The Boathouse, Portsmouth Abbey

The ultimate choice of location for the community envisioned by Leonard Sargent seems to have been a combination of intention and opportunity. The intention was a rural setting beyond suburban reach, such as that reach was experienced in the early twentieth century. The opportunity was a piece of property surrounding what was then known as “Hall Manor,” in the town of Portsmouth, on the west side of the island known as Rhode Island, also known as “Aquidneck.” Additional acreage adjacent to the north of the original monastic grounds was to be added several decades later, affording some 600 acres on the shore of the Narragansett Bay. Without proposing any sort of researched analysis, this article will highlight some aspects of our monastery’s surrounding community for those unfamiliar with its history or heritage, a history presenting unexpected challenges to the halcyon vision inspiring Sargent. Inspiring this brief review is a 1979 “Preliminary Report” undertaken by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission. That wide-ranging survey reveals a local community settled by religious radicals, unsettled by military battles, reached by railways and streetcars, host to summer resorts and rollercoasters, and industrialized by coal mines, advanced weapons systems, and aluminum wire manufacture. This range of historical moments and movements swirled very closely around the property later found at the address “285 Cory’s Lane.” One still encounters the effects today. Guided by the Report, we will use some of its findings to illustrate how our cloister has been connected to the world around us.

If the monastic life strikes one as radical and extreme, one must realize that English Benedictines were not the first religious-minded people to settle in Portsmouth. From its first European settlement, the area attracted religious radicals and dissenters. In 1638, “a group of prosperous and prominent religious dissenters from Boston,” notably John Clarke and William Coddington, set up shop nearby, directed to this area by Roger Williams, who assisted them in obtaining a land grant here. But while the two had supported Anne Hutchinson and her “Antinomian” movement in Massachusetts, her eventual arrival with her followers at their settlement did not go smoothly, with Coddington soon heading south to establish a Newport settlement. “Religion was an important aspect of Portsmouth life from the very beginning,” the Report tells us, and a group consistently present in that life was the Friends, or Quakers. In 1672, George Fox himself, founder of the Society of Friends, visited Aquidneck Island, attending “one or more meetings” in Portsmouth. In about 1700, its Meeting House, one of the oldest structures in the state, was constructed on Quaker Hill, little more than a mile from the present monastery. It came to be supported by “a large and wealthy congregation.” The community, as the rest of the state, has seen substantial religious diversity over its history: nearby Newport is home to the nation’s oldest synagogue; the Episcopal church has had a significant presence, and waves of immigration injected various Catholic groups into the mix. Several of the key early members of the monastic community were in fact local converts, such as Leonard Sargent and John Hugh Diman, who had previously been quite active in church work in their former congregations.

George Gardner Hall

Our Portsmouth heritage is inextricably linked to a culture and politics as well. Two notable buildings on the monastic grounds bear visible evidence to our direct connection to two distinct later historical periods: the nineteenth century’s era of summer estates, and the eighteenth century’s Revolutionary War. The grounds are perhaps most prominently, and un-monastically, defined by the wealth of the period of Summer Estates, associated with the “Gilded Age” of Newport and its environs. Architecturally, this is seen in the signature building of Sargent’s acquisition, what we now call the Manor House, a multi-purpose building now a dormitory and admissions facility, formerly a library, classroom and office building, and indeed once close to the center of monastic life. When purchased, it was known as Hall Manor, though the historian more properly calls it the Amos D. Smith House, described in the 1979 Report as a “2½-story, mansard-roofed structure, with several interior, brick chimneys; gabled dormers; an arched, open porch; and fine detailing. The house was built by Amos D. Smith (in 1864) and later purchased by George G. Hall. ‘Mr. Hall’s country place’ was, considered one of the most picturesque locations along Narragansett Bay.” Amos D. Smith had been the son of a sea captain, and together with his younger brother successfully entered the textile business.  His bayside estate was later purchased by George Gardner Hall, from an established Portsmouth family, who had been a hotelier. Hall died suddenly in 1917, when his carriage was struck by a trolley, and is now buried alongside several family members behind the Portsmouth Meetinghouse. It was his widow Catherine, whose family was from New Bedford, who passed the property to Leonard Sargent. Amos Smith had engaged Richard Upjohn, a well-known architect, to design the estate. Upjohn left his mark on projects all over the New England, including the Rotch-Jones-Duff House in New Bedford, Kingscote in Newport, and Grace Church in Providence, and many Episcopal Churches throughout the northeast. His work here for Amos Smith includes our iconic Boathouse.

The Manor House is not, however, the oldest home still in use on the property. That distinction goes to the “Seth Anthony House” built c. 1740, whose history reveals our intimate link to the Revolutionary War period. Portsmouth was the site of “The Battle of Rhode Island” of 1778, a battle that was reenacted in part here on campus during its bicentennial year. The Preliminary Report identifies the Seth Anthony House as a “2½-story Colonial structure, originally a large, brick, center-chimney house, with an addition with a stuccoed brick chimney at the west side. There is an enclosed entry in front and an addition at the left side rear. The house, at the end of a long lane behind Portsmouth Abbey School, was in the middle of the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778 and was plundered by Hessian soldiers.” The battle was scattered across much of the northern portion of Aquidneck Island, from the elevated fortification at Fort Butts along the present-day Route 24, to the terrain now serving the Aquidneck Club golf course. Dozens of the Hessian soldiers are buried in what is now called “Hessian Hole.” And one can visit the Anthony family cemetery, highlighted now along the entry road from Cory’s Lane to the Aquidneck Club’s Lookout.

Anthony family cemetery, accessible from
Aquidneck Club entry road

If visitors to campus do not sense the Gilded Age, nor Revolutionary War battles, perhaps even less will they suspect that this portion of the town was once known for coal mining. Mine shafts remain hidden beneath the grounds. The Report summarizes the history of our encounter with King Coal: “Although Portsmouth’s mills were small-scale ventures, the town was involved in an industry in a way unique in Rhode Island in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – coal mining. In 1809, after the discovery of valuable coal deposits near Bristol Ferry, the Rhode Island Coal Company and the Aquidneck Coal Company were incorporated and started mining coal. The coal was relatively easy to mine, but, unfortunately, was of poor quality, with a high ash content, and, largely for this reason, the history of the coal mining venture is characterized by repeated closings and openings under several different chartered companies. The Taunton Copper Company in 1866 built a smelting works near the coal mines, treating copper from the United States and abroad. It was a thriving enterprise, complete with eight blast furnaces, twenty-two kilns, large wooden engine houses, tenements, a store, a school house, a powder magazine, workshops and barns, an office and a depot on the Old Colony and Newport Railroad. In 1883, the last ore was received and the mines abandoned. The last mining venture started in 1909, new shafts were sunk and a modern power plant built, but the mines were closed in 1913 for the last time.” William Cullen Bryant, 19^th-century poet and politician who merits an impressive statue outside the New York City Public Library, wrote a poem about this Portsmouth product, “A Meditation on Rhode-Island Coal.” An excerpt:

Part of the former coal mining complex north of the monastery grounds

 Portsmouth coal is not only indicative of our industry, but also of our geology, and areas at “the end of Cory Lane and along the west side of Prudence Island, are rich in petrified plants which are important in the study of New England’s geological history.” While these coal mining ventures were sporadic, they are indicative of the diverse industrial development that was to inhabit the vicinity. The Report notes that the Weyerhauser Timber Company, “built a large complex of storage sheds and a small sawmill on a 100-acre site near Arnold Point in 1925” – the area just north of the monastery was known to many locally for years as the “Weyerhauser property.” It was later purchased by the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Company, responsible for the construction of a looming edifice that was later transformed into the deluxe apartments of the Carnegie Tower. The Report outlines several other industries, some that still surround our bayside haven: “The Raytheon Company, a manufacturer of sonar devices and very closely tied to the navy’s underwater system center in Middletown, built a plant here in 1959 and is now one of Rhode Island’s largest employers. Pearson Yachts established a plant in the early l960s, …Transcom Electronics Inc. came in 1967. These industries, plus the U.S. Naval Reservation at Melville, today dominate the western side of Aquidneck Portsmouth.”

While the anomalous height of the Carnegie Tower reminds us of our industrial history, the interruption of our quiet summer evenings by the occasional blast of train whistles may recall the heritage of trains and trolleys that still impacts us. The evening dinner trains are the remnant of a rail line established, like many American lines, in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Old Colony and Newport Railroad opened a line in 1864 between Fall River and Newport. Its single track crossed the Sakonnet River and wended its way along the western shore of the island, passing the Amos Smith House as well as the Brayton House with its topiary garden, our neighbor across Cory’s Lane. The line continued to serve both passenger and industrial purposes for decades, now providing the rails for the recreational dinner line, as well as for the “Rail Explorers,” weekend wanderers who propel themselves between Newport and Portsmouth on pedal-powered 2-4 seater rail vehicles. Rail travel on the island was expanded in 1898, with the introduction of an electric trolley, the Newport-Fall River Street Railway, later called the Old Colony Street Railway, which ran along East Main Road, facilitating the arrival of additional visitors to Portsmouth and points south. Associated with this transportation were the possibilities opened for tourists. The Island Park section of Portsmouth, located near its northernmost tip, was transformed into a well-known entertainment destination, home to an amusement park that “in its heyday had glider swings, a merry-go-round, and ‘The Bullet’ – the second largest roller coaster in New England.” The area attracted “thousands of funseekers in the l920’s,” though it was sadly completely destroyed by the famous hurricane of 1938 and was never rebuilt.

“The Bullet” Rollercoaster at Island Park
(photo from collection of former faculty member and Portsmouth historian, James Garman,
who also assisted with the 1979 Preliminary Report)

So, we come to the end of this rollercoaster adventure through the history of Portsmouth, a journey lasting about as long as a ride on “The Bullet.” While the monastic community follows a tradition of withdrawing from the world, that world stills leaves its traces, providing a bit more than merely the outer boundaries of our microcosm. Maybe this glimpse of that world can offer some insight into the Portsmouth that lends its name to our Abbey.

NOTES:

• Historic and Architectural Resources of Portsmouth Rhode Island: A Preliminary Report (Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission, 1979)

• Portsmouth Historical Society: Resources