Newport

A few Saturdays ago I drove down to Newport, Rhode Island.  It's hard to believe it's been eight years since I was last there, on the 7th grade trip.

Two bits of important practical info that I didn't know before I left: 

1. To drive to Newport you have to cross the Claiborne Pell Bridge, which costs $4 for passenger cars (or $2 per axle for larger vehicles).
2. There is public parking at the transportation/visitors' center, not far from the historic sites; parking is free from November 1 through April 30 (happily, the day I went).

Even though it was April and still a bit chilly, there were many more tourists than I'd expected to see.  I was both glad and disappointed that most of them were not interested in anything historical, leaving those sites for me to enjoy.  There were also at least two dudes wearing Nantucket red shorts.

There may be the most colonial houses in Newport of any place I've been so far.  This one belonged to John Stevens, a stone carver; he and his family members carved many of the stones in the Common Burying Ground, and his shop across the street has operated since 1705.  Three hundred eleven years in operation is pretty impressive for an American business.  You can sign me up for a tombstone from them, because they do nice work (including on the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.).

About four cemeteries are grouped together when you enter the city.  These include Historic Cemetery Number 6--if it has another name I didn't see it--home to many Irish immigrants, overgrown, with bees from a stack of hives nearby buzzing through the clover; Braman Cemetery, into which I did not venture; and Island Cemetery and the Common Burying Ground, which border each other but cannot be entered one from the other.

Both cemeteries had people with their dogs off-leash in them, and some owners failed to clean up after their pets.  Two young men rode a motorbike through Island Cemetery and later sat on graves to have a chat; in the Common Burying Ground I saw a man whom I thought at first was doing some kind of clean-up work, because he had so much stuff spread out from his car, but later it seemed like he, too, was just using a grave as a table and was kind of hanging out.  It was disconcerting, to say the least.

Island Cemetery has many interesting gravesites, some of which have been defaced by graffiti or are used as places to sleep by the homeless.  Newport cemeteries in general are a great place to find buried captains, but Island has two famous ones: Oliver Hazard Perry and Commodore Matthew Perry.  The former won the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812, and is also honored with a statue in Washington Square.  From his grave the masts of ships in the harbor can be seen not far away, which I thought fitting.  Oliver's younger brother Matthew was instrumental in the opening of Japan.  He is buried in the Belmont family plot (pictured at left, with Perry's monument at right),* and a statue of him stands in Touro Park.

The Common Burying Ground is in sad shape.  Some of it cannot be attributed to malfeasance; lots of the carvings are illegible because of lichen, likely due to the damp sea air, and some slate stones had holes right through them.  At first I thought they might be bullet holes, as someone in this article also believes, but upon closer inspection I changed my mind and reckoned there must have been some inherent flaw in the stone.  However, much of the destruction must have been the result of neglect at best and malice at worst.

This is especially awful since the Common Burying Ground is home to the highest number of colonial African-American graves in the country.  I expected there to be some kind of sign noting this and giving some information, but there was nothing.  It was also curious that most of the burying ground was crowded, with little concern for space or chronology, but the section where the servants are buried has plenty of room.  I would have liked to have seen the official explanation for this.  The photos below illustrate the difference in population density in the two sections.

On a more positive note, my favorite epitaph described the ingenious Captain Pollipus Hammond and his charitable, prudent, virtuous wife Sarah.  Would that I could be all of those things.

After I failed in my quest to find affordable fish and chips, I wandered past a few mansions and Salva Regina University to the Cliff Walk.  I walked the half-mile from Forty Steps to Memorial Boulevard.  The blues in the water were beautiful, and the air was cool and fresh. 

I also found made my way to Touro Park.  Just as last time, there is no sign by the stone tower, though at the museum at Washington Square they now claim the stone tower was part of a mill built by Benedict Arnold, ancestor of the famous one.  I'd rather believe it was built by Vikings.

I just wanted to include a picture of this house because it is HUGE for a colonial home.  Obviously the section at the back was an addition, but still: it makes sense that John Banister, for whom it was built in 1751, was a merchant but also a privateer and smuggler.

*I thought it odd that someone so famous was buried in a plot that prominently featured another family's name.  It turns out that Perry was originally buried in New York and was later moved to Newport.  One of his sons-in-law, August Belmont, was fairly rich and could afford a big monument.  He's also the namesake of the Belmont Stakes. ↩

The Most Ancient Towne

Kit's heart sank.  This was Wethersfield!  Just a narrow sandy stretch of shoreline, a few piles sunk in the river with rough planking for a platform.  Out of the mist jutted a row of cavernous wooden structures that must be warehouses, and beyond that the dense, dripping green of fields and woods. 

 
 Thank you, public television!

When I traced how I found out about a recent destination, the source was a program aired on Connecticut Public Television sometime late last year.  I somewhat flippantly thought to myself, 'Thanks, PBS!' but then I considered that "Rick Steves Europe," not to mention "Doc Martin" and all of the thousand British crime shows we watch, air only on PBS stations.  So, in all sincerity, thank you, public television.  And if you're in a position to do so, please support your local station(s) so they can keep providing educational, informational, entertaining content.

I heard about Wethersfield, Connecticut, because of its cemetery.  My aunts saw a program about it in the fall or winter and visited in December, sending me a few photos of graves there.  With the weather finally nice, I decided to drive down on a Sunday afternoon.  I invited the aunts to meet me there, and they agreed, though I showed up earlier for two reasons: it's a shorter drive for me, since the town is not far at all from Hartford, and I wanted ample time to explore the cemetery without having to worry about them waiting for me.

At least it looked solid and respectable, compared to the cabins they had passed.  Two and a half stories it stood, gracefully proportioned, with leaded glass windows and clapboards weathered to a silvery gray.

I didn't do much reading-up before I went, but I'm glad I at least looked at the Historic Wethersfield website, because it clued me in to an important thing.  On Broad Street, near the cemetery and a block or two from Main Street, there is a house called the Buttolph-Williams House.  It looks fairly unremarkable, just three stories of dark-weathered wood and a few windows, but it was the inspiration for the family home in Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  It's been so long since I read it that I hadn't realized that the book was set in colonial Wethersfield, so it was fun to go see the town and those buildings and homes that likely would have been around at the time Kit lived there.  (This write-up was delayed by the fact that it was harder than it ought to have been to procure a copy of the book to see how Kit described the town.)

The long rows of onions looked endless, their sharp green shoots already half hidden by encroaching weeds.

Considered one of Connecticut's very first towns, Wethersfield was also the home to Silas Deane, a diplomat during the Revolution, and Washington and Rochambeau met up there to plan the battle of Yorktown (which did not happen at the Yorktown in New York, as we thought, but at the one in Virginia).  With all of this history and culture, it's no surprise that the town's emblem is a red onion.  Apparently the Wethersfield red was for many years an integral part of the local economy.

The town also has the Grand High DMV of Connecticut (a.k.a. the department's state headquarters).  It is very much the most stately DMV building I've ever seen.

As promised, the cemetery had a bunch of colonial graves.  It was also interesting to see the newer markers near some graves noting in which wars the deceased had fought, because they were not limited to the Revolution; they included the War of 1812, the Civil War, and such lesser-known conflicts as Queen Anne's War and King George War, parts of larger European conflicts carried out in their colonies.  Other somewhat unusual bits of note: the grave of a Mr. Boyssou de Monplaisir of Guadaloupe, the names Salmon North and Zechariah Bunce, and the number of skulls that look like concerned lightbulbs.

It's fun to drive or walk around the historic neighborhoods and admire the 18th- and 19th-century houses.  Though this bed and breakfast isn't that historic, it is really beautiful.  Wethersfield was quaint and perfect for a pleasant Sunday afternoon out.