Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 44

The Old Stone Mill stands within the pleasant inclosure of Touro Park, a place as fitting as any in Newport for the beginning of a sentimental journey. It is a pretty sight on a summer's evening, this green spot, dotted with moving figures sauntering up and down under the grim shadow of this picturesque ruin.[268] By moonlight it is superb.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD STONE MILL.]

No structure in America is probably so familiar to the great ma.s.s of the people as this ruined mill. The frequency of pictorial representation has fixed its general form and character until there is probably not a school-boy in his teens who would not be able to make a rude sketch of it on the blackboard. For years it has been the toughest historical _piece de resistance_ our antiquaries have had to deal with, and by many it was supposed to embody a secret as impenetrable as that of Stonehenge.

The Old Mill was dozing quietly away on this hill, when, in 1836, the Society of Northern Antiquaries, of Copenhagen, declared it to be evidence of the discovery and occupation of Newport by Northmen, in the eleventh century. An historical chain was immediately sought to be established between Dighton Rock, an exhumed skeleton at Fall River, and this tower, of which the inscription at Monhegan Island was believed to be another link.

Common opinion, prior to the declaration of the Danish antiquaries, was that the tower was the remains of a windmill, and nothing more. In a gazetteer of Rhode Island, printed in 1819, is the following paragraph: "In this town (Newport) there is now standing an ancient stone mill, the erection of which is beyond the date of its earliest records; but it is supposed to have been erected by the first settlers, about one hundred-and eighty years ago. It is an interesting monument of antiquity."

About this time Timothy Dwight, formerly president of Yale, was in Newport. In his letters, published in 1822, he has something to say of the Old Stone Mill: "On a skirt of this town is the foundation of a windmill erected some time in the seventeenth century. The cement of this work, formed of sh.e.l.l-lime and beach gravel, has all the firmness of Roman mortar, and when broken off frequently brings with it part of the stone. Time has made no impression on it, except to increase its firmness. It would be an improvement in the art of building in this country, if mortar made in the same manner were to be generally employed."[269]

All readers of early New England history know that nothing was too trivial, in the opinion of those old chroniclers, to be recorded.

Winthrop mentions the digging-up of a French coin at Dorchester in 1643.

It is pertinent to inquire why Roger Williams, Hubbard, Mather, the antiquary, and correspondent of the Royal Society, Prince, Hutchinson, and others, have wholly ignored the presence of an old ruin antedating the English occupation of Rhode Island? Would not Canonicus have led the white men to the spot, and there recounted the traditions of his people?

No spot of ground in New England has had more learned and observing annalists. Where were Bishop Berkeley, Rochambeau, Chastellux, Lauzun, Abbe Robin, Segur, Dumas, and Deux-Pouts, that they make no mention, in their writings or memoirs, of the remarkable archaeological remains at Newport? Yet, on the report of the Danish Society, nearly or quite all our American historians have admitted their theory of the origin of the Old Stone Mill to their pages. With this leading, and the ready credence the marvelous always obtains, the public rested satisfied.[270]

The windmill was an object of the first necessity to the settlers. More of them may be seen on Rhode Island to-day than in all the rest of New England. That this mill should have been built of stone is in no way surprising, considering that the surface of the ground must have been bestrewed with stones of proper size and shape ready to the builders'

hands.[271] I saw these flat stones of which the tower is built turned up by the plowshare in the roads. Throughout the island the walls are composed of them.[272]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PERRY MONUMENT.]

The cut on the preceding page represents the Old Stone Mill, with the moon's radiance illuminating its arches. It is a cylindrical tower, resting on eight rude columns, also circular. The arches have no proper key-stone,[273] and two of them appear broader than the others, as if designed for the entrance of some kind of vehicle. One column is so placed as to show an inner projection, an evident fault of workmanship.

Two stages are also apparent, and there are two windows and a fire-place. On the inside the haunches are cut to receive the timbers of the first-floor, just at the turn of the arch. Some cement is still seen adhering to the interior walls. The whole tower I estimated to be twenty-five feet high, with an inside diameter of twenty feet. This was probably nearly or quite its original height. For the rude materials, it is a remarkable specimen of masonry.[274]

I could see that even some of the best-informed Newporters with whom I talked were reluctant to let go the traditional antiquity of their Old Stone Mill. It is more interesting when tinged with the romance of Norse vikings than as the prosaic handiwork of English colonists, who had corn to grind, though American antiquaries have ceased to attribute to it any other origin. I confess to a feeling of remorse in aiding to destroy the illusion which has so long made the Old Mill a tower of strength to Newport. Its beauty, when seen draped in ivy and woodbine, cl.u.s.tering so thickly as to screen its gray walls from view, is at least not apocryphal.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[251] Judah Touro, the philanthropist, was born here in Newport, in 1775, the year of American revolt. His father, the old rabbi, Isaac, came from Holland, officiating as preacher in 1762 in Newport. When still a young man, Judah Touro removed to New Orleans, where he acquired a fortune. He was a volunteer in the battle of 1815, and was wounded by a cannon-ball in the hip. Though a Jew, Judah Touro was above sect, generously contributing to Christian church enterprises. Bunker Hill Monument, toward which he gave ten thousand dollars, is a memorial of his patriotic liberality.

[252] At Naples the summer temperature is seldom above 73; in winter it does not fall below 47.

[253] Point Judith is named from Judith Quincy, the wife of John Hull, coiner of the rare old pine-tree shillings of 1652.

[254] Beaver Tail is a peninsula at the southern extremity of Canonicut Island, so named from its marked resemblance, on the map, to the appendage of the beaver.

[255] Fort Adams is situated at the upper (northern) end of a point of land which helps to form the harbor of Newport; it also incloses a piece of water called Brenton's Cove.

[256] By our American Grace Darling, Miss Ida Lewis.

[257] Goat Island was the site of a colonial fortress. During the reign of King William, Colonel Romer advised the fortification of Rhode Island, which he says had never been done "by reason of the mean condition and refractoriness of the inhabitants." In 1744 the fort on Goat Island mounted twelve cannon. At the beginning of the Revolution General Lee, and afterward Colonel Knox, marked out defensive works; but they do not appear to have been executed when the British, on the same day that Washington crossed the Delaware, took possession of the island.

The Whigs, in 1775, removed the cannon from the batteries in the harbor.

Major L'Enfant, the engineer of West Point, was the author of Fort Wolcott.

[258] There should be added to the detail of maps given in the initial chapter that of Jerome Verrazani, in the College de Propaganda Fide, at Rome, of the supposed date of 1529. This map is described and discussed, together with the detail of Giovanni Verrazani's letter to Francis I., dated at Dieppe, July 8th, 1524, in "Verrazano, the Navigator," by J. C.

Brevoort. A reduced copy of the map or "Planisphere" is there given. The author adopts the theory, not without plausibility, that Verrazani pa.s.sed fifteen days at anchor in Narraganset Bay. As I have before said, there is something of fact in these early relations; but if tested by the only exact marks given (lat.i.tude, distances, and courses), they establish nothing.

[259] Harrison, the first architect of his day in New England, was the author of many of the older public buildings in Newport, Trinity Church and Redwood Library among others. He also designed King's Chapel, Boston, and did what he could to drag architecture out of the mire of Puritan ugliness and neglect.

[260] He owned, besides his house and garden in Boston, lands at Mount Wollaston, now Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts. Coddington is mentioned in Samuel Fuller's letter to Bradford, June, 1630. "Mrs. Cottington is dead," he also says.

[261] It may be found at length in Hutchinson, appendix, vol. ii.

Governor Hutchinson was a relative of the schismatic Anne.

[262] This was called an appeal to the country. A judge would hardly, at the present day, permit such an expression in court.

[263] William Wanton, 1732 to 1734; John Wanton, 1734 to 1741; Gideon Wanton, 1745 to 1746, and from 1747 to 1748; Joseph Wanton, from 1769 to 1775. The last named left Newport with the British, in 1780, and died in New York. His son Joseph, junior, commanded the regiment of loyalists raised on the island.

[264] One of the most curious chapters of Rhode Island's political history was the "Dorr Rebellion" of 1842, growing out of a partial and limited franchise under the old charter.

[265] A fund bequeathed by Abraham Touro, who died in Boston in 1822, secures this object.

[266] It was incorporated 1747: the same year Mr. Redwood gave five hundred pounds sterling, in books, or about thirteen hundred volumes.

The lot was the gift of Henry Collins, in 1748; building erected 1748-'50; enlarged in 1758; and now (1875) a new building is erecting.

Abraham Redwood was a native of Antigua. When the library sent its committee to Stuart, with a commission to paint a full-length portrait of Mr. Redwood, Stuart refused, for reasons of his own, to execute it.

[267] Dr. Ezra Stiles was librarian for twenty years.

[268] The discovery of any portion of the coast of New England by Northmen belongs to the realms of conjecture. It is not unreasonable to suppose that they may have fallen in with the continent; but what should have brought them so far south as Rhode Island, when Nova Scotia must have appeared to their eyes a paradise? The vine grows there. Champlain called Richmond's Island Isle de Bacchus, on account of its grapes.

[269] "Travels in New England and New York:" New Haven, 1822, vol. iii., p. 56.

[270] Among the records of Newport was found one of 1740, in which Edward Pelham bequeathed to his daughter eight acres of land, "with an Old Stone Wind Mill thereon standing and being, and commonly called and known as the Mill Field." The lane now called Mill Street appears to have been so named from its conducting up the hill to the mill. The wife of Pelham was granddaughter of Governor Benedict Arnold. In the governor's will, dated in 1677, he gives direction for his burial in a piece of ground "being and lying in my land in or near ye line or path from my dwelling-house, leading to my stone-built Wind Mill in ye town of Newport above mentioned."

[271] I incline to the opinion that the Indians had here, as at Plymouth, cleared a considerable area. There the carpenters had to go an eighth of a mile for timber suitable for building.

[272] Within five miles of Boston is standing an ancient stone windmill, erected about 1710. It had been so long used as a powder-magazine that no tradition remained in the neighborhood that it had ever been a windmill. They still call it the Old Powder-house.

[273] The keys are compound, and, though rude, are tolerably defined. No two are alike; they are generally of a hard gray stone, instead of the slate used in the structure.

[274] This building may have been mentioned by Church in his account of Philip's War, when, after some display of aversion on the part of a certain captain to a dangerous enterprise, he was advised by the Indian fighter to lead his men "to the windmill on Rhode Island, where they would be out of danger."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOAT LANDING.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

PICTURESQUE NEWPORT.

"Don't you see the silvery wave?

Don't you hear the voice of G.o.d?"