Greek Revival granite church that opened in 1828, two years after John Adams’ death. Tours lead visitors below the church to view the stone tombs in the family crypt. I drive on to Providence along State Hwy. Route 3 South but first take a detour at Plymouth with a visit to the Plimoth Patuxet Museums highlighting the original landing site of the Pilgrims in 1620. Key to this attraction is a recreated 17th century English village with wooden cabins along dirt streets, a meeting house, gardens, and farm animals grazing on grassy plots. “What you’re seeing here is just one street in our town,” says an actor dressed in period garb. “We’re trying to work for a profit,” he adds, noting that colonists worked in fishing, furs, and lumber trades. The adjacent Patuxet Homesite portrays recreated thatched huts of the Patuxet tribe of Wampanoag Native Americans. Yes, the legendary Plymouth Rock does exist, protected by a temple-like granite portico on the shore of Plymouth Bay. It’s only a short walk from the Mayflower II , a replica of the actual Mayflower with its catwalks, full sail rigs and blue, white, and yellow striped hull. The Mayflower transported 140 passengers and crew to the new colony, half of them perishing during the first winter there. While most of us know about the Boston Tea Party, what many may not know is that a similar and more dramatic incident defying the Crown’s taxation took place in Providence a year and a half earlier than the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor. It was known as the Gaspee Affair, which led to Rhode Island patriots
storming a British ship used to tax colonial vessels and setting it ablaze. “This incident basically went viral in our terms,” explains Richard Ring, the Deputy Executive Director for Collections and Interpretation of the Rhode Island Historical Society. “For the most part, it was a flashpoint and certainly Rhode Island’s biggest instance of resistance.” The raid started when the Royal Navy taxing schooner HMS Gaspee got stuck on a sandbar while chasing a merchant ship. Patriots seized the moment and rowed out to the ship and set it ablaze. “In the dead of night, colonists decided to head down to what we today call Gaspee Point and burned the ship to the waterline,” says Kelvis Hernandez, manager of the John Brown House Museum. A stone monument marks the spot where Sabin’s Tavern once stood, where the Gaspee Affair was supposedly planned. The tavern’s marker sits at the base of Providence’s College Hill, home of the campuses of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and where historic colonial and 19th century buildings remain today. They include the Old State House, which served as Rhode Island’s seat of government from 1762 until the current state capital opened in 1901. The First Baptist Church in America, established in 1638 by Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, is in fact the nation’s oldest Baptist congregation. Built atop the slope of a hill, the church with its pointed white tower is a prominent landmark. A walk up College Hill and along Benefit Street leads to several historic buildings including the red- walled house of Stephen Hopkins, a governor of the Rhode Island colony and signer of the Declaration of Independence. The John Brown House Museum’s eponymous founder was a wealthy businessman and a strong proponent of the slave trade, yet the museum’s focus today is exploring diversity and exposing the consequences of human bondage. “So, for us it’s very important to have this conversation of how slavery was involved in the society of Rhode Island for those who were complicit, either directly or indirectly,” says Hernandez. The Rhode Island School of Design’s world-class RISD Museum houses 100,000 works of art ranging from Old Master paintings to decorative pieces dating back to antiquity. The early 19th century Providence Athenaeum, now a community membership library in Greek Revival design, has an interesting story. It’s where literary icon Edgar Allan Poe courted a young poet in the 1840s.
Actor portraying Samuel Adams at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum
BOSTON TO PROVIDENCE
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE SUMMER 2025 | 21
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