Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411090024
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEVE SILK THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: WICKFORD, R. I. LENGTH: Long
Oh, some folks know about the place. Painters, for example. This tiny village within the town of North Kingstown has been a sort of artists colony for more than 50 years. Fishermen know Wickford, too; so do sailors and yachties. And discerning shoppers, looking for something different in the village's 40 or so boutique-y shops and galleries, are frequent visitors. History buffs come, too - for here is a town full of post-Revolution homes, a place that has not changed a whole lot since the lights went out on Wickford's golden age more than 150 years ago.
Wherever you turn among the prim clapboard houses and neat brick shops, you're looking at water.
The Narragansett Bay seems intent on swallowing Wickford. During the 1938 hurricane, the place was hip-deep in water. Today, the bay continues its patient attack, probing the shoreline with fingerlike bays, scooping out neat coves whenever the opportunity arises. Bridges and tidal inlets are everywhere.
``It's a regular little Venice,'' says Jack MacGowan, a steward of nearby Smith's Castle, one of the area's noted historic sites.
The bay's long embrace of Wickford has shaped the character of both the village and its people. The town's economic zenith came in the late 1700s, when its wharves and docks were full of sloops and merchandise bound for Newport, then one of the biggest ports in the country.
Cattle and horses (particularly the locally bred Narragansett pacer, the prized riding horse of the time), cheeses and tobacco filled many a cargo hold back then. This was when most of the town's houses went up, and the wealth of the merchants is apparent still in the proud doorways that decorate the houses along Main Street.
But the coming of steamships and railroads ended Wickford's prosperity. The village slipped into Rip Van Winkle-like slumber, snoozing through the centuries like the little backwater it became.
Today it's a refreshingly old-fashioned place, a Norman Rockwell town where some of the kids speed down the sidewalk on foot-propelled scooters. In the narrow lanes spilling off Main Street, and along the tiny streets scattered along the bay, you're as likely to see a boat in the yard as a car in the driveway.
Down at the town dock, where quahog boats share the Wickford Harbor waters with lobster boats, swans, yachts and sailboats, there's always something going on. Captain Bill (as most folks know former ferryboat captain William Pemantel) is fishing for flounder off his buddy's docked boat. The captain comes over from his home in Jamestown almost every day.
Time, he says, has not been as kind to Jamestown as it has been to Wickford. ``Everything's changed over there,'' he says. ``I like it here.''
From the harbor, a walk down Main Street shows Wickford off to its best advantage. Nearly every dwelling boasts a plaque dating construction to the turn of the 18th century. Picket fences and shady maples are everywhere, as are flower boxes and neatly maintained gardens. Even the telephone poles are decorated with baskets full of petunias and vinca.
You can take a stroll down the Greeneway, striding past cedars and lilacs and across steppingstones inscribed with several centuries worth of pastors' names. At the end of the walkway stands Old Narragansett Church, built in 1707 in Narragansett and moved to Wickford in 1800. There's no steeple (it fell down in 1866 and was never replaced), so the church, with its wavy, time-twisted clapboards, looks like another historic home. But its grounds are marked with the dark slabs of eroded gravestones, some blazed with winged death's-heads or weeping willows. The house of worship has never been wired for electricity; it is now used only during summer Sundays and on special occasions.
Back on Main Street, a few minutes' walk brings you to the heart of Wickford's T-shaped commercial district, where rows of little shops and galleries sell everything from Shaker boxes and watercolors of Rhode Island scenes to sweaters from Ecuador, masks from Africa and jewelry from New Mexico.
Those who want to see more traditional tourist attractions will have to head out of town. South of Wickford is a rather curiously named attraction that offers one-stop sightseeing. The Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, Old Snuff Mill & Waterwheel offers a chance to see all three, but the streamside red clapboard homestead is best known for native son Gilbert Stuart, the famed 18th century painter whose portrait of George Washington appears on every $1 bill.
One of the last stops around Wickford might be Smith's Castle, a descendant of the fortified blockhouse built by Providence founder Roger Williams and his friend Richard Smith. They came in the late 1630s to build a trading post and set up cannons to protect against pirates. Indians weren't a problem - Williams and Smith got on famously with the Narragansetts, who summered by the tens of thousands in the area around what is now Wickford.
That cozy relationship changed later, when a new generation of Indians challenged New England's European settlers. The Narragansetts declared themselves neutral but offered haven to Indians from tribes engaged in fighting under the Wampanoag leader Metacom, also known as King Philip.
During King Philip's War, Colonial fighters used the castle as a staging ground for a December 1675 raid on a Narragansett village in the Great Swamp area of Rhode Island. The settlers set fire to the settlement, taking considerable casualties in the process - 40 of their dead are buried under a single stone near the castle. In retribution, warriors later burned the castle to the ground.
Soon it was rebuilt. And Smith's Castle became the first of the plantations that would prosper along the west banks of Narragansett Bay. It was a vast 27-square-mile estate where horses, sheep, tobacco and corn were raised. The prosperous dwelling became for a while the unofficial capital of the county. Benjamin Franklin slept there, the Marquis de Lafayette slept there, but George Washington never did.
Smith's Castle today is in the midst of a multiyear renovation and restoration program. The old home is open to visitors, and you can wander its grounds, pause in its 18th century garden or just look out over the tiny islands and watery inlets of Mill Cove.
Here it's easy to imagine how things might have been way back when. After all, they've hardly changed.
by CNB