Historical Teasers:
Answers to last month's questions

1. The Pocasset Worsted Company, on Pocasset Street in Thornton, employed over 1000 people in 1909, more than any other firm in the town's history. The company manufactured yarn from 1898 to the mid-1930s when the Walter Marshall Spinning Corporation took over the complex. The Pocasset Worsted mills were built by Charles Fletcher of Providence as part of his textile empire.
2. Johnston's first post office was at Simmonsville. It operated only from January 29, 1847, to May 22, 1850. Its first postmaster was Walter S. Brownell. Manton's post office was established on November 19, 1849, with William S. King as postmaster. It closed October 31, 1905. The Olneyville post office served adjoining areas of both Johnston and Providence, lasting from May 22, 1850, until October 31, 1900. James Kelley was the first postmaster. Hughesdale's post office opened under Theodore S. Hughes on March 17, 1876, and closed February 29, 1916. The last post office to open in Johnston and the last one operating in town was at Thornton. It conducted business from December 2, 1889 until December 31, 1927. Benjamin Berry was the first postmaster. The present post office on Hartford Avenue does not have its own postmaster and is actually a branch of the Providence Post Office. There were other auxiliary stations in town also, such as the contract station at Little Rhody's Hardware in Thornton in the 1950s. It had no first-class postmarking device though, and was not a real post office.
3. The first building erected as a high school in Johnston was a brick structure completed in 1891 on Killingly Street, near Plainfield Street. George H. Currier was principal. Graduates of the town grammar schools were admitted upon completion of an entrance examination. The Johnston High School was actually established in 1885 in part of the Odd Fellows Block Building in Olneyville. In 1889 Lydia Frances Harrington and Nora Guilda Wright were its first graduates. With the 1898 annexation of the Olneyville/Silver Lake area to Providence, Johnston lost its high school and did not have another until 1960 when the Ferri Middle School off Atwood Avenue opened its doors as the Johnston Junior-Senior High School. The present high school was completed in 1968, with the former high school across the street being renamed the Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School.

This month's questions:

1. At least three Johnston churches have been destroyed by natural disasters. Name the three and what happened to them.
2. Where was the Fenner Stand located and what was its claim to fame?
3. What famous archeological site in Johnston was supposedly rediscovered by a clairvoyant in 1874?

The cost of printing this publication for the year 1986 has been paid by the following sponsors:

• Mayor Ralph A. aRusso
• Walter Beaune of United Display
• Jean Dexter, electrologist
• Bill and Bob Jackson of W.E. Jackson bookbinders
• Louis Perrotta of The Louis Press
• Frank Rotondo of Johnston Insurance Agency
• Frank Saccoccio of Frank Saccoccio Appliance Service
• Ben Zanni of Manton Autobody

*JOHNSTON PLACE NAMES* in Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World (1880)

• Antioch—not mentioned.
• Caesarville, see'zer-vil, a hamlet of Johnston township, Providence co., R.I., 2 miles from Manton.
• Hughesdale, huz'dale, or Hughes, a post-hamlet of Providence co., R.I., in Johnston township, 2 1/2 miles from Olneyville. It has a manufactory of chemicals.
• Johnston, a township of Providence co., R.I. Pop., 4999. It contains West Providence and part of Olneyville.
• Manton, a post-village of Providence co., R.I., on the Providence and Springfield Railroad, 4 miles W. by N. of Providence, of which city it is a suburb. It has several churches and factories. Pop. 463.
• Morgan Mills—no mention.
• Olneyville (local pron. o'ne-vil) a post-village of Providence co., R.I., in Providence and Johnston townships, on the Providence and Springfield Railroad and the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad, 2 miles W. of Providence. It has several cotton mills and a church. The thriving villages of West Providence, Waterman Plat, and Silver Lake are adjacent. Pop. 4995.
• Merino, me-ree'no, a village in Providence co., R.I., on the Providence and Springfield Railroad, 3 1/2 miles from Providence. Pop. 340.
• Pocasset, a village of Providence co., R.I., in Johnston township, 4 miles from Olneyville. It has a church and a grist-mill. Pop. about 200.
• Rockville—no mention.
• Graniteville, a village in Johnston township, Providence co., R.I., on the Providence and Springfield Railroad, 6 miles N.W. of Providence. It has a church, and is adjacent to the larger village of Centredale. Pop. 210.
• Silver Lake, a village in Johnson [sic] township, Providence co., R.I., adjacent to Olneyville. It has a foundry. Pop. 278.
• Tripptown—no mention.
• Simmonsville, a village of Johnston township, Providence co., R.I. It has a hall, and manufactures of cotton yarns. Pop. in 1875, 97; of Simmons Lower Village (adjacent), 82.
• Dry Brook, a hamlet of Providence co., R.I., in Johnston township. Pop. 135.
• Thornton—no mention.
• Waterman Plat, a village in Johnston township, Providence co., R.I., adjacent to Olneyville. Pop. 316. Here is Olneyville Railroad Station.
• West Providence, a thriving suburb of Providence, R.I., in Johnston township, Providence co., is on the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad, 4 miles W. of Providence, and adjacent to Olneyville. It has a chapel. Pop. 358. West Providence is Station of the Stonington and Providence Railroad is 3 miles S.W. of Providence.

Taken together, this group of definitions gives an interesting view of how the world saw Johnston in 1880. We can be reasonably sure that the publishers tried hard to make this book as up-to-date and accurate as possible, but these local places seem a little dated and a few errors appear. Antioch was a pastoral country village at the time. Morgan Mills was closely identified with Hughesdale in physical locality and can be understandably overlooked, but what about Dry Brook? This was simply an early name for Hughesdale; two notes appear about the same place, without even mentioning each other! Simmons Lower Village became Thornton in ca. 1885. It is not too surprising that no space is given to Tripptown or Rockville, earlier names for the village of Manton. What's Waterman Plat or West Providence except land developers' housing plats?

No known church was ever in Pocasset, so this may refer to the Congregational/Methodist Episcopal church at Hughesdale (?). The Providence and Springfield Railroad ran local service, running northwest out of Olneyville up the Woonasquatucket River through numerous mill villages. But what was the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill?

—RSB

Ancestry: The Line of Daniel Thornton
In our November issue we related the dismantling of the Thornton/LaFazia House. Two of our members, Bob Burford and Louis McGowan, are compiling a deed chain for this house and a genealogical sketch of the Thornton family that lived there. The accompanying chart shows the family tree from John Thornton, the first of the family in Rhode Island, down to Elijah W. Thornton, the last Thornton to own the house.

John¹ Thornton was living in Rhode Island by 1639, when he was granted ten acres of land in Newport. He moved to Providence about 1679 with his wife, Sarah, and the following year was appointed a deputy in that town. In 1680 he purchased 300 acres of land at Neutaconkanut Hill, which later was part of Johnston. John¹ lived at least until 1695, making a complaint to the Town Council in August of that year.

John² Thornton, son of John¹, was married to Dinah Steere and lived in Providence until his death in 1716. He was given the easterly sixty acres of his father's farm at Neutaconkanut Hill in 1686. By his will all his land was to be sold to pay debts with any remaining money to be divided among his children.

John³ Thornton, son of John², married Abigail, daughter of Richard and Sarah Clemence. They lived north-west of Neutaconkanut Hill in what was later Johnston. John³ died in 1745, necessitating the appointment of a guardian for Daniel⁴ Thornton, his son. Daniel is the first Thornton that is known to have lived in the Thornton/LaFazia House.

Bibliography

• Austin, John Osborne. Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1969. (reprint of 1887).
• Arnold, James N. Vital Records of Rhode Island, First Series, Volume 2, Johnston.
• Brown, Clarence I. "Thornton Genealogy: an Alphabetic Account of the Descendants of John Thornton", 1898 mss. (microfilm copy at RIHS Library)

28 January, 1986

Stephen Mack Associates
Ashaway, Rhode Island

Mr. Mack:

Re: Thornton-LaFazia House, Johnston

Several times in the past four months we have studied old Rhode Island documents with the aim of determining the age of the house formerly at the northwest corner of Memorial Avenue and Atwood Avenue.

Deed work at Johnston Town Hall shows the house to have passed to Francesco and Maria B. LaFazia in July 1908 from Herbert Calef, who had purchased the Elijah W. Thornton farmstead a month earlier at a mortgage foreclosure auction. Deeds seem to show the property coming to Elijah Thornton from his father, Jeremiah; likewise, Jeremiah undoubtedly received it from his father, Solomon. And Solomon (referred to as Solomon junior to differentiate from an uncle) acquired the farmstead from his father, Daniel. Evidence of this chain of occupancy is found in a cemetery (Johnston Historical Cemetery #16) about one-hundred yards north of the house, in which are markers for Elijah W., Jeremiah, Solomon jr., and Daniel (along with spouses and some children and other relatives). To date we have not found evidence of ownership of the land or a house prior to Daniel Thornton. That gravestones for no generations earlier than Daniel are found in the family cemetery on Atwood Avenue suggests that earlier Thorntons lived elsewhere.

Genealogical sources, especially a manuscript, "Thornton Genealogy: an Alphabetic Account of the Descendants of John Thornton of Providence" (1898) by Clarence I. Borwn (microfilm copy, R.I. Historical Society Library, MFILM/CS/71/+49/1898) make Daniel Thornton of Johnston to be son of John, who was son of John, who was a son of the first John Thornton in Providence. The homestead(s) of John² and John³ seem to have been on Neutaconkanut Hill several miles from the house site in question. Daniel's brother Solomon is buried in a cemetery plot on this hill and Daniel's brother John⁴ is buried not far away in a cemetery on Hartford Avenue. Brother Solomon⁴'s grave is near the Thornton-Brown House at 69 Morgan Avenue thought to have been his home. John⁴'s burial site is near a house at the corner of South Lawn Street (later the birthplace of Gov. Samuel Ward King) which is possibly the homestead of several of the John Thorntons, since John⁴ sold the house to William Borden King in 1776.

Johnston Book of Deeds # 1, page 54, records that Daniel Thornton of Johnston and his wife Susanna, on October 3, 1760, sold for £6500 to his brother John of Johnston, fifty acres more or less being the place where Daniel then lived, and which had been given to Daniel by his father, John Thornton (deceased), being one half of his homestead. (Brother John⁴ had already received the other half of the homestead directly from their father.)

It may be supposed that, about this time, Daniel moved to the property in question at the present Atwood Avenue/Memorial Avenue intersection. Daniel would have been twenty-seven years old, with a young family to provide for. At least by 1772, Daniel was living at that location; Bayles' History of Providence County, (1891), page 788, quotes from the town's 1772 highway roster: "Capt. Seth Tripps district to begin at Grate Rock opposite Belknap's Dam bars, and to extend down said way to a Chestnut stump near the lower end of Richard Clemence wall, and also to take the new highway that goes from meeting house to Daniel Thorntons and his men to work on said way are..." This description is easily identified as that portion of present Greenville Avenue from Benjamin Belknap's house at the corner of Pine Hill Road south-easterly to some point near Manton, and a new road running south from Samuel Winsor's Baptist meeting house to meet the Pocasset road (now Memorial Avenue and Cherry Hill Road) at Daniel Thornton's.

Though the above scenario is undoubtedly sound, the deeds and wills do not document the precise mechanisms by which each generation received the property. The documents rarely mention a house; boundaries of property are poorly described; and written phrases are exasperatingly inexact as to what is intended. We have still more wills and probate records to study at Providence City Hall and other documents to recheck as new information suggests differing interpretations. Despite questions at most every step, evidence so far leads us to believe that Daniel Thornton built the house between 1760 and 1772, which seems to correlate with architectural evidence.

You can expect to hear further from us as we continue.

Respectfully, Robert S. Burford, Louis H. McGowan

Welcome New Members:
Irving I.A. and Blanche Almonte
Robert E. Jackson, Sr.
John Ribezzo
Joseph N. and Marcella Wood

Join Today!

On November 30th society members painted storm windows at the Farnum/Angell House. On December 21st the windows were installed on the second floor of the house. Walter Beaune, Pat Macari, Bob Burford, and Kathy and Mario Lobello painted while Walter, Pat, Bob, and Louis McGowan installed the windows.

On December 4th, twenty society members and friends gathered at the Farnum/Angell House to make Christmas wreathes and other greenery for our sale of same that took place on Saturday, December 7th. The sale went well, netting us $82.55.

On December 8th, Louis McGowan, John Nanni, and Carol Nanni journeyed to Sturbridge Village for a society field trip.

Our annual Christmas party, held on December 16th was a rousing success. Approximately fifty members and guests attended the pot-luck event at our headquarters. Members brought decorations for our live tree and a joyous time was had by all.

Calendar of Events
February 24 (Monday), J.H.S. General Meeting, 7:30 p.m., Farnum/Angell House, 101 Putnam Pike. Slides of Johnston will be shown.
March 24 (Monday), J.H.S. General Meeting, 7:30 p.m., Farnum/Angell House, 101 Putname Pike.

1985-1986 Membership Renewal Time
Johnston Historical Society
101 Putnam Pike
Johnston, RI 02919

Membership for: ___________________________(name)
___________________________________________(address)
___________________________________________(town, state, zip)

__ Renewal
__ New
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Type: __ Individual ($5) __ Family ($7) __ Company ($10)

Membership is tax-deductible as a contribution to a non-profit educational organization. Enclosed please find check or money order payable to JOHNSTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY for $____________. For further information, call Membership Chairman Pat Macari, XXX-XXXX.