Wickford Walk HistWick marker #2 - Main Street, The Grand highway - 1770s to 1836 - Wickford, RI
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N 41° 34.290 W 071° 27.100
19T E 295594 N 4605104
This Rhode Island Historical Marker is the second marker on a 33-stop walking tour through Wickford Village in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, created and placed by HistWick. It can be seen near 15 Main Street on the south side of the road.
Waymark Code: WM10MQZ
Location: Rhode Island, United States
Date Posted: 05/29/2019
Views: 6
This Rhode Island Historical Marker is the second marker on a 33-stop walking tour through Wickford Village in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, created and placed by HistWick. It can be seen near 15 Main Street on the south side of the road.
It reads across the top, from left to right:
Wickford Walk
Main Street…The Grand Highway: 1770s to 1836
HistWick
Preserving and Celebrating Historic Wickford
A full-color, painted illustration is the major visual component of this sign. It shows a view looking east down early 1800s Main Street — its full green trees and two-story homes providing shade from the mid-day sun for about twenty people interacting in small groups. It’s caption reads:
Wickford in the early 19th century was a busy and prosperous community with a diverse population. Artist Harley Bartlett 2017
A few paragraphs of historical lessons about the village's Main Street span the space below the illustration:
Most of Wickford Village’s grand homes, seen here stretching up and down the “Grand Highway” (now Main and West Main Streets) and Main Street (now Pleasant and Bay Streets), are the result of an era of economic growth as a maritime and trading center. Local builders constructed these fine homes for ship captains, ship owners, bankers, and merchants. British interference in Newport during the Revolutionary War drove Newport-based businessmen, mariners, and maritime traders to Wickford, further fueling this expansion.
Wharves and warehouses overflowed with goods being transported in and out of Wickford Harbor by the many sailing vessels that called Wickford their home port. Taverns and inns catered to mariners and out-of-town traders and businessmen. Two rum distilleries operated in the Village, making spirits for local consumption as well as for the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Shops, stores and businesses lined the streets, many within the homes along Main Street. Upscale crafts- and tradesmen, including silversmiths and goldsmiths, master cabinetmakers, fine tailors and leatherworkers catered to well-to-do customers. Several houses of worship addressed the Village’s spiritual needs: The Quaker Meetinghouse (ca. 1797) which stood on Fowler Street, the Old Narragansett Church was moved to its current Church Lane home in 1800, and The First Baptist Church of Wickford which was built on a small knoll overlooking the Grand Highway in 1816.
The Village’s prosperity demanded financial institutions. At one time during this era Wickford supported five different banks, all heavily invested in the lucrative maritime-based businesses in the community. The brick Noel Freeborn House to the west along Main St. adjacent to the First Baptist Church is an example of one such institution.
At the upper right corner, there are portraits of four men, captioned:
Left to right: “Banker Pardon T. Hammond, goldsmith Peleg Weeden, Episcopal priest Lemel Burge, & master cabinetmaker Jebez Bullock all lived on Main Street in this timeframe.”
Also along the right border and below the portraits is an image of a notebook with two recipes - Oyster Stew and Brown Bread. The caption reads:
The numerous inns and taverns along the Grand Highway served a very typical New England fare.
The bottom edge of the marker is filled by, left to right, a community timeline (1524 to 1939); Historic Wickford, the organization that created the Walking Tour and produced the markers; and a hand-drawn map of Wickford that shows the locations of the markers throughout the village.