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Pawtucket Gazette & Chronicle
June 10, 1853
Smithfield, R. I., Chief Of Police Ad – 2024
March 22, 2024
Ad placed March, 2024
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50 Years Ago – March, 1974
March 19, 2024
50 Years Ago – March, 1974
By Jim Ignasher
Elaine J. Cullen of Pleasant View Avenue completed basic training at Lackland Air Force base in Texas.
The Emblem Club organized a “What America Means To Me” poster contest and members of Cub Scout Pack 44 of Smithfield participated. The winner was 8-year-old Kenneth Brown whose poster depicted uniformed cub scouts of all races.
If one went to the Apple Valley Cinema in March of ’74, they could have seen Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in the police drama, “Magnum Force”; or Steve McQueen in the Devil’s Island prison movie, “Papillion”; Elizabeth Taylor in “Ash Wednesday”, and last but not least, “Chariots of the Gods”, a documentary based on Eric von Daniken’s book of the same name which speculated that ancient astronauts had visited Earth.
One “Chariots of the Gods” advertisement asked, “Did spacemen visit Earth in ancient times?” followed by “Now we have proof!” This was in a time when governments didn’t acknowledge that UFO’s exist.
Old Stone Bank was offering free power tools to anyone that took out a loan for $1,500 or more. One could choose between a finishing sander, a hand-held drill, a cordless hedge trimmer, or a jig saw. The interest rate wasn’t stated.
On March 3, over one-hundred visitors were on hand at the Smith-Appleby House to witness the mortgage signing of the newly acquired building which the historical society planned to restore. On display at the ceremony was the original deed to the house dated March 3, 1725.
On March 4, Smithfield police detective Hawkins Hibbs, Jr., gave a talk at a meeting of the Maplewoods Women’s Club, a local service organization, about the dangers of illegal drugs and drug addiction.
On March 7 local cub scouts held a pinewood derby at the Greenville Baptist Church. Thirty-five scouts participated, racing their home-made derby cars along a forty-foot long track. The winners were: Jeffrey Cummings, 1st place; Kevin Dione, 2nd place, and Gene Giancaglini, 3rd place.
On March 10, Cub Scout Pack 3 of St. Philips Church held their 7th annual Blue and Gold Dinner at the Elks lodge. The guest speaker was Sergeant Charles DeCarlo of the U. S. Army Special Forces, who demonstrated survival equipment used by the military. Among those cub scouts in attendance were: Christopher Manocchia, Alan Priestly, Bernard Hawkins, William Bennett, Michael Carr, Thomas Cullen, John Lusher, John Reynolds, William Dalton, and Raymond Antonelli.
Maria Detri and Joanne Strain, students at Smithfield High School, raised money for the Easter seals organization by selling “smile Lolli-pops”. The funds were used to help children at the Meeting Street school.
On March 18, the Apple Valley Junior Women’s Club held a meeting at the Club 44 restaurant. The guest speakers were Mrs. Shirley McCleod, assistant director of the Women’s Club of Rhode Island, and Mrs. Dorothy Palmer, of the Rhode Island Historical Farm.
On March 20, the Smithfield Golden Agers celebrated their 11th anniversary as a club with a St. Patrick’s Day dinner at the Esmond Recreational Center. The club’s treasurer, Miss Mary Keough, who’d just turned 92, was presented a corsage by the club’s president, Margaret Sanderson,
On March 24 the public was invited to attend an open house at the Smithfield Boys Club, which is today the YMCA. Free swimming all day was offered in the newly opened Olympic sized pool, with refreshments consisting of free coffee and cookies.
From March 26 through the 30th, Smithfield High School students presented a play by Gilbert and Sullivan titled, “The Sorcerer”; the light-hearted story about a sorcerer who mixes a love potion that causes the population of a small village to fall in love with the first person they see. The performance was directed by Jane Calderara, a 1972 graduate of Smithfield High.
Smithfield, R. I., Airport Advertisement
March 1, 2024
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Pawtucket Times
November 9, 1944
Richard Waterhouse, Smithfield, R. I., Obituary, July 14, 1910
February 14, 2024
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July 14, 1910
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/49872782/richard-waterhouse
Waterhouse Home – 649 Putnam Pike, Greenville. See photos under Historic Homes portion of this website.
Who’s Donder and Blixem?
February 4, 2024
Originally published in The Smithfield Magazine – December, 2023
Who’s Donder and Blixem?
By Jim Ignasher
“Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer! Now, Vixen! On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner, on Blitzen! “
Virtually everyone’s familiar with the names of Santa’s reindeer, but how many are aware that his reindeer officially turn 200 this year? All except Rudolph, but more about him later.
Today we take it for granted that Santa travels the world in his open sleigh powered by eight reindeer. We don’t even question the fact that reindeer aren’t equipped for flight. Anyway, prior to the 1820s, Santa generally walked, or rode a donkey or white horse. It wasn’t until 1821 that ole St. Nick finally got around to using a sled pulled (then) by a single reindeer. A depiction of this appeared in a children’s poem titled, “Old Santeclaus With Much Delight”, published that year in New York.
The following year poet Clement C. Moore, (1779 – 1863), penned his classic poem “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”, for his children. (Sometimes referred to in modern times as “The Night Before Christmas”.) The poem was first published in a New York newspaper in 1823 and has been a yuletide favorite ever since.
Moore was the first to infer that Santa’s sled was pulled by eight reindeer, and he gave them their names that we know today. However, as a point of fact, the original names of “Donner” and “Blitzen” were actually “Donder” and “Blixem”, which are Dutch words for thunder and lightning. Exactly when and how the names morphed is unclear. Perhaps it was an editor who took artistic license, or simply a typographic error. Some claim it was Moore himself who made the changes. In any case, The Green Mountain Freeman, a defunct Vermont newspaper, published the poem on December 20, 1860, and Blixem had become Blixen. Six years later, a Staunton, Virginia, newspaper spelled the names “Dunder, (With a U not an O.), and Blitzen. Eventually, “Donder” or “Dunder” became Donner.
Moore’s poem was so popular that it inspired spin-offs such as Edgar Fawcett’s 1880 poem of the same name, which told of Kris Kringle trudging through a snowstorm with his back “bent from the weight of his pack”, and his long beard blowing like “ocean spray” in the wind. Then there was Annie’s and Willie’s Prayer, (1884), by Sophia P. Snow; a poem about two children who pray to Jesus after being told that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Another was “Twas The Day After Christmas” C. 1897, by Frank C. Stanton, which told of a man with a severe hangover who couldn’t seem to obtain enough ice. And there have been others who’ve been inspired by Moore’s format down to the present day.
While Clement C. Moore is generally credited by most historians with writing “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”, there are some who disagree. This is mainly because when Moore’s poem was originally published in December of 1823, his name was not credited because his friend had anonymously mailed the work to a newspaper in Troy, New York, without Moore’s knowledge. Despite not knowing who’d authored or sent the poem, the paper published it, and it was subsequently re-printed in other newspapers the following year.
Getting back to Santa’s reindeer, there’s the ninth reindeer we know as Rudolph, who is, relatively speaking, the new kid on the block. Rudolph was the brainchild of Robert L. May who came up with the red-nosed reindeer as part of an advertising campaign for the now defunct department store chain known as Montgomery Ward. In December of 1939 free Rudolph coloring books were distributed to boys and girls who visited the stores to see Santa. The books were a success, and were later followed by the popular song “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer” written Johnny Marks, and recorded by Gene Autry in June of 1949. Rocker Chuck Berry later wrote and recorded “Run Rudolph Run” in 1958, and in 1964 the animated story of Rudolph was aired on television for the first time thus making Rudolph, “The most famous reindeer of all”.
Finally, by a show of hands, how many know that there was a children’s book published in 1902 that mentioned Santa’s reindeer, but instead of eight, there were ten, and they had different names than the ones we’ve come to know today? The book is titled, “The Life And Adventures Of Santa Clause”, by L. Frank Baum. The story is nothing like Moore’s poem, but Baum gave the reindeer the following names; Glossie and Flossie; Racer and Pacer: Reckless and Speckless; Fearless and Peerless; and Ready and Steady. The book has since been adapted for television.
So this Christmas Eve, as children everywhere lie nestled all snug in their beds, they can listen for reindeer – be it eight, nine or ten.
“A happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
Smithfield, R. I., Advertisements – 1973
February 4, 2024
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March, 1973
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March, 1973
Stone Walls – The Bones Of New England
February 4, 2024
Originally published in The Smithfield Magazine – November, 2023
The Bones of New England
By Jim Ignasher
As October surrenders its colorful foliage to the starkness of November, the centuries-old stone walls that crisc-cross our wooded landscape come into view. We New Englanders tend to take them for granted. We know the walls denote former boundaries of long ago farms and homesteads, but seldom give thought to how they were made, or the distance those stones may have traveled.
As a point of fact, the stones in those walls may have come from as far away as northern New England; carried to Rhode Island by the glacier of ice that covered the region about eleven thousand years ago. In some places that ice was a mile thick, creating tremendous pressure on the landscape as the glacier slowly pushed and ground its way southward. When the glaciers melted, the torrents of rushing water further carried stones, rocks, and boulders, towards the sea. In many cases, the massive grinding and tumbling action exerted on the rocks rounded the edges thus creating the “cobbles” which make up a large number of the walls in Smithfield.
To illustrate the power involved with this process, the glacier also left behind large “Glacial Erratics”, which are huge granite stones weighing many tons that seem to be randomly placed across the New England landscape. One that locals are no doubt familiar with sits on Rt. 44 just east of the Apple Valley Mall. This particular erratic, as large as it is, is a mere pebble compared to the Madison Boulder in New Hampshire, which is 83 feet long, 23 feet high, and weighs in at 5,000 tons!
Some of New England’s stone walls date to the 1600s, but historians estimate that the majority were constructed between the 1770s and 1830’s, with some walls still being built in the early 1900s. Constructing these walls was very labor intensive. Upon obtaining a virgin tract of land, the early New England farmer had to set about building a shelter and then clearing the land of trees for crop planting. Many trees were “old growth” having stood for centuries before falling to the axe. In the 17th and 18th centuries wood was used for everything, from furniture making to fuel, so the lumber was put to good use. Even the large tree stumps, once pulled from the soil, were used to create an ugly and temporary fence. These stumps were sometimes incorporated into stone walls, but have long since rotted away.
After the stump removal process, the farmer would have found the ground littered with fieldstones, which he also had to remove. He then hauled or carried them to where he decided the edge of the field would be, and thus began building what would become a stone wall. Larger stones were transported using a “stone boat”, or “stone sled”, which was a homemade platform made of thick oak planks. If he was lucky, the farmer had oxen to assist him. If not, he might enlist the help of neighbors in what was called a “clearing bee”, where farmers would alternate between each other’s fields to get large jobs done.
The type of wall constructed depended upon the types of rock cleared, (such as flat or rounded), the urgency in which the task needed to be done, and the skill of the farmer. The walls weren’t meant to be decorative, but functional. When one sees a wall that has been carefully and artfully constructed at an old home site, it indicates a luxury of time and certain level or prosperity.
In reading the forested landscape, one can figure which field was created first by the presence of a stone-lined cellar hole denoting where the farmhouse once stood. Other fields leading outward came later. One can also tell which fields were likely used for farming verses livestock. A field used for livestock might contain the remnants of an ancient tree in the center to shade the animals, or contain more rocks than one used for crops.
If one notices a break in a stone wall, it’s likely that there was once a wooden gate there, and if one’s lucky, they might discover a hand forged strap-hinge or two just under the groundcover.
In rare cases, stones were incorporated into a wall to form three or four steps up one side and down the other, thus eliminating the need for a gate.
By the late 1800s, many farms, for various reasons, came to be abandoned, and by the 1940s the New England landscape was once again reforested.
I doubt those early settlers considered that the walls they were creating would eventually become an intricate and visually pleasing part of the local landscape, but did they realize the walls they were building would last for hundreds of years after they’d passed into eternity? One can only wonder.
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