Hughesdale is a neighborhood in the town of
Johnston, Rhode Island
Johnston is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 29,568 at the 2020 census. Johnston is the site of the Clemence Irons House (1691), a stone-ender museum, and the only landfill in Rhode Island. Incorpora ...
. Hughesdale is a primarily residential neighborhood in the southeast corner of the town, centered near Central Avenue and
Atwood Avenue. It is situated near the villages of
Simmonsville and
Thornton.
The neighborhood is named for the local 19th-century mill owner Thomas Henry Hughes, an Englishman who arrived in America first to
Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Pawtucket is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 75,604 at the 2020 census, making the city the fourth-largest in the state. Pawtucket borders Providence and East Providence to the south, Central Fal ...
in 1839, and later to Johnston in 1849.
Thomas Hughes established what would later be known as the Hughesdale Dye and Chemical Works on the Dry Brook, a tributary of the
Pocasset River, in 1850. Hughesdale grew as a small mill village around the chemical works. Much of the village including the mill was destroyed by a flood in 1868, but the mill was quickly rebuilt larger than before.
Hughes set up a post office at his store in 1876, and the Hughesdale Congregational Church was established the following year.
By 1878, the village was occupied by some 300 inhabitants, and the mill employed over 50 men.
Thomas Hughes died in 1883, and two of his four sons took over the business. The Hughes Chemical Works was destroyed a second time in a fire in 1914.
Thomas Hughes's personal home from 1865 to around 1877, pictured on the right, is one of the few buildings still standing from this early era. The building was built in 1845 and is listed on the
U.S. National Register of Historic Places as the
Thomas H. Hughes House.
References
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Villages in Rhode Island