Wickford is a small village in the

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

of North Kingstown,

Rhode Island Rhode Island ( ) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Is ...

, United States, which is named after

Wickford Wickford is a town and civil parish in the south of the English county (England), county of Essex, with a population of 33,486. Located approximately 30 miles (50 km) east of London, it is within the Borough of Basildon along with the orig ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. Wickford is located on the western side of

Narragansett Bay Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering , of which is in Rhode Island. The bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. S ...

, just about a 20-minute drive across two bridges from

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, United States. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and nort ...

. The village is built around one of the most well-protected natural harbors on the eastern seaboard, and features one of the largest collections of 18th century dwellings to be found anywhere in the Northeast. Today, the majority of the village's historic homes and buildings (most in private hands) remain largely intact upon their original foundations.

History

Wickford is generally said to have been settled around 1637, when theologian and Rhode Island state founder

Roger Williams Roger Williams (March 1683) was an English-born New England minister, theologian, author, and founder of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Providence Plantations, which became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Pl ...

bought a parcel of land from

sachem Sachems and sagamores are paramount chiefs among the Algonquians or other Native American tribes of northeastern North America, including the Iroquois. The two words are anglicizations of cognate terms (c. 1622) from different Eastern Alg ...

Canonicus Canonicus (c. 1565 – June 4, 1647) was a chief of the Narragansett people. He was wary of the colonial settlers, but he ultimately befriended Roger Williams and other settlers. Biography Canonicus was born around 1565,Benjamin J. Lossing ...

and established a trading post there. Prior to European contact, the lands in and around Wickford had long served as dwelling, fishing, and hunting grounds to the Narragansett people, who were one of New England's more powerful and prominent tribes at the time when Williams found his way to their shores. Richard Smith established a trading post on Narragansett Bay near the mouth of Cocumscussoc Brook at about the same time as Williams' purchase. He was a Puritan from Gloucester, England who had originally settled in the Plymouth Colony's town of Taunton. In 1637, he built what appears to have been a rather grand, gabled house on the site, which Williams described in his letters as the first English house in the area. This house was also heavily fortified, and thus became known as ''

Smith's Castle Smith's Castle, built in 1678, is a house museum at 55 Richard Smith Drive, near Wickford, a village in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Smith's Castle is one of the oldest houses in the state. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 199 ...

''. During 1651, Smith purchased Roger Williams' trading post, and continued expanding his holdings over the years, building what came to be called the ''Cocumscussoc Plantation''. His plantation became a center of social, religious, and political life in the area. During

King Philip's War King Philip's War (sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion) was an armed conflict in 1675–1678 between a group of indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodland ...

, the only incident of an individual being hanged, drawn, and quartered for

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...

on American soil took place at Smith's Castle in 1676. Joshua Tefft was executed by this method, an English colonist accused of having fought on the side of the Narragansetts during the Great Swamp Fight. During King Philip's War, many of the homes were destroyed that had been built during this brief period of expansion. One of the homes that went was Smith's Castle, which was burned to the ground in 1676. Two years later, Richard Smith Jr. built a new home on the old foundation, retaining the name "Smith's Castle". This structure remains standing today and is one of the area's most visited historic sites. Following King Philip's War, Wickford grew steadily as a port and shipbuilding center. To this day, the waterfront remains very active. Captain Lodowick Updike developed much of the early village between 1709–1715 after inheriting the land in 1692 from his grandfather Richard Smith, owner of Smith's Castle and the surrounding lands. The village was often interchangeably called "Updike's New Town" or "Wickford" in honor of the English home town of the wife of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut. In 1707, the Old Narragansett Church was founded in downtown Wickford, and survives as the oldest Episcopal church building in the northeastern United States. The British military attempted to raid Wickford during the

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

in 1776, but the "Wickford gun" was used to thwart the invading British expedition, a single cannon commissioned by the General Assembly for the town to defend itself. Later, the gun was taken to Point Judith, despite local Tories' attempts to disarm the weapon. There it was used to force a British ship to surrender its crew. The prisoners were removed to Providence. In the 1800s, the Washington Academy was established as a crucial institution to meet the growing need for public education. Founded in North Kingstown, with contributions from leaders in Providence and Newport, this academy aimed to train young men as educators. Samuel Elam, a prominent businessman from New York and Newport, served as its first president. He maintained a summer estate near the small mill village of Annaquatucket in North Kingstown. The prosperity of Wickford began to decline when it was bypassed by the Providence and Stonington Railroad in the late 1830s. Additionally, a shipping dispute with Providence, fueled by exorbitant wharfage prices set by waterfront property owners, deterred major trading companies like Brown & Ives from utilizing Wickford. The revitalization of Wickford commenced with the construction of the Sea View Trolley Line about two decades later. Wealthy Narragansett casino owners, eager to facilitate access to their resorts and beaches, largely funded this initiative, following the success of the Newport Line. File:Smith's Castle, Wickford, RI.jpg,

, built in 1678 File:Old Narragansett Church Wickford RI.jpg, Old Narragansett Church, built in 1707, is the oldest Episcopal Church in the Northeast. File:Wickford Rhode Island in 2009.jpg, Wickford in 2009

Notable residents

In 1755, painter

Gilbert Stuart Gilbert Stuart ( Stewart; December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter born in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. His best-k ...

was born in Saunderstown, a village to the south of Wickford, in a snuff-mill that still stands and is open to the public in season. Other famous residents have included novelist

Owen Wister Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 – July 21, 1938) was an American writer. His novel ''The Virginian (novel), The Virginian'', published in 1902, helped create the cowboy as a folk hero in the United States and built Wister's reputation as the " ...

, who for decades summered in a home just to the south of the village. Wickford was also home to Paule Stetson Loring, artist for ''

Yachting Yachting is recreational boating activities using medium/large-sized boats or small ships collectively called yachts. Yachting is distinguished from other forms of boating mainly by the priority focus on comfort and luxury, the dependence on ma ...

'' magazine and other publications, and longtime editorial page cartoonist for ''

The Providence Journal ''The Providence Journal'', colloquially known as the ''ProJo'', is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, the largest newspaper in Rhode Island, US. The newspaper was first published in 1829. The newspaper had won four ...

''. A popular urban legend maintains that novelist

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

hailed originally from Wickford—but this is not the case. Updike was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Updike did, however, use Wickford as the model for the fictional village of Eastwick in his novel, ''

The Witches of Eastwick ''The Witches of Eastwick'' is a 1984 novel by American writer John Updike. A sequel, '' The Widows of Eastwick'', was published in 2008. Plot The story, set in the fictional Rhode Island town of Eastwick in the early 1970s, follows the witc ...

'' (Knopf: 1984). (Nevertheless, a branch of the Updike, or Op Den Dyck, family was among the first settling families of Wickford; the original village was at one time called ''Updike's Newtown''. The descendants of Richard Smith and Lodowick Updike intermarried and the Updikes were residents of Smith's Castle in the colonial era.) Christian leader Joshua V. Himes grew up in Wickford.

Notable people

* Frances Irene Burge Griswold, writer * Louis Sauzedde, shipwright

Wickford Art Festival

The Wickford Art Festival—held in July of every year since 1962 and hosted by the Wickford Art Association—is one of the leading such events on the eastern seaboard, attracting hundreds of prominent artists and thousands of spectators from across the country and around the world.

References

External links