In 1750, East Greenwich along with Coventry, Warwick, and West Greenwich became a part of Kent County. East Greenwich was chosen as the county seat which is the town where all of the government for the rest of the county will have offices. In August of 1750, John Peirce donated his lot in town so that it could be the site for the Kent County Courthouse. The Rhode Island Assembly voted in 1803 that a new courthouse should be built. The original courthouse was sold and removed so that the new one could be built in 1805. The town pump used to be located in front of the building. During the 1800's the building was one of Rhode Island's five statehouses.
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What is left of the Tillinghast Factory is located in Frenchtown Park. During the 1800's cotton thread was made in this factory. The mill called the Mount Hope Factory or the Tillinghast Factory was opened in about 1813. It was started by Thomas Tillinghast, Jr. and General Christopher Rhodes. Eventually, the mill was closed and in the 1970's the land became the property of the town of East Greenwich.
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People disagree on when this home was actually built, but it was between 1800 and 1818. In 1866, the home was sold to American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He bought the house for George Washinton Greene, who was the grandson of General Nathanael Greene. During the Revolutionary War, General Nathanael Greene was second in command to George Washington. George Washington Greene was the United States consul to Rome. He was also a professor of modern languages at Brown University. At Cornell, he gave lectures on U. S. history. In 1870, the windmill was attached to the house. Both Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and George Washington Greene had their studies in the windmill.
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There was no public school system in East Greenwich before 1828. The first school committee was created in 1827. Originally, there were five different schools in the town. Students went to whatever school was closest to their home. The District 1 school was between Duke and Exchange Streets. The District 2 School was at the corner of South County Trail and Division Street. The District 3 school was on Shippeetown Road. The Tibbits School in Frenchtown was the District 4 school. The District 5 school was at the corner of Frenchtown Road and South County Trail.
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East Greenwich United Methodist Church 1831
In 1791, the Methodist Society was officially organized in East Greenwich. Rev. J. C. Rusley became the group's pastor in 1822, but there was no church building until 1831. Until the building of the church, services were held at the Kent County Courthouse which is where several religious groups held services while they had no church buildings. In 1842, the Consititutional Convention was held in this church. The state constutution was drawn up during the convention to replace tho old charter that the state had been run under.
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King Street Railroad Bridge c. 1837
When King Street was originallly built, it was designed to be the main road of East Greenwich. That is why the road is so wide. Sea captains and merchants were some of the first people to live along King Street. Prisoners used to be marched up King Street from the Second Kent County Jail to the Kent County Courthouse at the top of the hill where they would go on trial. Where King Street connects to Main Street used to be called the "'head of the gutter'" because before King Street ws paved it would flood and the mud running down the road would dump into Greenwich Cove (Planning).
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The Kentish Guards were formed on Saturday, September 2, 1774 by 54 men from Kent County. In October of 1774, the General Assembly made the Kentish Guards a part of the Rhode Island militia. The Kentish Guards realized that there was going to be a revolution, so they began to practice before the war. In the beginning, their uniforms had to have red coats and look like the British Colonial troops' uniforms because Rhode Island was still ruled by the British. Durning the Revolutionary War, the Kentish Guards built and ran Fort Daniel which overlooked the harbor in East Greenwich. The group also fought in the Civil War and members of the group fought in World War I and World War II.
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The Kentish Guards practiced here before they went to fight in the American Revolution. In 1803, this field became the playing field for Greenwich Academy, a private school where older students attended.
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This house was built by the town to be a place where the poor of the town could live and work. Vegetables and milk were sold from the farm. In 1863, the town pound was also there to take care of lost livestock until they were claimed by their owners. After closing in 1945, Dedford Farm was made into apartments.
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