Skookum Traveler: Rhode Island, Yeehaw! (RI)

Westerly Library.

Nobody says 'yeehaw' in Rhode Island, so this is just me indicating my pleasure in having finally crossed paths with my earliest American ancestors. The earliest was Edward who likely came over from Lincolnshire, England in 1636 with two young boys in tow, Daniel and Stephen. Edward was probably a follower of the Puritan rebel Anne Hutchinson. She was a fellow agitated pilgrim from Lincolnshire who said her good riddance and sailed to Plymouth in 1634. Known to boldly speak her mind and seriously question the male orthodoxy, she was soon banished from the Massachusetts Colony for her rabble-rousing and assorted heresies. Some call her America’s first feminist.

At the suggestion of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Anne Hutchinson and her booted band of troublemakers became the first Europeans to settle on the actual Isle of Rodes in Narragansett Bay, thereupon founding the town of Portsmouth. My ninth-great-grampa Edward acquired land for a sizable farm on the east shore. As the two sons grew up, Edward passed on and the land was sold. Daniel moved east to the Tiverton mainland and became quite a hell-raiser later in life, while Stephen, my direct ancestor, ambled over to Misquamicut Beach and Westerly where my own line of Wilcoxes would remain for at least another four generations.

Our first stop in Westerly was the city library, housed in a beautiful old building surrounded by Wilcox Park. Thanks to Kris quickly diving into the Wilcox history books, we were able to scour the books and the document files in under an hour, as I hurriedly photographed the things that seemed most relevant to the family history. We thanked the friendly staff and strolled out and around the park, which doubles as an arboretum and outdoor music venue in summer. A lovely fountain is dedicated to Harriet and Stephen Wilcox—a different Stephen (of Babcock and Wilcox fame), but a close cousin nonetheless. A war memorial nearby includes the inscriptions of several unfortunate victims from the Wilcox clan.

Thanks to a tip from a friendly couple with two little dogs, I discovered there was an old white oak tree in Wilcox Park that was close to 400 years old. That meant that the tree would have been a sapling about the same time the first Stephen and his clan came to Westerly. It was pretty special to have something so tangible to grab onto and to imagine a distant ancestor having walked past the same tree centuries ago.