"Neighborhood of the Week"

Out In The Country, Just Up The Road

The perception is that Chepachet is way out there, but think again.

By Rhode Island standards, where people in Warwick won't drive to Providence for dinner because it's "too far," Johnstonians pack a lunch to go to the beach, and some folks in Cranston have never been to Woonsocket, Chepachet is in the middle of nowhere.

But it's a nowhere that's only 15 miles northwest of Providence.

"The perception of Glocester is that you're so far out," Tourtellot Road resident Peggy Bates says. "It only takes 25 minutes to get to Providence. It's very accessible."

"It's a peaceful 25 minutes," adds real estate agent Carol J. Miller of Coldwell Banker Gold. "You're not in traffic, like in Providence. There's no doubt about it, it's country. When I come here, I mellow right out."

Miller, who sells houses in Glocester but lives in Johnston, kicks herself for not moving here herself.

"My husband wanted to go out to Greenville. I didn't want to be that far from my mother (who lives in North Providence). But now, Chepachet doesn't seem that long a drive at all."

Chepachet has a long and colorful history.

The Pequot and Nipmuc Indians carved woodland trails through Chepachet on their way to the Bay. Today, these trails are Snake Hill Road and Route 44.

The name "Chepachet" means "where the rivers meet." The Indians sold the land, including Glocester, Scituate and Smithfield, to Roger Williams.

One of Chepachet's earliest settlers was Abraham Tourtellot, who established a farm in 1706. By the early 1800's, Chepachet had grown into a commercial center with businesses that included a hat factory, a tannery, a cording mill and a stone mill. Thriving Main Street was lined with churches, taverns and stores.

"Thriving Villages" When Getting There Meant By Horse or By Foot ... At the start of the 19th century, Chepachet was known as a trading hub. Gradually it became a mill village, but the mills in Chepachet declined through the later part of the 19th century, says Edna Kent, Glocester's historian. The last big mill, White's Mill, burned in 1897. It was burned, Kent says, for the insurance. "The gentleman who was the night manager, the superintendent, he had never taken a vacation and he was approached by this brother of the man who lived across the street from the mill. He said, 'You work so hard, whyh don't you take the day off and I'll watch it for you.' And that night it burned. "As the story goes, that man never came to town again," Kent says. "He just couldn't set foot in town. It just broke his heart. He loved that mill." Kent says the burning of the mill, which employed many people at the time, "cast a pall over the community." ... In the mid-1800s, there was talk of bringing the railroad to Chepachet, linking it to Providence. The farmers, however, "were afraid the engines would cause the hay fields to burn. "They refused it," Kent says. "That's why it went to Burrillville." In Burrillville, business was booming and mills were everywhere ... And Burrillville had the railroad. So until 1914, when the electric trolley came to Chepachet from Providence, many people traveling into Glocester took the train to Oakland in Burrillville, then the stage coach into Chepachet. Though the mills were in decline, Chepachet was still a busy place. Henry Taft, who ran the giant Chepachet Inn, continued having his famous game dinners, featuring fish, venison, pheasant and grouse caught in the area. "He used to go hunting and fishing with his guests, as well," Kent says. In 1902, the Rhode Island Automobile Club took over the inn. Automobiles were still an anomoly in the area. Some well-to-do owned cars; everyone else walked, rode atop a horse or behind one in a wagon or carriage. Nevertheless, Kent says, "With autos, it lost some of its intimacy." With autos, the village also lost its horse racing. Before cars were common in Chepachet, residents used to hold horse races down Main Street. "It was called the Half Mile," Kent says, and it ended in front of what is now the Brown and Hopkins Store. While the auto ended the betting on horses, it also helped Providence discover Chepachet. The Providence Journal wrote this in July 1907: "One of the most picturesque and interesting of the older villages of Rhode Island ... Chepachet is being discovered by the automobilist as it was several years ago by the bicyclist." ... Chepachet didn't get electricity until 1922. This meant no refrigeration in the early part of the century. During the winter, ice from ponds was sawed into blocks and carted to ice houses where, with a thick layer of sawdust for insulation, the blocks could stay solid into the summer. Residents could have ice delivered to their homes, along with meat, fish, bread and milk. Those who lived in the countryside mostly made do on their own, raising some crops and some animals, Kent says. But some things did draw them into the village. In 1906, the townspeople held the first Old Home Days at the Freewill Baptist Church. It was a daylong picnic and festival, held in August, meant to bring people together. And it showed, Kent says, just how different the country folk were from the village folk. Those coming into the town from the countryside would not offer "Good day" as a greeting but "How sare ye?" a throwback to Colonial times. In fact, Kent says, people from West Glocester often had different speech patterns from those from a village as close as South Glocester. "They just lived in the neighborhood; they didn't go anywhere," Kent says. "They came into town four or five times a year; the rest of the time they just stayed on the farm. They didn't have a chance to hear other types of speech." ... The Freewill Baptist Church and the rest of the village was nearly burned to the ground in 1907 when fire destroyed several buildings after somebody put a pail of hot coals on the back porch of Bob Wade's general store. The stairs ignited and the fire soon spread to three nearby houses and several barns. "At that time, we had no fire department," Kent says. "The only thing that really saved it was the winds shifted. The stiff breeze blowing to the south reversed and blew back on what had already burned." THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL-BULLETIN SEC. C – NORTHWEST, PP. 1, 2 MONDAY, MARCH 1, 1999 BRIAN D. MOCKENHAUPT JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Chepachet is best known for two events that happened there – Rhode Island's own civil war and the murder of an elephant.

The "war" actually never quite happened. It arose from a suffrage movement in the 1830's. Up until that time, only landowners with property valued at more than $134 were allowed to vote. The People's Coalition rallied for voting rights for all white males over the age of 21, regardless of land ownership. In 1842 they elected their own governor, Thomas Wilson Dorr, whose headquarters were at what is now the Stagecoach Tavern in the center of the village.

But Rhode Island governor Samuel Ward King, who was reelected two days later, was not amused. He arrested Dorr supporters and signed a warrant for Dorr's arrest. Dorr's legions convened in Chepachet, 400 muskets strong. King sent the state militia in to fight, but Dorr's troops had already dispersed. The single casualty was a cow.

The other "famous" Chepachet moment occurred on May 24, 1826, when a 12-year-old elephant named Betty was killed on the Main Street bridge over the Chepachet River. Betty was brought to town by a traveling showman and housed in a tent behind the Chepachet Inn.

There are several stories about what happened that night. The one most usually recounted is that a group of youths tried to slip into the tent to see Betty without paying admission. They were discovered and thrown out. Six of the young men returned to the tent later that night and led Betty to the bridge, where they shot her with their muskets.

A plaque on the bridge today commemorates "Betty the Learned Elephant."

Chepachet is one of three villages in Glocester, making up the center third of the town. East of Absalona Hill is Harmony. West of Echo Lake is West Glocester. Chepachet falls between the two.

Today's Chepachet is a mix of picturesque farms and quaint village, a short drive and lightyears away from the city.

Take Tourtellot Road, for example.

It's a blend of new houses and old with more wooded areas than residences. A goat from Chepachet Farms perches precariously atop the fence surrounding the petting corral. Farther down the road, homeowners have carved out a large flower garden surrounding their house. Then it's woods again. The roofline of a large contemporary being constructed juts out from the trees, across the street from a horse farm.

On Snake Hill Road, cattle graze in pastures behind low stone walls. A large red barn marks Cherry Valley Herb Farm. A sign outside Bonniedale Farm announces that boots, turquoise jewelry and riding apparel are sold inside. Just past the farm is a camp for special-needs children, nestled near a large pond.

Route 44 paints a slightly different picture.

There are modern conveniences like Dino's Park 'N Shop, Robert's Jeep and Video Voyage on one side of the road, directly across from the Chepachet Cemetery and Acote's Field on Acote's Hill, the hub of the Dorr Rebellion.

The hill binds Chepachet's past with its present. Children play ball on fields in the shadow of the cemetery; in the winter, they slide down the cemetery's steep slopes in the snow. Adults walk trails through the grounds, and the town's two parades start right outside the gates. There's the Memorial Day parade and the infamous Ancients and Horribles on the Fourth of July, where nothing is sacred as locals spoof local and national politics.

Farther up, Route 44 bends past the Glocester police station, toward the library, post office and fire station. Country stores and antique shops sit cornerstone to cornerstone, calling weekenders to come and browse.

Glocester town clerk Barbara Robertson has lived in the village for 33 years. She spills out a long list of reasons that Chepachet is special: beautiful fall foliage, the feeling of country where you aren't living on top of your neighbor, an excellent school system, good recreation facilities and a community where people reach out to help each other.

"There's a tremendous amount of volunteerism," she says. In town hall, for example, Friday is "dress-down day." Town employees wear jeans and donate the cost of dry-cleaning their dress clothes to those "in need of something special that's beyond what human services has to offer."

Local churches, businesses and clubs do similar charity work.

Chepachet has an all-volunteer fire department. "They go into it and they stay for years and years and years and they socialize with each other."

If Robertson were pressed to narrow her list to one thing that makes Chepachet special it would be the rural atmosphere, she says, though she admits it's not as rural as it used to be.

"Between 1970 and 1990, Glocester went from 5,000 to almost 10,000 people," she says. "Most of the growth has been in the Chepachet and Harmony areas."

In 1991, the population had grown so much that the town built a new elementary school in West Glocester and increased the size of the middle and high schools. Students who live east of Route 102 go to the Fogarty Elementary school and those who live west go to West Glocester Elementary. Almost all of the town's students are bused, with most picked up at the end of their driveways.

The town has a large recreation department that provides a number of activities for children and families. During the summer, kids can learn to swim for only $1 for a six-week series of classes, Robertson says.

There are several playgrounds and parks with baseball and soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts, and swing sets. One of the newst additions is Glocester Memorial Park, in the center of Chepachet Village. The park, completed in the spring of '97, has tennis, basketball, baseball and soccer facilities, as well as a handicapped-accessible playground. Two walking paths connect the park to Route 44.

The rapid growth brings some bad things, too. There's more traffic in town, Robertson says, with cars speeding through the quaint, antique-store-lined streets. Soon, Chepachet will get its first three-way traffic light.

"They've put the cables in," Robertson says. "We're just waiting for the poles to come in. Routes 44 and 100 will have crosswalks with buttons" to stop traffic for pedestrians. "That will be a major change."

Roseannette Starr Bowen and her husband own the Pleasant Valley Tree Farm. She's lived in Chepachet since 1954 – "For most of my life." She also works in the public library and served as town tax collector for three years and worked in the town clerk's office.

"Even though there has been a large influx of people, there is a feeling of continuity and roots here," she says. "It's a separate world."

She took over the family tree farm in 1986 after her parents died. Every year, the same people come back to tag and cut their trees, drink hot cider, and buy Bowen's homemade jams and pickles. The farm is on the site of Abraham Tourtellot's original farm. Each December, she uses an old wagon wheel that she found on the property to fashion a 5-foot-high wreath from Christy's Liquors, a store in the center of town.

There are 31 single-family homes currently for sale, ranging in price from $7,900 for a two-bedroom cottage on a postage-stamp size lot to $375,000 for a four-bedroom colonial on over five acres. Forty-eight properties have sold in the past six months with an average market time of 112 days.

One multi-family house is on the market, a four-unit building on Main Street with eight bedrooms. The asking price is $159,900.

Although smaller lots have been grandfathered in, current zoning laws require 4 -acre house lots, Miller says. Some older lots may be as little as 1/3 of an acre.

Thirty-one vacant lots are for sale, ranging in price from $24,000 to $110,500.

Glocester real estate taxes are assessed at $25.14 per $1,000. Chepachet assesses an additional 90-cent per $1,000 fire district tax.

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