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The Archaeology of the Old Stone Mill in Newport, Rhode Island

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

William S. Godfrey Jr.
William S. Godfrey Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
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Extract

The origin of the old stone tower in Newport has been an important problem in the ancient history of American archaeology for something over a century. The argument swirls around two questions. Who built the tower? When was it built? There are two possible answers to the first of these questions; the second question can readily be answered if the first can be solved. Either the tower was built by persons unknown at some time in the pre-Colonial period; or it was erected in Colonial times shortly before it is first mentioned in the documents. And there is a shortage of the documents on this problem until the development of the nineteenth century romanticism. Either there was no interest or there was no problem. Up to about 1800, moreover, a clear line of legal documents traced the structure as well as the land on which it stood as belonging to Governor Benedict Arnold. The legal documents are supported by strong local tradition that the building was a stone mill. Specifically, in 1677, three documents, including Arnold's own will, mentioned the tower, and for the next 100 years other mention is rare. Thus, at the outset, we see that the controversy over the origin of the tower is recent.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , October 1951 , pp. 120 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1951

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References

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