Dear Editor,
On behalf of a community group called the Snowtown Research Team, I am writing to address the recently published piece History Under Our Feet: Unearthing Providence’s Past by Ruth Marris-Macaulay. Our team has been looking deeply into the Snowtown neighborhood for over five years now, and we have produced scholarship, held walks and events, and collaborated with artists to interpret what we found.We are concerned that this article reproduces a lot of the misinformation which we try to refute; our main purpose is to position Snowtown as a small, mixed-race working-class neighborhood which existed for about a century
at the head of the Cove, where the Rhode Island Statehouse and Amtrak station now stand. It was a home for people, quite common, not a novelty. The team is especially concerned with the following statements.
“An area known as Snowtown, renowned for its dance halls, brothels, and gambling houses in the early nineteenth century, was uncovered. Beneath it, on the shores of the Great Cove lay a Native American summer camp close to where the state house now stands on Smith Hill.”
Snowtown was not “an area renowned for its dance halls, brothels and gambling houses”. We cannot stress enough that Snowtown was just a regular neighborhood, a home for people. While it is certainly possible that at some point over 100 years, one or more such businesses existed, our research shows that the area was populated mainly by workers and families, as well as a wide variety of different small businesses. We have identified one possible “brothel”, but it was present during the 1860s, which was over 30 years after the 1831 incident.
We believe that newspaper reports which position the neighborhood as unusually immoral were very biased. We also have seen no evidence that the Snowtown site was a “Native American Summer Camp” during the pre-Colonial era, although the Providence area was occupied by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. This may just be a misunderstanding of the archaeological report.
“This part of town was inhabited by free black residents who were driven out of an area named Hardscrabble after a race riot there in 1824. Its location is not known but it is thought to have been near Snowtown where sewer pipes emptied into the now filled-in cove. The cause of the riot is not entirely clear, but ultimately the neighborhood gained a bad reputation that was enhanced by the Irish sailors who made use of the area’s entertainments. Racist white factory workers were only too ready to lay the blame on the black population.”
Nope. Hardscrabble continued on after the racially motivated incident of 1824, and we see no evidence that people were “driven out of it”. The incident was not a “race riot” by any means! It was an attack on property, sparked by racism, and definitely one-sided. The location of Hardscrabble is absolutely known, as it was north of Orms Street nearby to where the Providence Marriott hotel is today. Hardscrabble was inhabited at the same time as Snowtown, and residents could move back and forth between the areas if they chose to. Free Black people absolutely lived in Snowtown, but it was very much mixed, and also included Narragansett
people, working class white people, Irish immigrants, and a wide variety of short and long term residents. It is unclear what is meant by “sewer pipes emptied into the now filled-in cove”, as Snowtown mostly had outhouses. In 1824, many factory workers were women and children. A number of white men at the time were artisans, seamen or laborers. Irish immigrants really only arrived in significant numbers beginning in the 1840s.
“The riot, which destroyed and looted some twenty houses, may have begun when a black resident refused to step aside for a white man on the sidewalk. Of the eleven “gentlemen” (as they were described) charged with rioting, only two were found guilty and, because of legal technicalities, were allowed to go free, while charges were dropped against the other nine.
Snowtown saw its own race riot in 1831 when seven houses were destroyed. Eventually, the area was taken over by the railroad.” Please stop calling the Snowtown/Olney’s Lane incident a “race riot”! Sparked by a standoff between Swedish sailors and Black business owners, a white mob gathered over several nights and damaged a number of homes in both neighborhoods. Many of those buildings were owned by Nicholas Brown II, and were occupied by a variety of people. The incident ended when the Rhode Island State Militia fired upon the mob, killing four white men.
This incident was important, but was a few nights out of 100 years, during which so many lives were lived. It is part of a much bigger history.
“On the Snowtown site fragments of luxury goods from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were found: blue and white pearl ware, a glass decanter, Delft tile fragments, all in association with a wood-lined hole. These finds raise all kinds of questions for which the written record has no answers since it only records the spectacular, the riots, not the daily details of the inhabitants’ lives. We can only surmise why fragments of high-end goods cropped up in this area. Might they have been gifts to ladies of the night from well-heeled East Side customers? A more likely scenario was shared by Heather Olson of the Public Archaeology Lab: “Providence was a really important port city with a wide variety of people” she said of this mixed population of mariners, domestic servants, and those in maritime trades, amongst other working people. Such goods she added “could have been gifts, stolen, or bought at auctions – when people ran into debt, they often sold all their possessions.” Her interest is in “. . . finding out about everyday people, not the people who
write. The industrial revolution brought outsiders into urban environments and archaeology can give clues as to how they established homes, jobs and so forth.”
Actually, we have a lot of evidence about the details of inhabitants’ lives. This is what we do, and we are committed to learning as much as possible about the types of work, the relationships, the environment, and the architecture of Snowtown and its residents. This team has conducted years of archival research. There is no evidence of Snowtown being a “red light district” at any point in its 100 years. Nor do we think Providence had such a district at all. We strongly prefer not to refer to sex workers, who again we have NO evidence lived in Snowtown in any abundance, as “ladies of the night”. We also question what customer would visit a sex worker and give a gift of Delft tiles? The “luxury” goods were found intermixed with lots and lots of other things. While it is true that the residents of this area tended to be working class, Is it so hard to believe that working class people could have a few nice things?
Research Team member Ted Coleman summed up the dynamic of Snowtown research brilliantly when he said “Every researcher brings their own prior expectations to Snowtown. The neighborhood is most often a projection of the researcher’s fancies, a window dressing to adorn other historical issues.” Snowtown was a mixed-race, working class neighborhood. Snowtown residents were displaced mainly by the railroad. Snowtown was more than four nights in 1831.
Snowtown was more than what biased newspapers said about it.
Snowtown was a home.
Thank you for bringing attention to this project. Readers can learn more at our website https://thesnowtownproject.wordpress.com, and can contact the research team at TheSnowtownProject@gmail.com.
Traci Picard, in collaboration with the Snowtown Research Team
To the Editor,
I read the article on what is under our feet. What the article did not mention is that most of Downtown providence is built on fill. They filled salt marches to create dry land. When they were constructing the mall they were having trouble setting the pilings because the pilings were going down into salt marsh muck. At that time I suggested that the city would do petter to restore the salt marshes than build a mall. Obviously I lost that argument. But I was right. Mall is useless. Much of the rest of downtown is also on landfill that originally was a marsh. The marsh was amazing rich and biodiverse.
Another sideline to all this is that I would never want to be downtown in an earthquake. In an earthquake filled lands liquify making the earthquake much more destructive. That could also be an issue along Allens Ave with all of its gas and oil infrastructure. Likely to have a huge fire if we have a large earthquake. They are rare around here, but not unknown. Providence would be much better off returning all of the filled lands to salt marsh.
Greg Gerritt
To the Editor,
Loved the “History Under Our Feet” article by Ruth Marris-Macaulay–particularly the sections on the Snowtown and Hemenway’s excavations.
I do walking tours on the Providence River and use that 1827 illustration on my tour–knew it was from somewhere in the State House vicinity but the illustration caption and text provided more useful info for me. I also knew that the old Customs House was somewhere in the WW2 Memorial/Hemenway’s area–but again more detail is always helpful. I especially liked the part about the gangways there being sealed in 1818–since I talk about the gangways as we walk down the river walk on the Water Street side.
Regards,
Catherine Beyer Hurst
To the Editor,
I love Ruth Marris-Macaulay’s description of all that history lying a few feet below our cityscape. And what will archaeologists find 150 years from now? Traces of buildings we’ve allowed to decay? ArtInRuins, “Documenting Change since 2002,” is a great source for the curious, particularly the section “UsedToBeThere,” which lists 110 properties, many of which still could be with us. See artinruins.com.
Sarah Gleason
Dear Editor,
Thank you for publishing Ruth Marris-Macaulay’s “History Under Our Feet: Unearthing Providence’s Past.” I always enjoy learning the back story of a city that I love. It’s the closest thing to time travel.
Stephen Snyder
