Rhode Island's Great Road

I'll write more about this road in my RoadLog blog, but for right now, I'll give a short history of it here since I mentioned that the Hearthside House is located on the Great Road.

The Great Road was a major transportation route through the Blackstone River Valley until the early 1800s with the completion of the Louisquisett Pike and Blackstone Canal took away much of its traffic.

It connected Rhode Island with Massachusetts, to the north.

Several small mills operated along it, but the limited power of the Moshassuek River prevented the development of larger mills like those along the Blackstone River. The Great Road remained an agricultural area until well into the 1900s.

The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor has a driving tour guide of it "Great Road-- Lincoln, Rhode Island-- Travel Through Three Hundred Years In Three Miles.". The road dates to 1683 and would definitely have been used during the War of 1812.

Oh, That Great Road. --Brock-Perry

Rhode Island's Hearthside House: The House That Love Built-- Part 1

From the Hearthside House website.

I have been writing about the HMS Guerriere's bell coming to the Hearthside House in Rhode Island back in 2012 earlier this week. It turns out that the home has quite a history as well and is connected to the War of 1812 (and even old roads).

Hearthside is an 1810 stone mansion located along The Great Road, the first byway built through the wilderness between Providence, Rhode Island, and Mendon, Massachusetts, one of the oldest thoroughfares in the United States.

It was a private residence until 1996 when the Town of Lincoln purchased it. In 2001, the Friends of Hearthside was founded.

The home is an example of 19th century federal-style architecture built of fieldstone and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

What's Love Got To Do With It? --Brock-Perry