The Great Road to Providence

        Alexander Hamilton did not walk the Post Road. Indians did not have pack animals and their sole means of land transport was walking. The original paths through the woods were narrow and deeply furrowed by centuries of use by small groups of Massachusett, Narragansett, Niantic, or Pequot traveling “Indian file” on paths two feet wide. Clearly this would not work well for somebody on horseback, nor for the stagecoaches that began to appear in the eighteenth century. Roads are always improved over time, even it seems they are awful to us. That is because our standards rise to match expectations. Traveling through the swampy woods south of Boston in the seventeenth or eighteenth century was no easy task, and many preferred traveling by water to New York and other points in the colonies. Sometimes a trip by land was necessary, and, in the earliest days, few roads existed and the ones that did exist were of poor quality.

        Towns slowly made improvements to their sections of the various roads that passed through their town. Men were often required to give a certain amount of time each year working to improve the roads of the town in which they lived. Eventually the roads, though still execrable by today’s standards, improved, and new roads were actively constructed to make the distances between towns shorter, less circuitous, and less affected by topography. Knight traveled in a time when settlement outside the major port towns was sparse and roads were yet to be improved. Forty years later, substantially more people inhabited the interior areas away from the coast and demand increased for more reliable roads. The government in London, however, had little interest in promoting intra-colonial trade, preferring transatlantic commerce between each colony and the motherland. Thus there were no attempts to create a unified road system at the highest levels of government. So it was up to individual colonies and towns in those colonies to improve the roads within their territory to improve transport and increase trade in the colonies. As you can imagine, this policy produced mixed results.

        The towns south of Boston, particularly Walpole and Wrentham, were different from most towns in New England, as town leaders with some foresight could see that an improved road that steered traffic away from the Old Roebuck Road, and instead passed through their towns, would substantially increase business for merchants in the towns, as well as provide easier access to Boston, the biggest market of them all in eighteenth-century America. Consequently a road improvement plan was undertaken, and by 1751, a “new road” had been created between North Attleboro and Walpole, which connected with the old road from Dedham to Walpole, shortening the route to Providence by three or four miles miles and effectively easing the Old Roebuck Road out of existence (1).

        This route, the Great Road to Providence, is the route Dr. Alexander Hamilton traveled on his way from Boston to Providence, in 1744, via Dedham and what is now North Attleborough. Instead of heading through the wilderness in what is now East Norwood, East Walpole, Sharon, and Foxborough, the new road passed through the center of several small settlements, including the Second Parish of Dedham (Norwood), Walpole, what is now Norfolk, and Wrentham.  We know Hamilton traveled this route because he kept a diary of his travels, and listed the taverns at which he stopped to eat or sleep. The taverns he visited all fall on this route as we shall see as I walk the route Hamilton took. I would ride a horse, but can’t. I could bike through this area, but I feel I will be able to see more by traveling on foot. Thus it will take me longer than the thirty hours or so Hamilton needed (including sleeping overnight in North Attleborough at Slack’s) to cover this ground.

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     This “New” road had not just appeared out of the blue. Parts of the road had existed since the earliest days of settlement and parts were even Indian trails. And this road was sometimes used as an alternative to the Old Roebuck Road even in the late seventeenth century. Tulley’s Almanac of 1698 lists taverns from Boston to New York and the distances between taverns. The distance from Boston to Dedham is listed as being ten miles (it is actually eleven), then a spur is listed to Medfield nine miles further, to Wrentham another ten miles, and finally to Woodcock’s four miles, “which is the smoother road.” (2)   Tulley’s Almanac describes the Roebuck Road as the principal road, however, as discussed in the previous entry. The distance following either of these two routes from Dedham to Woodcock’s (North Attleborough) was twenty-three miles and from Boston to Providence, forty-eight miles. The Vade Mecum of 1732, another almanac, lists only the Old Roebuck Road, where Fisher’s in Dedham is listed as eleven miles from Boston, Coney’s (mentioned in the previous entry) at seven miles further on, Billing’s in Stoughton (now Sharon) three miles after Coney’s (optimistic), Hugh’s in Wrentham seven miles on, and finally Slack’s in Attleboro (Now North Attleborough, formerly Woodcock’s) five miles after Hugh’s, for a total of twenty-two miles Dedham to North Attleborough. In 1797 taverns listed on the route from Boston to Providence are all on the “New Road”: Boston to Dedham, eleven miles, Dedham to Ellis’s Tavern in Dedham (now Norwood), three miles, Ellis to Downe in Walpole (Robbin’s in Hamilton’s day) five miles, Hadden in Walpole two miles, Mann’s in Wrentham six miles, Holmes in Wrentham five miles, Newells in Attleboro four miles, to Providence nine, for a total of forty five miles. This route is three miles shorter than the cumulative distance listed by Tulley in 1698, that is forty-eight miles from Boston to Providence. The lists provided by almanacs of different eras document the changes in the main route from Boston to Providence over the course of a century.

    In the middle of the century Hamilton traveled through the area and on both occasions he used the “New Road.” On the route in to Boston from Newport he “breakfasted at Man’s, and from thence went 10 miles farther to Robin’s where we baited...we parted from Robin’s a little after three and betwixt 5 and 6 arrived at Dedham, a village within eleven miles of Boston...” (3) On his return trip he again stopped at Fisher’s in Dedham, then proceeded to Mann’s (Wrentham) and finally stopped at “Slake’s” (Slack’s, North Attleborough) in the evening.

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    At Washington and Neponset Street in Norwood, the Old Roebuck Road and the Great Road split for twenty miles. Knight in 1704 followed the Roebuck or “Old Post Road” down Neponset Street. Hamilton in 1744 stayed on Washington Street and headed into what is now Norwood Center. He does not describe any of this segment of his journey until he gets to what is now Walpole Center at Robin’s Tavern. A mile of fairly nondescript walking on Washington Street in Norwood brings me to Norwood Center. The Old Parish Cemetery is at the north end of town, but otherwise the houses and scenery were similar to my walk through Norwood in the previous entry. At least this time I pass through Norwood Center, which is quite pleasant, with a common and many small businesses lining two or three streets around the common for a half mile in each direction. I grab a Lamb Kofta pita “roll-up” at the Al Koura Restaurant in Norwood Center, a small family-run Lebanese place that serves up delicious Arabic food. Refreshed and cooled off I head back out into the hot summer sun and continue down Washington Street in Norwood until I arrive at a junction with Walpole Street. Washington Street, as mentioned before, is the former Boston to Providence Turnpike and continues in a straight line to Providence, running in between the Old Post Road and the New or Great Road to Providence. The road Hamilton followed veered right and headed to Walpole or “the Sawmill Settlement,” along Walpole Street, also known as Route 1A along this stretch.

    Norwood was called South Dedham or the Second Parish of Dedham for most of the first two centuries of its settlement by the English.  The first church was built here at the corner of Walpole Street and Washington Street in 1736, where the elegant library stands today. The area that is now Norwood was “a pretty sleepy area” up to the appearance of the railroad in 1849, after which the population grew rapidly. A stagecoach line was established by Thomas Sabin as early as 1767 that traveled from Boston to Providence and passed through this area and down Walpole Street in the same direction Hamilton traveled.

    As I leave the Norwood Library I pass a stone marker commemorating Captain Aaron Guild, a participant in the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775, who “ Left plow in furrow, oxen standing” to take up arms against the tyrannical King George. I love the agrarian utopian spin many of these monuments display, no doubt taking their cue from the famous Minuteman statue in Concord. Heading out down Walpole Street, I pass through a pleasant neighborhood of nineteenth and early twentieth-century houses. After a little more than a mile I pass over a small tributary of the Neponset River fed by pretty Ellis Pond. Half a mile further on I enter Walpole, established 1724, and am greeted by a curious sign (see picture below) about shooting. As I cross into Walpole the sidewalks disappear for a short time. Not an auspicious entrance to the town. I am also armed with statistics about the town that only confirm the opinions I have already formed from the rather unwelcoming sign. Walpole has 23,461 inhabitants (2007 estimate)within 21 square miles, so it is about half as densely populated as Norwood. 96.7% of the people in the town were White according to the 2000 census and a mere 0.8% were Black, approximately 200 people in town of 24,000. The town was one of the very few in Massachusetts to give a majority of its votes to John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, and in the recent Senate Election, it gave Scott Brown, Republican, 68% of its votes. I am in Kansas now. Guns, Republicans, and white people in overwhelming abundance. Throw in some fundamentalists and the departure from the Massachusetts stereotype will be complete.

    The only problem with my initial image of the town is that the town of Walpole is actually quite pleasant. I stop for ice cream at Scoops about a mile and half into Walpole, and by then the sidewalk has reappeared, I have not seen anybody shooting anything, and the houses as I approach Walpole Center are much nicer than the typical ranch houses that seem to be a permanent feature of the landscape the further I get from Boston. The ice cream, as is the case in most “real” ice cream stands outside Boston, is enormous and flavorful. Families congregate around benches, many of the kids still in their after-school sports uniforms, small girls trying valiantly to finish their ice cream cones until their big brothers have to do it for them. I have a conversation with a mother and son fresh from the orthodontist, mulling over the $5,500 price tag for braces. Maybe it is the sugar rush, but Walpole seems much nicer now than in the first few minutes after my arrival.

    I cross the street and pay a visit to the Old Burial Place, with many eighteenth century gravestones, including some from the Robbin’s family, the eponymous tavern owners. Continuing onward, I descend a small incline into Walpole Center, much less developed than Norwood Center, but nevertheless bustling. Walpole Center has at least two large green spaces around which many of the town businesses, churches, and town offices are located. In front of the Town Hall sits a welcome site, a mile stone indicating 20 miles to Boston, 1740. Twenty miles! The stone itself was originally placed in front of Robbin’s Tavern, which was located in front of Ezekiel Robbin’s Brass Ball Tavern on West Street on the other side of the town Common from the Town Hall.

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        Walpole was originally settled in order to take advantage of the waterpower of the rivers and streams to power a sawmill to produce lumber from the vast cedar swamp in the area (hence the original name of Walpole Street, Sawmill Road).  As early as 1659 the town leaders in Dedham approved the improvement of the trail to the sawmill, and by 1663 Sawmill Road to Walpole had become a regularly laid out “highway” four rods wide. Thus by the late seventeenth century two main roads south of Boston passed through what is now Walpole. For Willard DeLue, author of a history of Walpole “The story of the development of these trails from narrow and tortuous footways into bridle paths, cart roads, and, in turn, modern streets, is the story of Walpole.” (6)

        In 1673 a man traveling from Boston to Providence, Zachary Smith, was murdered while traveling the road I am on. This event sparked a conflict which became known as King Philip’s War, after the sachem of the Pokanoket or Wampanoag tribe, which resulted in the usurpation by the English from the Pokanoket of much of the land I am about to pass through as I leave Walpole Center. From the perspective of this project, Smith’s journey through this area to Providence demonstrates that this road had some significance as a road to Providence before it became known as the New Road to Providence. As for Philip, the war, and the people who inhabited this area before the arrival of the English I will have more to say in future entries.

    The original road to Walpole center continued on past the center of town to the Stop River, which today is near the boundary of Walpole and the town of Norfolk. In 1722 the “Old Wrentham Road” was improved to Stop River and made two rods wide (7) (I know at this point you are thinking “what the heck is a rod?” A rod is unit of distance equivalent to five and a half yards, or sixteen and a half feet. The measurements of bridges, roads, and property lines in the colonial era are almost always in rods.) Leaving Walpole center it is tempting to continue on Main Street and follow it directly to Wrentham Center. However, the area south of Walpole Center was swampland until Main Street

was constructed as a short turnpike in 1812. The Old Wrentham Road Hamilton would have taken is West Street, a quieter and smaller street that heads west (duh!) out of Walpole Center towards Norfolk. I pass the Walpole MBTA Commuter Rail Station (thirty-seven minutes with stops from South Station!) and continue past a sand and gravel company (the third one so far on this trip), and continue down a quiet road for three miles until I cross the Stop River and enter Norfolk, where West Street intersects Main Street. Old maps are sparse for this area. A map from the middle of the nineteenth-century shows the road diverging here, one road continuing south and one road (Main Street) heading west into Norfolk Center. The road heading south would have been Needham Street, but the area is now occupied by MCI Norfolk, a prison with a red-brick nineteenth-century entrance and administration building with more modern facilities behind it. Surrounding the property is a double fence and guards are perched on lookout towers. There are many prison guards at the entrance as well. I decide not to try to cut through the prison if indeed Needham Street was the original road and turn west toward Norfolk Center on Main Street.

    Norfolk is comprised of parts of what were once Walpole, Wrentham, Franklin, and Medway, and became a separate town in 1870. Previously what is now Norfolk Center was originally in Wrentham. A tavern called Hatch’s is listed in Wrentham four miles from Walpole in 1798. A building on the corner of Rockwood and Main Street called the Mann House was also known as Ware’s Tavern, and Washington reputedly spent the night there (he had to sleep somewhere).  Ten miles from where I started today and close to twenty-five miles from the Boston Town House, I will stop here and continue this portion of the trip in the next entry. This one is already pretty long and there are still many miles to go.