View allAll Photos Tagged TransActing
Text
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF PAWTUCKET
of travel between Boston and New York from a week, as had been the case before the revolution, to about fifty hours. The coaches ran between all the principal towns and cities, and by 1830 had become very commodious and convenient as compared with their predecessors. A steamboat line between Providence and New York was established in 1822. Stages were run from Boston through Pawtucket to connect with the boats, and made the trip in about five hours, which was then considered phenomenally fast time. The railroads, in a few years after their advent, drove the long distance stages off the great highways, al1d utterly killed the business of the wayside inns; but for two decades thereafter stages, then known as omnibuses, were very generally used for local transportation, and continued to perform that service until the beginning of the street car era in the 6o’s. A stage known as the Pawtucket Diligence was run between Pawtucket and Providence in 1825 by Simon H. Arnold. It started from the Pawtucket hotel and made two trips a day. This was not the beginning of local stage travel between Pawtucket and Providence, as the coach had been run before Mr. Arnold purchased it. Abraham H. Adams was the next stage owner. Then Wetherell & Bennett operated a line of omnibuses from 1836 to 1854, when Sterry Fry purchased them and continued to run them until they were supplanted by the horse cars of the Providence and Pawtucket street railroad, which was constructed by Hiram H. Thomas, and put into operation May, 1864. For many years the omnibus station was on Mill Street ill a building which occupied the site of B. McCaughey & Co.’s store, 93 North Main Street. The Pawtucket Street Railway Co. was incorporated in 1885, and its lines, now operated by electricity, reach every part of the city and suburbs. The cars of the Union Railroad furnish transportation to Providence, and those of the Interstate Railroad to Attleboro, North Attleboro and intermediate points. While in 1830 four hours and fifty minutes was the fastest times that the stage coaches could make between Providence and Boston, the express trains now go through in an hour al1d the electric cars make the trip in less than a half hour between Pawtucket and Providence, and instead of two trips a day, like the old diligence, make over a hundred. Strictly speaking Pawtucket never has had any commerce. During the latter part of the last century and the beginning of this century Sylvester Bowers on the east side al1d George Robinson and Thomas Arnold on the North Providence bank of the river built ships of ordinary size for the times.* But there does not appear to have been any vessels bringing cargoes for distribution through the surrounding country, and, with the possible exception of Nathan Daggett, there were no importing merchants. Providence transacted all the commerce, and Pawtucket in those days afforded no opportunity for foreign shipping. At high tide there was enough water in the channel to float the largest vessels,—some of them of nearly three hundred tons burden,—that were built in the shipyards; and probably a few vessels came up the river early in the century with cotton for the mills, and lumber and other supplies for the growing community. The neighborhood on both sides of the river in the vicinity of the present Division Street Bridge was known locally as the Landing. Here the shipyards were located. The town of North Providence owned in this region some
*Benedict’s Reminiscences, No. 27; Centennial Address, North Providence, p. 31: