Historian’s Efforts to Make Smith’s Castle Role in RI’s Plantation Society Known

he picturesque view of Smith’s Castle, a historic house-turned-museum sitting upon Narragansett Bay, belies a complicated and at times, bloody past that historians are still working to fully understand, as volunteers inform countless visitors of stories still being uncovered.

The original site, overlooking Mill Cove, was established when Richard Smith, a settler in Taunton, MA, combined his land with a trading post purchased from Roger Williams, later fortifying it with a spectacularly large house that came to be known as Smith’s Castle. By the time of Smith’s death in 1666, the area, known as Cocumscussoc, had become a cultural and economic hub and was a local landmark during the Great Swamp Fight, a battle between New England’s colonial militia and the Narragansett people during King Philip’s War.

“William Coddington, who was governor, allowed the forces from Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay to meet and get together at Smith’s Castle,” explains public historian and author Robert A. Geake. “Soldiers left the castle and marched to the Great Swamp with an Indian guide they had captured. And they massacred the people that were there… It was a great blow to the tribe at that time, and it took them many years to recover.”

The original Smith’s Castle was burned down in retaliation the next spring. Smith, Jr. rebuilt the structure and became one of the first “Narragansett Planters,” expanding the land into one of Rhode Island’s largest plantations. In the 1700s, after Smith, Jr. left the estate to Captain Lodowick Updike, “there were well over 100 enslaved people there and many more that we don’t even know about,” says Geake.

Part of Geake’s work at Smith’s Castle is making sure those stories are uncovered and honored. For example, historian and former president of Smith’s castle, John Dower, found what was known as a primer, an English instructional book on site. ”It was a book that was distributed by the Quakers in Newport to help enslaved people learn English,” says Geake. “So we believe that this was a book that was hidden by one of the enslaved people that (son of Lodowick Updike) Daniel Updike originally lent to a tenant farmer in the years before he moved into the house himself.”

It’s because of Smith’s Castle’s historical importance and work toward understanding a history rooted in slavery that the site was awarded a Rhode Island Slave History Medallion. Speaking at the dedication, Geake explained that “as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, we can acknowledge those wrongs committed in the past, and further fulfill our obligation as the caretakers of this historic site to tell the history in its entirety.”

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, sites like Smith’s Castle are instrumental in making sure that those first two and a half centuries, and what came before, are not only remembered but also fully understood for their complexity. And that’s reason for celebration.

May Events

Smith’s Castle sponsors year-round programming

• May 2: “Reimagining the Revolution,” a season-opening conversation with historian Tim Cranston and John Adams reenactor Micahel LePage.
• May 14: “Rhode Island Quakers in the War of Independence,” a conversation with historian Elizabeth Cazden.
• May 23: “Women During the American Revolution” breakfast talk with historian Marilyn Harris.

Learn more at SmithsCastle.org