Red, White, and Barrington
A Digital Archive

Barrington 250's exhibit Red, White, and Barrington: Local Perspectives on American Independence, 1776-2026, which was displayed in Barrington Public Library's Jennifer English Gallery from January 22 through February 26, 2026, invited visitors to explore evidence of Revolutionary-era Barrington and Rhode Island. The exhibit was developed by the Town of Barrington's 250th Anniversary Celebration Committee with assistance from Barrington Preservation Society Trustee Maria Bruce. Additional guidance and content was drawn from the Barrington Preservation Society, Barrington Public Library, RI250 Commission, Rhode Island State Archives, Sowams Heritage Area Project, The Official Website of The Pokanoket Tribe, and the American Association for State and Local History. This webpage reproduces the exhibit content in order to provide opportunities for exploration throughout Barrington 250 programming (January-July 2026) and beyond.

We can start to imagine our local history, including the Revolutionary Period, by reading place names and understanding the landscape around us. Maps and charts, like this one requested by General William Howe, Commander-in-Chief of British forces during the Revolutionary War, help us to do that. Take a look at the 1776 chart of the East Bay area. We first notice that Barrington is surrounded by water, with beaches, inlets, and marshes throughout our town. In colonial times, water was more of a connector than a divider – it was often easier to travel somewhere by boat than by foot or wagon. Also visible on the map are homes and cultivated fields.

People name places in order to communicate about them. For example, Ferry Lane is named for the ferry that once operated between Barrington and Warren, and which was active at the time of the Revolution. Today we see echoes of Pokanoket words in many place names in town. Sowams Road, Sowams Elementary School, and Sowams Woods (believed to be a Pokanoket sacred area set aside for women and childbirth) all reference the Pokanoket ancestral homeland. Massasoit Ousamequin is remembered in Massasoit Avenue and Osamequin Nature Preserve.

Events of the Revolutionary War also factored into local and place names. On May 25, 1778, 500 British and Hessian (German) soldiers raided the East Bay by boat, landing between Bristol and Warren. They destroyed many boats and part of Bristol's town. According to Thomas Bicknell’s 1898 A History of Barrington Rhode Island, during the raid two Hessian soldiers took a small boat and tried to cross the Palmer River into Barrington. Resident Moses Tyler was ready with a musket in hand, prepared by his wife and daughter, at the bank of the river. Despite warnings, the soldiers kept coming; Tyler fired and killed one of the soldiers, and the other turned back to the Warren side of the river and fled.

As Bicknell’s history was written more than a hundred years after the event, we will never know exactly which parts are fact or embellishment, but in public memory “Tyler Point” at the bottom of New Meadow Neck links our town to the war period.

The General Thomas Allin house, built between 1769 and 1774 and a recent addition to the National Historical Register, likely housed three Revolutionary War veterans. Certainly it was home to the owner, Thomas Allin (1742 - 1800), a military officer in the war and later an elected local and state political official. The late Georgian/early Federal style home likely also housed Dick (Richard) Allin and Jack Allin, two enslaved men who served in the Revolutionary War, earned their freedom, and died c. 1781. While no record of Dick and Jack by name exists, we do know that Thomas Allin inherited four enslaved people from his father and that these two men were in his father’s household. Thomas Allin was the administrator of both their estates later in life.

The Thomas Allin house at 20 Lincoln Avenue was originally part of a 300-acre farm, a part of Barrington’s agricultural beginnings. The prominent and wealthy Allin family had roots in Barrington dating back to the late 1600s. With large properties to farm and maintain, the Allin family were slave owners over multiple generations. According to the 1774 census, Thomas Allin enslaved three Black men and two Black women, all over age 16. It is one of ten known surviving homes in Barrington from this period, and one of six surviving Barrington properties with a documented association with enslaved people of African heritage.

The first documented slave ship to come to Rhode Island arrived in Newport in 1696. In total, approximately 1,000 slaving voyages originated in Rhode Island, carrying more than 100,000 African men, women, and children to be sold into slavery. African heritage people, both slave and free, made up a significant portion of the population in the state's urban seaports and working farms during this period. The Rhode Island Slave History Medallion at the entrance to the building we are in, part of a statewide project, raises public awareness of the history of enslavement in Barrington.

The information included here is available in the Allin House’s 2024 nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, which documents and preserves places of historical importance. The house qualified for the National Register because of its association with enslaved people of African heritage (in addition to architectural significance). With the work of recent historians, we are starting to learn and share more diverse stories of Americans not included in the traditional narrative of nation-building. 

Brave Men As Ever Fought was commissioned by the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia with funding provided by the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail of the National Park Service, and unveiled in 2021 at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. It depicts the march of the Rhode Island Regiment through Philadelphia on their way to Yorktown in 1781. 

The regiment notably included two companies comprised of men of African and Indigenous descent – many of whom had gained their freedom through military service – which was the first non-white military regiment, authorized by the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1778. The Regiment served in several battles of the Revolutionary War including the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778 and the decisive Battle of Yorktown in 1781. (See additional details in accompanying RI250 label.)

At least 13 people of color were known or believed to have lived in Barrington prior to enlisting in the First Rhode Island Regiment. They are:

Richard Allen

Jack Allin

Cato Bannister

Pero Bicknell

Prince Brown 

Scipio Freeman 

Prince Ingraham

Pomp Smith

Prince Tiffany

Pomp Watson

Prince Watson

Thomas Reynolds

Joshua Quam

Richard Allen enlisted as a free man, and Joshua Quam who was listed as an “Indian head-of-household” according to the 1774 census, probably did as well. The others were enslaved when they joined and little else is known about them.

As part of its statewide programming, the RI250 Commission exhibited this reproduction of the original painting at the Rhode Island State House in 2025, and made it available for display in our state’s communities during this Semiquincentennial year.

Made in 1760, these hand-knitted stockings belonged to (and are thought to have been made by) Mrs. Hope (Rounsevell) Nelson (1735 - 1820). Born in Freetown, MA, Hope was the daughter of Captain John Rounsevell and Sarah (Holloway) Rounsevell. She married John Nelson (1737- 1803) in 1760. Nelson was from Middleboro, MA, served as both a major and a colonel during the Revolutionary War, and was on duty in both Rhode Island and New Bedford, MA. Colonel Nelson also served as a Selectman in Middleboro for several years.

Despite their seemingly ordinary and common-place role in today’s American society, stockings played a significant role during the Revolutionary War. Serving to protect one’s feet from injury and/or disease, durable stockings were an essential part of a soldier’s attire, and were often repeatedly repaired to extend their life. 

Donated to the Barrington Preservation Society in 1993 by longtime Barrington residents Mrs. Barbara Barton and her daughter Mrs. Prudy Bishop, these hand-knitted stockings were passed down in this family for seven generations. Other notable members of this family include Barrington residents Reuben Andrew Gibbs and his wife Fannie Eliza (Nelson) Gibbs. They owned and operated the R.A. Gibbs Store, located on the northwest corner of Washington Road and Bay Spring Avenue around the turn of the twentieth century. Additionally their son, Harold Nelson Gibbs (1886 – 1970) was a self-taught scientist, distinguished naturalist, and early conservationist.  

-Maria Bruce, Historian

These stockings are attributed to the year of Hope and John Nelson’s marriage. Perhaps 25-year-old Hope Nelson made them for her husband as a wedding gift or as a new wife. Perhaps he used them 15 years later when serving in the war effort, though we have no way of knowing. In 1776, Hope Nelson was 41 years old, married for 16 years, and had multiple children. She may have been the manager of her household while her husband was away to fight. Many women in this period, like women during wars before and after the Revolution, took on new responsibilities to keep the homefront running. Women like Abigail Adams of Quincy, MA, wife of Continental Congress member (and later President) John Adams, detailed in letters the work to maintain a farm, care for children, and try to provide safety for all people in their care. While we don’t have written records of Hope Nelson, these stockings are a reminder of her and other women of the period who did not leave surviving written records, but whose labor and care we can see in the tiny, strong stitches of an otherwise plain item of clothing.

The Declaration of Independence

Reproduction of printing by Mary Katharine Goddard

1777

Rhode Island State Archives Collection

One of three copies of the Declaration of Independence maintained by the Rhode Island State Archives, this version was printed by Mary Katharine Goddard (1739 - 1816) in Baltimore in January 1777. It was the first version of the document to list the names of most of the signers. Goddard risked her life and her livelihood by including her own name at the bottom (which has been crossed out on this copy for reasons not documented).

Born in New London, CT, Goddard learned the printing business from her younger brother William, who she followed from New London to Providence, and then on to Philadelphia and Baltimore, where William started newspapers. Mary Katharine Goddard took over the printing business while her brother traveled the colonies to promote the "Constitutional Post," an alternative to the royal postal system. In July 1775 she was named postmaster of Baltimore, becoming the first in the city and the first female postmaster in the colonies and, eventually, the United States.

In December 1776, the Continental Congress relocated to Baltimore, just blocks from Goddard's printing office/bookstore/post office. As the official printer to the Continental Congress and a proud supporter of the American cause, she printed Congressional resolutions and notices as well as this version of the Declaration of Independence.

Also in the Rhode Island State Archives’ holdings is a January 31, 1777 letter from John Hancock accompanying the delivery of the Declaration to the state, in which he writes, “As there is not a more distinguished point in the History of America, than the Declaration of her Independence – nor any, that, in all Probability, will so much excite the attention of future ages, it is highly proper, that the Memory of that Transaction, together with the Causes that gave Rise to it, should be preserved in the most careful Manner that can be devised.”

Exhibit and website archive design, research, and production led by Barrington 250 Committee members Julieanne Fontana and Julia Lazarus. Special thanks to Siobhan Egan, Community Engagement Librarian, and Kris Chin, Library Director of the Barrington Public Library.