Welcome sign for the Town of Portsmouth

If monasticism is guided by the “Love of Learning,” I found myself in the right place a couple of weeks ago to learn more about local history and to make some new friends. The locally famous and historically significant “Portsmouth Compact of 1638” was to be put on display here in town, and I received an invitation to attend. It was an important next step for me in my local learning curve since moving to Portsmouth in 2019, both in encountering history as well as encountering new people. The venue was appropriate: the Friends Meeting House in Portsmouth.

My pedagogy in local history really began a few years ago, when a request came in to the monastery from St. Michael’s Episcopal Church on Hope Street in nearby Bristol, founded in 1718. Just inside the main entrance, to the right side in the Servicemen’s Chapel, are four modestly-sized stained-glass windows depicting what were described as warrior saints. Decades-old church lore held that the memorial windows had been constructed, and perhaps even designed, by the Benedictine monks of Portsmouth Abbey. The request sought assistance in tracing “the history behind the Abbey designers” of the windows, “a magnificent and colorful collection.” The time had come, it was felt by those searching St. Michael’s church history, to verify or debunk the legend. As so often happens in cases which require monastic archival research, their request landed atop the in-box on my desk. Thus began a friendship and a correspondence across the Mount Hope Bridge with Mr. Winthrop DeWolf Fulton. Mr. Fulton was already well-acquainted with cross-bridge correspondence, as the parent of a 2005 graduate of the School.
Warrior Saint windows at St. Michael’sThe next substantial step in our correspondence was an invitation that arrived from him to deliver the 2022 Roswell S. Bosworth Jr. Lecture at St. Michael’s. I accepted, and in the lecture I outlined a year of research about the windows, their provenance, and about the saints depicted in them. The topic elicited a reference visit to Ealing Abbey in London and a comparison between their “warrior saint” windows and those in Bristol. The lecture, titled Warrior Saints v. Thou Shalt Not Kill, was scheduled appropriately on November 10, the eve of Armistice Day, and reported in The Current in the issue of November 20-26, 2022. Fast forward to Thanksgiving Day two years later when I accepted yet another invitation from Mr. Fulton to drop by his house to meet his wife and other family members before their traditional New England dinner. Upon leaving, he handed me a book, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans, by Eve LaPlante (HarperOne, 2005). LaPlante had presented a talk at Portsmouth Abbey School in 2013. I read American Jezebel in the next weeks, the perfect follow-up to one of Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower books, which we had heard read aloud in the monks’ refectory as dinner reading. The books helped bring me up to speed on areas of New England history and the fight for religious freedom, of which I had only cursory knowledge when I relocated here in 2019.
Br. Sixtus with Newport Artillery volunteer
viewing the Portsmouth CompactMy most recent local history lesson turned to the very creation of Portsmouth in 1638. I had often noticed the gold-leaf-enhanced “Welcome” road signs at various entry points to Portsmouth, and had heard of the nearby Founders’ Brook Park and Anne Hutchinson Memorial. I had long been curious to learn more about how the town had been “Founded on the Compact of 1638,” as the welcome signs announce. My learning curve steepened dramatically when I was invited to attend a unique midday program earlier this month at the historic Friends Meeting House (built in 1700), near the Portsmouth Town Hall. Roberta Stevens and James Garman, both former faculty members of the School, had extended the invitation. Jim served in the School’s History Department for 39 years, subsequently delving further into Portsmouth history and becoming the Town Historian since 2014, also sitting on the Board of Directors of the Portsmouth Historical Society. The occasion, on Friday, March 7, was the 387th anniversary of the founding of Portsmouth and the 249th anniversary of the United States. It provided a rare opportunity to actually view the original 1638 document, treasured by the town and normally secured at the Rhode Island State Archives in Providence. The document had been transported to the Meeting House that morning by Ashley Selima, the State Archivist, with a police escort. The program opened with a welcome from Matthew Kent representing the Friends Church followed by greetings from Craig Clark, President of the Historical Society. Further remarks were made by Keith Hamilton, President of the Portsmouth Town Council; Gregg M. Amore, Rhode Island Secretary of State; with historical perspectives supplied by Stephen Luce, also a board member of the Historical Society. Amore framed the historical significance of the document: “The seeds of democracy, the seeds of self-governance, were planted by documents like the Portsmouth Compact.” A reprinted brochure from the 325th anniversary notes: “Of the 19 signers of the Portsmouth Compact of 1638, several later became Quakers, including William Coddington and John Clarke. Look closely and you will see Mary Dyer’s and Anne Hutchinson’s husbands’ signatures, too. The Portsmouth Compact was significant because it established a government based on the consent of the governed, emphasizing religious freedom and separation of church and state. This concept of self-governance and religious tolerance influenced later democratic principles, including those found in the Declaration of Independence. The Compact is often seen as an early step towards the development of American democracy.”
State Senator Linda Ujifusa reads citation presented to Mr. Stephen Luce of the Portsmouth Historical SocietyThe gathering gave me a chance not only to learn the town’s history, but also to encounter some present inhabitants. It was a pleasure to meet Dr. Fred Zillian, also a former history teacher at the School, and to have a few words with Interim Pastor David Chatowsky of the Friends Church. Adding to the ambience was a volunteer from the Newport Artillery Company in a colorful full Revolutionary War-era re-enactment uniform, standing close by the document throughout the proceedings. The Company was chartered in 1741 and is the oldest military unit in the U.S. operating under its original charter. I also had the honor of meeting and speaking afterwards with R.I. Senator Linda L. Ujifusa, a third-generation Japanese-American. Senator Ujifusa presented a Senate citation to Stephen Luce highlighting not only the church’s 325th anniversary, but also the ongoing struggle for social justice so important to its history. An especially poignant moment came when the Senator related, “I am Japanese-American and the Friends Church was one of the only organizations that was against the Japanese internment” during World War II, when the U.S. forced approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent into concentration camps called “relocation centers,” incarcerating entire families. More firmly completing the circle of historical connections, Senator Ujifusa’s husband, Dr. J. Mark Ryan, is an alum of Portsmouth Abbey School. I shared with her the legacy of woodworking at the school and monastery left by the legendary Japanese-American craftsman, George Nakashima, one of those incarcerated in a relocation center. The Senator agreed to visit soon to view the Abbey’s collection of his furniture.

For furthering my budding interest in history on the local level – which I saw clearly opening up onto national and even international levels – the day was greatly enlightening.

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