M. E. Reilly-McGreen - Witches, Wenches & Wild Women of Rhode Island

Witches,
WENCHES &
WILD WOMEN

OF RHODE ISLAND

OF RHODE ISLAND

M.E. REILLY-MCGREEN

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2010 by M.E. Reilly-McGreen

All rights reserved

First published 2010

Second printing 2010

Third printing 2011

e-book edition 2011

ISBN 978.1.61423.063.2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reilly-McGreen, M. E.

Witches, wenches, and wild women of Rhode Island / M.E. Reilly-McGreen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

print edition: ISBN 978-1-59629-937-5

1. Women--Rhode Island--Biography. 2. Witches--Rhode Island--Biography. 3. Rhode

Island--Biography. I. Title.

CT3262.R4R45 2010

920.7209745--dc22

2010013683

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To Joe, Reilly, Colin and Peter

First, to my boysReilly, Colin and Peter McGreenthank you for your love, your encouragement, your patience and your understanding. Also, thank you to Peter and Joyce Reilly, my parents, who have always had more faith in me than I had in myself. To my siblings and best friendsSean Reilly, Tim Reilly, Kate Grosso and Tara Sandathank you for your staunch support and restraint from making comments about similarities between me and my subject matter. Thank you, too, to Donna Shirley Reilly, my sister in spirit, for her endless enthusiasm about anything involving ghosts, vampires or witches. And to my dear sisters-in-law, Katherine and Anna McGreen, thank you for your unwavering encouragement.

A number of friends also assisted in gathering information and providing photographs. James and Tracey Manni, thank you so much for the beautiful Block Island photographs, as well as all your knowledge of the island, its inhabitants, its legends and its lore. Everyone visiting Block Island should be in the company of such fabulous tour guides. Michael Bell, thank you for letting me tag along. Thank you, too, to Betty Cotter, Carrie DiPrete, Gale Eaton, Susan Graham, Laura Kelly, Mag Ryan and Ericka Tavares for your offers of assistance, your wit and your wisdom.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to the following organizations: the South County Museum, the Newport Historical Society, the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society and the Providence Athenaeum. To the ladies of the Peace Dale Library, Rebecca Turnbaugh and Jessica Wilson, I am deeply grateful and honored that you allowed me access to your special collections and your knowledge. And to Keith Lewis, thank you for sharing your Block Island stories with me.

This book would never have materialized if not for the Chariho School Committees approval of my course, Rhode Island Myth, Legend and Folklore. Thank you, as well, to Chariho Regional School District superintendent Barry Ricci, Chariho Regional High School principal Robert Mitchell, Chariho Regional High School assistant principal Elizabeth Sinwell, former Chariho Regional High School assistant principal Philip Auger, PhD, and Chariho Regional High School English Department chair Shelley Kenny for allowing me this privilege. Special thanks, too, to the students of Chariho Regional High School, without whose interest and enthusiasm this course would never have happened.

To all the authors whose work I reviewed in researching and writing this book, thank you.

This book would have been so much poorer without the artistic eye and photographic talents of Mark Kiely. Thank you, Mark, for your vision.

I would like to thank Jeffrey Saraceno, Saunders Robinson and everyone at The History Press for all of your advice and assistance. It has been a wonderful experience working with you.

And to Joe, the most supportive husband a woman could have, thank you for everything.

This is a book about magic, specifically the magic of Rhode Island. I think the best description Ive read of Rhode Islands magic is by author John Updike in his bestselling novel The Witches of Eastwick:

Rhode Island, though famously the smallest of the fifty states, yet contains odd American vastnesses, tracts scarcely explored amid industrial sprawl, abandoned homesteads and forsaken mansions, vacant hinterlands hastily traversed by straight black roads, heathlike marshes and desolate shores on either side of the Bay, that great wedge of water driven like a stake clean to the states heart, its trustfully named capital. The fag end of creation and the sewer of New England, Cotton Mather called the region. Never meant to be a separate polity, settled by outcasts like the bewitching, soon-to-die Anne Hutchinson, this land holds manifold warps and wrinkles. Its favorite road sign is a pair of arrows pointing either way. Swampy poor in spots, elsewhere it became a playground of the exceedingly rich. Refuge of Quakers and antinomians, those final distillates of Puritanism, it is run by Catholics, whose ruddy Victorian churches loom like freighters in the sea of bastard architecture. There is a kind of metallic green stain, bitten deep into Depression-era shingles, that exists nowhere else. Once you cross the state line, whether at Pawtucket or Westerly, a subtle change occurs, a cheerful dishevelment, a contempt for appearances, a chimerical uncaring. Beyond the clapboard slums yawn lunar stretches where only an abandoned roadside stand offering the ghost of last summers CUKES betrays the yearning, disruptive presence of man.

Greetings from Rhode Island. Authors collection.

Updike chose Rhode Island, specifically Eastwick, a fictional town believed to be composed of equal parts East Greenwich and Wickford, as home for his beloved coven comprising Alexandra Spoffard, Jane Smart, Sukie Rougemont and the devil, Darryl Van Horne. Let Arthur Miller have his Salem and its prepubescent shrews; real witches work their magic in Rhode Island, aka Rogues Island.

As a rabid fan of revenants, ghosts and ghouls, I consider myself blessed to have grown up just outside of Wickford and a mile from Exeter, the final resting place of Mercy Brown, Americas last vampire. In my twenty-odd years as a journalist, I have taken every opportunity offered to write about the states strange stories, and there are many. I found witches particularly attractive, as to me, they were women who flouted societal norms and lived by their own rules. Through the years, I have also been privileged to profile many of the states most accomplished women. From this experience, I learned that the ordinary woman who dared to challenge convention oftentimes found herself labeled a witch as a result.

I didnt begin collecting local stories in earnest until I had the opportunity to teach a class called Rhode Island Myth, Legend and Folklore at Chariho Regional High School. I have learned that there are unique job hazards encountered when teaching a class with such a title to teenagers. First, your audience is certain that you, yourself, are a witch. Second, students want to know the answers to questions for which you have no answer, like, Do you believe in (insert any number of supernatural creatures names here)?