Foster, Rhode Island

Rhode Island

Foster's town hall was built in 1796 and the town still meets in it, making it the oldest government meeting house of its kind in the country.

historicalpeopleengineering

The Foster Town House went up in 1796, and the town never stopped using it. No other government meeting house of its type in the United States has been in service that long. The town itself was cut loose from Scituate in 1781 and needed a name. It took one from Theodore Foster, a United States senator, who thanked the place by handing it a library. Some of those original books survive. So do the early town records. Before any of that, in 1662, three men named William Vaughan, Zachariah Rhodes and Robert Wescott bought a large tract from the Indians called West Quanaug. That purchase covered nearly the whole southern half of what is now Foster. The first English settler here was said to be a man called Ezekiel Hopkins.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Built in 1796 and in use to this day, the Foster Town House is the oldest government meeting house of its type in the United States.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

  • Scituate Reservoir 6.2 mi Rhode Island's largest lake was made by drowning five villages and knocking down nearly twelve hundred buildings.
  • Old Furnace State Park 7.3 mi Horseshoes for George Washington's army came out of a furnace here, built from iron ore dug out of swamps.
  • Israel Putnam Monument 11.5 mi Critics said the horse on this Revolutionary War monument looked like it had a leg disease.
  • Statue of Christopher Columbus (Johnston, Rhode Island) 11.5 mi This bronze Columbus is a copy of a statue once cast from thirty thousand ounces of sterling silver, which was later melted down.
  • Providence College 15.4 mi A fifteen-year-old Judy Garland sold her own autographs on a Providence sidewalk to help pay for a college dormitory.
  • Canterbury, Connecticut 15.6 mi Connecticut's official state heroine was jailed overnight for teaching Black girls in this town.