The transition of Rhode Island from an agricultural and maritime economy into one based on industrial production is no better illustrated than in the careers of Providence merchant-industrialists Nicholas Brown and Edward Carrington. Carrington was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 2, 1775, the son of physician Edward Carrington and the former Susan Whittlesey. His family moved to Providence after the Revolution, and Edward embarked on a career in maritime commerce.

The exotic China and East India trade from the port of Providence began in December 1787, when John Brown and his son-in-law John Francis sent their ship General Washington to China with rum, cheese, spermaceti candles, and cannons from the Scituate factory at Hope Furnace. The ship returned on July 2, 1789, laden with tea, gunpowder (a product the Chinese invented), silk, flannel, chinaware dishes, and a small fortune in profit for its sponsors. When he reached his majority, Carrington zealously embraced this commercial opportunity. In 1802, after serving as a clerk for three local merchants, he went to Canton, China, to facilitate trade, and he soon was appointed United States consul, a position he held until 1811. In that capacity, he represented the interests of other American merchants, and he often challenged the English practice of impressing American seamen (a form of kidnapping using the excuse that these sailors were really British runaways), an abuse that became a cause of the War of 1812.

At the conclusion of the second war with England, a conflict that stifled American shipping, Carrington established the commercial firm of Edward Carrington & Company in partnership with Samuel Wetmore of Middletown, Connecticut. This firm enjoyed phenomenal growth. It built numerous ships and, at one time owned twenty-six merchantmen engaged in global commerce—Providence’s largest fleet. Using profits derived from trade with the Orient, Europe, South America, and Africa, Carrington became a principal promoter with Nicholas Brown and Thomas P. Ives of the Blackstone Canal between Providence and Worcester, a public works project designed to bring the produce of the Blackstone Valley southward to the port of Providence while sending raw cotton in bales north to new mills. Begun in 1824, with a large contingent of Irish immigrant laborers, it opened on October 7, 1828, when the Lady Carrington, named for Edward’s wife, Loriana, arrived in Worcester, making this barge the first boat to traverse the entire length of the canal.

In that same year, Carrington built the Hamlet Mill in present-day Woonsocket. He followed this venture into the cotton textile industry by building the Carrington Mill (also called Clinton Mill) nearby in this strategic area along the Blackstone River. Carrington also had an interest in the huge Lonsdale Company (established in 1834) and its cotton mill in the Cumberland village of Ashton, and he helped to finance the construction of a railroad spur from India Point across Seekonk to connect with the new Boston-to-Providence railroad.

Carrington was very active in political and civic affairs. From 1815 to 1818, he served a stint as brigadier general of the Providence County Brigade of state militia, earning him his favored title of “General.” He was also a delegate to Rhode Island’s first constitutional convention in 1824, the foreman of a forty-five-member volunteer fire company in Providence (Hydraulion No. 1), and a Whig member of the General Assembly representing Providence. He served on the war council of Law and Order governor Samuel Ward King during the Dorr Rebellion. Ironically, his only son, Edward Jr., had married Candace Dorr, sister of the controversial reformer, on February 22, 1841.

Carrington lived on Williams Street, off Hope Street, on Providence’s East Side. He furnished his mansion with oriental rugs, porcelains, furniture, sculpture, paintings, vases, and other art objects, most acquired from the Orient. Many of these items are now owned and displayed by the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Rhode Island School of Design. A huge collection of the Carrington business papers, preserved and donated by Margarethe L. Dwight (Edward Carrington’s sole surviving descendant), is now housed at the Rhode Island Historical Society and constitutes one of the nation’s great private mercantile archives of the early nineteenth century.

On January 30, 1841, the ship Lion became the last East Indiaman (as these vessels were called) to enter the port of Providence, and on December 23 of that year, the Panther, destined for Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, became the last to depart from Providence. Edward Carrington owned both ships. Exactly two years to the day after Providence’s China trade ended, Carrington’s own life ended when he died of stomach cancer on Dec. 21, 1843, at his Providence home while still a member of the General Assembly. The state’s leading lawyer, John Whipple, gave the merchant prince a moving eulogy.

Edward Carrington was inducted into The Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2012.

For additional reading:

• Bayles, Richard M., ed. History of Providence County, Rhode Island, New York: W.W. Preston & Co., 1891, Vol. 2, p. 310. (For the history of Stone Mill and Hamlet Mill)
• Downs, Jacques M. “The Edward Carrington Collection,” Rhode Island History, Jan. 1963, p 16-21
• Rhode Island History, vol.19, no. 3, p. 96; vol. 21, no. 1, p. 64
• RIHS annual meeting minutes, January 21, 1962: “During the year, we acquired ownership of the Carrington Papers.” The heart of this collection is the Carrington mercantile records, from Edward Carrington’s personal investments in the China trade from 1802 to 1815 to the firm of Edward Carrington & Co. from 1816 to 1843 to Edward Carrington II’s shipping and textile investments through 1860. The records are exceptionally detailed and are often considered to be one of the world’s great private mercantile archives for the early nineteenth century. Also included in this collection are a relatively small quantity of personal papers from Edward Carrington, his son Edward II, and Edward II’s wife Candace C. (Dorr) Carrington.