By Patrick T. Conley

This essay is an expanded version of a talk delivered on President’s Day, 2005, at Mount Hope Farm in Bristol. I intended to dispel the myth that George Washington slept there while president. I also made a plea to my hosts that they call the home on this site “the Senator Bradford House” rather than “the Governor Bradford House” to avoid confusion between this former Rhode Island lieutenant governor (later president pro tem of the United States Senate) and his illustrious ancestor, Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony.

Every college professor has compiled, at least in memory, a litany of bizarre answers received from students, made more absurd because they emanated from our nation’s “future leaders.” High on my short list of such pearls of wisdom is the answer I received when I once posed the question, “Why is George Washington regarded as the Father of His Country?” A completely serious sophomore promptly and intuitively volunteered his speculation: “Professor, was it because he slept around a lot?”

Undoubtedly, this answer was prompted by the young prodigy’s previous exposures to the ubiquitous claims advanced throughout the thirteen original states by local boosters and chambers of commerce that George Washington slept or spoke in their town or, at least, schlepped through it. Fortunately, these assertions are easier to verify than one might think. George Washington was a prolific letter writer and a frequent recipient of missives. His writings are preserved in a thirty-nine-volume edition compiled by John C. Fitzpatrick. In addition, Washington kept a detailed, though interrupted, diary of his daily routines until a few days before he closed his eyes for the last time on December 14, 1799. That diary, also edited by Fitzpatrick, fills four printed volumes. These sources detail Washington’s travels along the eastern seaboard from Kittery, Maine, to Savannah, Georgia. In fact, the comings and goings of this extremely mobile Virginian are better known to posterity than those of any other prominent eighteenth-century American. Therefore, we can certify that Washington made four Rhode Island journeys, visiting our micro paradise in 1756, 1776, 1781, and 1790.

Washington’s initial contact with Rhode Island came before his celebrity status and is less well-documented than his subsequent visitations. As a twenty-four-year-old colonel of the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, Washington strongly objected to the British policy whereby royal military commissions were superior to those of equal or higher rank authorized by colonial governments.

While a colonel of the Virginia forces, Washington was subject to orders from a royal officer of inferior rank. Colonel Washington set off for Boston to plead his case to General William Shirley, then commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces in America to protest this situation. En route to Boston, the second largest city in colonial America, Washington stopped in Newport, which then ranked fifth. An entry in the cash account of this journey, now preserved in the Washington Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, substantiates his Newport visit in February 1756. The Virginian was the houseguest of Godfrey Malbone Sr., a prominent Newport merchant. According to contemporaries, Malbone’s residence was the finest in Newport and enjoyed a commanding water view. As a guest at the Malbone mansion, the young colonel expended four pounds in Virginia currency to tip the home’s servants and another four pounds as compensation for “a bowl broke.” Sadly, the future of the Malbone house as an elegant bed-and-breakfast was extinguished by a destructive fire in 1766.

Early Washington biographer Jared Sparks believes that Washington went on to Boston by way of Providence; Blackstone Valley historian John Williams Haley (upon whom I have relied) opts for a Bristol Ferry-to-Swansea-to-Boston route. General Shirley’s support of Washington’s demand for officer parity is documented, whereas Washington’s return route through Rhode Island is not.

When Washington visited Rhode Island for the second time on Friday, April 5, 1776, he came as a general and the commander in chief of the Continental Army. After his siege of Boston forced the British evacuation on March 17, 1776, Washington visited Providence en route to another confrontation with the British in New York. Leaving Boston, Washington followed the old Post Road through the Massachusetts towns of Dedham, Wrentham, Attleboro, and Pawtucket Village (then in Rehoboth). He crossed the Blackstone River into Rhode Island from the latter settlement, entering the North Providence village of Pawtucket on the west bank of the river via the Pawtucket Bridge, from which the “great” Sam Patch would begin his jumping career a half-century later. In April 1776, therefore, Washington crossed the Blackstone more than eight months before he crossed the Delaware!

A throng of dignitaries, militia, and townspeople journeyed north from the center of Providence to rendezvous with General Washington at the Old Pidge Tavern, which was located on North Main Street near the present Providence-Pawtucket city line. The victorious commander received a hero’s welcome from the moment he entered Providence via North Main Street. Governor Nicholas Cooke, who had requested Washington’s visit, and General Nathanael Greene led the large civilian and military procession into the town center.

Washington slept for two nights (Friday and Saturday, April 5 and 6) in the small and simple home of former governor Stephen Hopkins. Then, on South Main Street, that structure now stands at the southwest corner of Benefit and Hopkins Streets. Relocated in 1928, when the Providence County Courthouse (now the Licht Judicial Complex) was under construction, the Hopkins House is owned by the state and maintained and opened to the public by the Rhode Island branch of the National Society of Colonial Dames. 

When Washington slept at the Hopkins home–and his hectic two-day whirlwind of receptions, toasts, and meetings must have caused him to sleep soundly–his gracious hostess was Ruth Hopkins. Ruth’s stepfather Stephen, one of Rhode Island’s two delegates to the Second Continental Congress, was in Philadelphia, where soon he would become one of two Rhode Island signers of the Declaration of Independence. Washington left Providence for New York early on Sunday, April 6, 1776, traveling overland via Norwich and New London, Connecticut, and then by boat. He passed through Cranston and Scituate during this course, but he did not pause to nap.

General Washington’s third Rhode Island visitation was again militarily related. In March 1781, he journeyed from his headquarters on the Hudson River to rendezvous with Count Rochambeau and his Newport-based French army to prepare a strategy for final victory over England, a campaign that would end at Yorktown. With a small guard of twenty soldiers, on March 6, 1781, the general entered Rhode Island at Westerly and proceeded along the old Post Road through Charlestown to South Kingstown. He boarded a ferry to Jamestown, crossed that island, and ferried to Newport.

Washington’s reception was tumultuous. A huge procession wound from the pier to the Colony House and was repeatedly punctuated by cannon fire from the French ships of war that lined the harbor. According to one ecstatic observer, Washington rode on horseback “calm and unmoved by all the honors that surrounded him; neither the voice of adulation nor the din of battle had ever disturbed the equanimity of his deportment.”

Washington spent a whole week in Newport, discussing strategy by day and dancing and dining by night, before departing for Providence via Bristol Ferry. During his Newport sojourn, he slept (when his adoring hosts and colleagues allowed him to sleep) in the Vernon House, still standing at the corner of Clarke and Mary Streets.

When Washington made his overland journey to Providence on Tuesday, March 13, 1781, he was joined by Count Dumas and several French officers. The colorful party passed quickly through Middletown, Portsmouth, Bristol, Warren, and Barrington, stopping only for lunch in Warren at the tavern of Shubael Burr. The tab (twelve pounds, twelve shillings) was later paid by the General Assembly and duly reported.

In Providence, where he slept for two nights (March 13 and 14), Washington received his accustomed royal reception, including a gala at Hacker’s Hall on the east side of South Main Street (a building that burned in the great Providence fire of 1801). He slept both evenings at the home of Deputy Governor Jabez Bowen, whose house was located on the present site of the Providence-Washington Insurance Building (now owned by RISD). Early on Thursday, March 15, Washington departed via Johnston, Scituate, and Foster to rejoin his army on the Hudson.

President Washington snubbed Rhode Island while making his New England tour in 1789. The state’s refusal to attend the Philadelphia Convention or to ratify the Constitution made Rhode Island, in effect, an independent foreign country over which Washington exercised no jurisdiction. When Rhode Island finally relented on May 29, 1790, so did Washington. Upon adjourning Congress (which then met in New York City), the president made immediate arrangements for his fourth and final visit to Rhode Island. He departed by boat on August 15, 1790, with an entourage of political luminaries, including Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Governor George Clinton of New York, and Theodore Foster, one of Rhode Island’s first two United States senators.

Arriving in Newport early on August 17, the president experienced the usual round of toasting and boasting, culminating in a lavish dinner dance at the Colony House. After the festivities, he retired to Mrs. Mary Almy’s fashionable boarding house (long since eradicated) on Thames Street near Mary Street for a well-earned rest. During his stroll around town on August 17, Washington went to Touro Synagogue, which has become his most remembered Newport visitation. In grateful response to his warm welcome from the small Jewish community, the president later wrote the congregation a now-famous letter in which he assured his Jewish audience (paraphrasing senior warden Moses Sexias) that “happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

On Wednesday, August 18, the president sailed by packet for Providence, bypassing the staunch Federalist strongholds of Bristol and Warren en route. Here, his reception was more exuberant. Governor Arthur Fenner was so zealous in offering his respects that he jumped aboard the ship even before it came to rest at the Providence wharf. During his brief stay in Providence, Washington made his second visit to the Old State House (now 150 Benefit Street), toured the campus of Rhode Island College (now Brown University), and took refreshments at the John Brown House. He dined and slept at the Golden Ball Tavern on Benefit Street at the corner of South Court. (This historic structure was demolished in 1941, just before preservation fever hit Providence; a parking lot for a sandwich shop now occupies the site). After two days of touring and toasts, Washington and his entourage reboarded their packet late on Thursday, August 19, 1790, and returned to New York City. The president’s visit and the adulation he received helped cement relations between Rhode Island and the Union. Washington’s benign presence also seemed to dispel most of the state’s lingering doubts concerning the new federal experiment.

Washington never returned to Rhode Island, despite a persistent claim that he came to Bristol in 1793, while president, to snooze a few days at U.S. Senator William Bradford’s house, now Mount Hope Farm. Bradford won election to the office of United States senator in 1792, replacing Anti-Federal leader Joseph Stanton Jr. of Charlestown. From July 6, 1797, until he resigned from the Senate in October 1797, Bradford held the prestigious post of the Senate’s president pro tem.

During his congressional tenure, Bradford often met with President Washington in Philadelphia as one of twenty Federalist senators. It was one of those meetings that gave rise to the distorted reminiscence by Bradford’s daughter of their weeklong encounter with Washington at Mount Hope Farm. Washington, in fact, never stayed there, a local legend to the contrary. But whether awake or asleep, Washington remained “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” 

In a letter to his commander dated August 8, 1783, Nathanael Greene summed up Rhode Island’s feelings for Father Washington: “You were admired [here] before; you are little less than adored now. In 1790, those feelings were unchanged. Rhode Islanders with an appreciation for American history still love you, Mr. President! On that, you can rest assured.”

Patrick T. Conley is the Historian Laureate of Rhode Island.