Little Compton and the Battle of Rhode Island
by Steven Lubar
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Some 10,000 American soldiers participated in the attempt to drive the British from Aquidneck Island in August 1778, the Battle of Rhode Island. Almost as many were engaged in the attempt a year earlier, the “secret expedition.” Those soldiers were drawn from throughout New England. They camped, mostly, in Tiverton, across the river from Portsmouth. After several weeks of waiting and a few days of action, most of them returned home, or went on to other engagements.
Among those troops were a few who had not traveled very far, troops from Tiverton and, just south of Tiverton, Little Compton. Those troops had a different, more extended, and more personal stake in the British occupation of Aquidneck Island. Their homes had been under attack even before the British landing on the island. Captain Wallace, sent to enforce the Coercive Acts in 1774, terrorized the towns. Ruth Clapp, widow of Barnabas Clapp, a Little Compton soldier, remembered: “He plundered the farms of the stock, set fire to the dwelling houses and other buildings, and whenever he could, carried the men away, prisoners of war.”
The estimated 6,000 to 7,000 British and German troops that arrived on Aquidneck Island in 1776, accompanied by a large civilian contingent, made their situation even more worrisome. British soldiers raided the shores on either side of Aquidneck Island for firewood and food, occasionally burning houses and taking prisoners. Refugees from Newport required housing and food, and Little Compton took some of them in.
Life in town was difficult. The town was under siege. Farmers couldn’t plant or harvest. Crops couldn’t reach their markets. Commercial and family connections to Newport were cut. “Our whole town,” remembered Mary Tompkins, “being, in one sense, a Military camp, but little attention could be paid to raising anything from the earth, to the usual domestic manufactures, with which we were usually supplied with clothing.” Hunger and illnesses were always threatening. Francis Wilbur, just twenty-one when the war broke out, remembered: “It was my business to go a soldiering. There was scarcely any other business done in this town at that time.”
These memories of the war come from the pension applications that veterans and their widows filed, mostly in the 1830s. Some eighty Little Comptoners filed for a pension from the federal government. In their applications, they were required to describe their role in the war. Some, especially the widows, did much more, writing pages on their activities, hopes, and fears.
Ruth Clapp wrote that the arrival of the British:
“made our situation most distressing, we were compelled to live almost under the Guns of our Enemy for nearly three years. And such was the course of events at that time, that many things happened which tended to exasperate the enemy and their tenderest mercies towards us were cruel.”
Many women described their constant fear of attack.
Deborah Brownell wrote:
“Our sufferings were many and great. I have, at that time, frequently had to put my childrens clothes, into a small bag, and hide them in the elders and weeds, near the house, to keep them from the Enemy. They annoyed us in every way they could and we never were safe from their approach.”
Rhode Island allowed soldiers in the shore communities to stay home to protect their towns, and so many Little Compton men were on guard along the shores. They served one month on, one month off, at five guardhouses along the shore, and were on call for emergencies.
One of those emergencies was Sullivan’s Expedition, as the soldiers called the Battle of Rhode Island (“Sullivan’s Expedition” is most commonly used today for Sullivan’s 1779 offensive against the Iroquois in upstate New York). General John Sullivan gathered some 10,000 soldiers in an attempt to drive the British from Aquidneck. Many veterans reported details of the battle in their pension applications.
Joseph Wilbour wrote:
“Our Company and Regiment went on to Rhode Island with the whole American army that was collected for said Expedition, and the army was stationed at several different places in the Island and we had one engagement with the Enemy in which we had hard fighting one of the Regiments being mostly killed or wounded, and a considerable number from other Regiments, there being a large number killed and wounded on both sides, the American army being compelled to retreat off of the Island to Tiverton crossing the River at Howlands Ferry.”
Local soldiers had local knowledge useful to the attack. William Woodman was drafted into the militia for a month for the expedition. He wrote that he “immediately proceeded to Rhode Island, and was present and engaged in managing the boats in conducting the retreat.”
Edward Woodman remembered that he was “mounted and wore side arms and pistol” when he was “on the Island.” One detail stood out:
“The day after the Battle, and the last day we staid upon the Island, I was in house of one Mrs. Alice Lawton, situate to the Northeast of Quaker Hill, when Major Sherburne, from New Hampshire or Massachusetts, who was at breakfast, lost his leg by a cannon ball, from the enemy. In this expedition I remember Genl Lafayette, and Genl Sullivan, and Genl Glover, and Genl Greene.”
After the attack failed, most of the soldiers went on to other battles. Many of the Little Compton soldiers went back to their guard duties, which continued until the British left Newport in October 1779.
Little Compton’s veterans remembered the Battle of Rhode Island in various ways. Andrew Taylor forgot that he had been part of Sullivan’s Expedition until he ran into an old comrade at a bank in Providence, who reminded him to add his month-long service to his pension application.
Captain John Davis’s first application for a pension was rejected. He wrote to the pension office with a patriotic appeal:
“If I fail in obtaining I shall have one comfort left (viz) Love to my country and the government under which I live. I pray God to continue them to the latest generations, knowing that I fought & bled to obtain them before many, who are now managing the affairs of Government were born.”
He ended his pension application by ranking the Battle of Rhode Island with other turning points in the history of the young country. Those who fought “at New Orleans, Bunker Hill & Sullivan’s Battle, would, if they could speak, say, help the soldier, who risqued his life to gain the freedom that we enjoy.”
Steven Lubar is George L. Littlefield Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Brown University. A historian of material culture, museums, technology, and public history, he previously spent two decades at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. At Brown, he directed the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage and the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. He is also president of the Little Compton Historical Society and the author and editor of numerous books on museums, material culture, and American history.
