Visiting an old Johnston farm and walking some old Johnston roads

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On Saturday, Jan. 12, 2008, Dan Brown and I did little exploring at one old Johnston farm and on some old Johnston roads.

We started off at Highland Memorial Cemetery off George Waterman Road, where we visited the three historic cemeteries that were moved to Highland within the last few years. The cemeteries are surrounded by modern stone walls, which are well built and quite attractive.

Two of the cemeteries look fine inside the walls too, but the most recently moved historic cemetery (the Blanchard Lot from Plainfield Pike) is not looking too good inside. None of the old gravestones have been erected yet, and the ground is very uneven. We have been promised by the manager of the cemetery that the situation will be remedied this spring.

Next, we visited the old house at the west side of Highland Cemetery. The staff was nice enough to let us look at the interior of the homestead, which is identified as the E. Sweet House on the 1870 Beers map of Johnston. It is a post and beam structure with a more recent addition, that is not post and beam, on the west side. It was erected as a center chimney building, but at some point changes were made (probably when the addition was put in), and what remains are two smaller chimney systems.

The opening for the bake oven is present, but the oven itself was taken out when the chimney system was reworked. The house is now vacant and has been totally gutted on the inside. There are two fireplace surrounds still in place, and the four-panel doors have been saved. The future use of the property is unknown.

The house was last lived in by James E. Mitchell, who was a blacksmith by trade. He and his brother Frank Mitchell Jr., who also was a blacksmith, shoed horses all over the area. Their father, James Mitchell Sr., owned and raced harness horses at local tracks.

The property surrounding the house is very scenic. There is a stream with two very old bridges crossing it, a pond, and some nice cleared land in addition to a few outbuildings associated with the homestead. We walked to the old stone dam at the end of the pond, where, we were told, there used to be an icehouse.

On our way back, we saw an old farm road leading west from the house, so we decided to walk that path. We knew that old maps show a road running from Pine Hill Avenue to the E. Sweet House, and we figured that this must be the road. Dan and I had talked before about traveling this path.

The temperature was around 50 degrees, and the walk was very pleasant. The road was abandoned long ago, but little vegetation has grown up on its surface. After a few minutes we reached a site where a new housing development is being built.

The construction work obliterated the last few hundred yards of the old road. After we reached Pine Hill Avenue, we walked north until we met another dirt road running east. Danny knew this road from his childhood.

He used to ride on the local milk truck with Alex Harrington who drove for the S.B. Winsor Dairy of Manton. This dirt road was the last stop on the route. Alex would drive down the road to deliver milk to a house that no longer stands. Danny was pretty sure that the chimney from the house was still in place, and sure enough, when we had walked a couple of hundred yards in, there it was.

All other traces of the house are long gone, but the late 19th or early 20th century chimney is in good shape. It stands about 12 or 14 feet high and is made up of small, rounded boulders that project out from the surface. A fireplace opening is seen on the east side of the chimney. The new housing development has reached within a few feet of the chimney, so we fear that it may not last long.

We picked up the dirt road on the other side of the development and followed it back to the cemetery, ending up a couple of hundred yards north of the first road that we walked. On the way back we passed several small pits where granite was quarried many years ago. A number of cut pieces were left in place with the drill markings quite evident.

This area that we were traveling about is located on Pine Hill, where much granite was quarried in the last two centuries. The granite gave its name, of course, to the village of Graniteville. The most famous stone taken from the quarries on this hill ended up at the Arcade in Providence. The columns at the Arcade were cut here and hauled by oxen team to Downtown Providence.

The roads we walked were apparently part of an informal complex of farm road/paths that were laid out before autos came into widespread use. The roads are more than wide enough for a horse and wagon to travel on. Some of these roads were used well into the 20th century.

We thoroughly enjoyed our exercise and our exploration of a bit of old Johnston. It is fun to walk the paths that our ancestors did.

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