Midwest Guest

Photo Friday: Castle Hill Light, camera club winner

Great Lakes lighthouses are among favorite subjects for my stories and images, but we occasionally have the chance to see some pretty lighthouses from somewhere beyond the Great Lakes.

Such was the case as we traveled to Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island a number of years ago, and I captured this image of the picturesque Castle Hill light station in Newport, Rhode Island.

 

 

I remember it being quite overcast and threatening to rain as we wandered around the lighthouse, looking for some nice vantage points. We ended up having to shove our cameras under our shirts and hustling back to our car as the threat of rain became a reality, but not before I got some nice images of the light sitting on the rocky shore.

I liked more dramatic look of the sky when I looked at this photo in a black-and-white version, and it took third place in Monochrome General, Beginner Division competition for May 2015 at the Motor City Camera Club.

Want to learn more about lighthouses in Rhode Island? Check out Lighthouses & Lightships of Rhode Island: Past and Present by Arthur P. Richmond or The Lighthouses of Rhode Island by Jeremy D'Entremont.

Check out the Motor City Camera Club's Web site, or connect with the Motor City Camera Club on Facebook.

Touro and Trinity in Newport

Rhode Island’s history as an early refuge for those seeking religious freedom resulted in some of the state’s towns developing a bit differently from the tradition New England model of a community centered by one church that served the religious needs of most, if not all, of the area’s residents.

Newport is a good example of a city where many different congregations established churches that enveloped the city’s core in a comforting web of faith represented by numerous houses of worship scattered throughout the downtown area.

We visited the homes of two of Newport’s oldest and most notable congregations while staying in the city earlier this year.

Newport seemed to us an unlikely home for the oldest synagogue in the United States, but it really does stand to reason that Rhode Island’s reputation as a haven of religious tolerance would attract a congregation that established Touro Synagogue.

Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763, owes its respectful melding of majestic Georgian architecture and the traditions of Sephardic Jews to the design of well-known Newport architect Peter Harrison and the guidance of Isaac Touro, the congregation’s spiritual leader at the time.

Paying the small fee to take the synagogue tour was definitely worthwhile, although we were surprised to find we seemed to be the only non-Jewish folks in our tour group. Tour guides take small groups of 10 or 12 people into the synagogue for a tour, a short talk about the site’s history and to answer questions.

When our tour guide pointed out an elaborate chandelier as a feature that created a good bit of controversy for the 1760s era congregation, we were the only ones in our group who couldn’t correctly guess why. Our tour guide explained that the fixture in question featured images of human heads, viewed as a form of idolatry by strict members of the faith. The chandelier, a gift from the people of Newport, was a meant as a welcoming gesture. Touro’s congregation eventually accepted the kind gesture represented by the gift, and it remains a prominent feature in the synagogue today.

The chandelier was one of a group of metal artifacts undergoing a restoration in 2005-2006. Check out a detailed report of that project with some great before and after photos here.

Our guide also said that architect Harrison, unfamiliar with Jewish faith and traditions, expressed initial reluctance about designing Touro Synagogue. He eventually agreed to accept the commission to design the building, now a National Historic Site and one of the elite group of sites named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The historic 1726 Trinity Episcopal Church, a National Historic Landmark modeled after Boston’s famous Old North Church, is a short walk from Touro Synagogue.

Trinity regularly welcomes visitors to tour the church. Box pews, beautiful stained glass windows (many of them picturing famous parishioners and benefactors from Trinity’s history), a massive pipe organ in the church balcony, and the sole center-aisle, triple-deck, freestanding pulpit left in America today, make it an unusual and interesting sanctuary.

A small graveyard surrounding the church featuring some headstones dating back to the early years of the church’s history also make for some interesting browsing. It is fun to imagine the lives of the people behind the names and the sometimes funky graphic images carved into the stones.

The day we visited, we listened in on a lecture given to a small class of local college students visiting the church with their professor.

Visiting both Trinity Episcopal Church and Touro Synagogue offered an intriguing look at just two of the historic congregations that contributed to Newport, Rhode Island’s vibrant and diverse religious community.

© Dominique King 2008

Passports with Purpose

We’re big fans of Food Network television shows at our house, including Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”. Finding little out of-the-way family diners and other independent eateries are often the best parts of our road trips. So when we saw Guy’s show that featured a joint called Evelyn’s Drive-In on the waterfront in Tiverton, Rhode Island just before we left for a vacation in that state, we knew it was a must-stop destination for us.

Guy’s enthusiasm for the place was spot-on, I thought as I sat on Evelyn’s waterside patio, enjoying Rhode Island clam chowder, a whole-bellied clam roll and a cold beer on a sunny summer day.

Want to whip up a pot of Evelyn’s Rhode Island clam chowder? Or plot a roadmap to some of the best and quirkiest roadside food to check out on your next U.S. road trip? Well, Guy’s book (featuring lots of cool eateries and recipes) is just one in a package of food and travel books donated by Midwest Guest to the travelblogger Passports with Purpose fundraiser benefiting Heifer International.

Check out the Passports with Purpose prize page for information about prizes, including an opportunity to whet your appetite for travel with my book package (prize number B01):

Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali w/Gwyneth Paltrow
1,000 Places to See Before You Die-by Patricia Schultz
Immersion Travel USA-by Sheryl Kayne
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives-by Guy Fieri
Frommer's 500 Places to See Before They Disappear-by Holly Hughes

(Books shipped to a winner in the United States or Canada)

My book bundle is just one of the prizes offered in the Passports with Purpose effort. So, before you make your donation, be sure to check out all of the great prizes you could win.

Select the prizes you’d love to win, and go to the Passports with Purpose First Giving link to make your donation. For each ten dollar donation you make, Passports with Purpose enters you into the raffle for your prize of choice. Make sure you enter your email address and the number of the prize you want to win in the comments field, so the Passports with Purpose crew can notify you if you win! Passports with Purpose promises not to use your email for any other purpose than to notify you if you win a prize.

Passports with Purpose founders will pull winners and notify them via email on December 30, 2008.

Help us help others, and maybe find some great travelblogs you’ll continue to enjoy year round in the process!

© Dominique King 2008

Mischievous spirit at Pilgrim House Inn

“Your room is haunted!”

The occupant of Room 11 looked blearily startled at his breakfast companion’s greeting.

Room 11 was one of a block of rooms reserved at the Pilgrim House Inn for a group of friends visiting Newport, Rhode Island for a special event. Room 11’s occupant may have briefly wondered if partying with the group the previous evening led to an unpleasant morning after, complete with reports of seeing and hearing non-existent things.

Or maybe he dimly remembered an encounter with the spirit of Jessica, the little ghost girl who is the Pilgrim House Inn’s most storied guest.

Jessica’s mischievous spirit supposedly haunts this charming bed and breakfast inn located in Newport’s Historic Hill district, drawing visitors and ghost hunters anxious to catch a glimpse of her.

The three-story home, built in the late 1700s as a single-family residence, sits tightly tucked into a row of buildings of similar vintage.  The home later saw use as apartments for Navy families living in the historic harbor town and as overnight accommodations for dockhands, merchant marines and visiting fishermen.

The inn’s current keepers, Barry and Debbie Fonseca, took over ownership of the bed and breakfast in 2000 and became keepers of the house’s ghostly legacy.

I asked Barry about Jessica, and he said he’s yet to encounter her spirit. However, he said a group of “professional ghost hunters” visited the inn during January 2008 and reportedly detected some sort of image on the inn’s stairway.

Author John T. Brennan shares several stories of Jessica sightings in his 2007 book, Ghosts of Newport: Spirits, Scoundrels, Legends and Lore.

Brennan said Jessica seems to relish playing practical jokes like buzzing intercoms in empty rooms, playing a music box in the middle of the night or slamming a clothes dryer door and turning the dryer on. One group taking a Ghost Walk tour of the town reported seeing a little girl in an old-fashioned dress standing at the foot of the inn’s stairs, when there were no children reportedly staying at the inn that evening.

Most activity seems to center on the third-floor Room 11 and the second-floor Room 8. Read some of the guest books in various Pilgrim House Inn rooms to see guests’ reports of experiencing Jessica’s presence.

We didn’t encounter Jessica during our five-night stay at the inn, but we did encounter many of the Pilgrim House’s most numerous guests: the innkeeper’s rabbit collection.

Barry told me that his father-in-law, in an effort to draw attention to his house painting business during a slow time, drew bunny outlines on buildings as he painted them. The house painter’s daughter, innkeeper Debbie Fonseca, began collecting rabbits. The rabbit collection quickly multiplied (no surprise when it comes to bunnies, I guess) until bunnies now occupy nearly every corner of the inn.

A bunny guarded the door to our room, bunnies sat in the quiet reading nooks on the inn’s second and third floors, another sat on our bed and bunnies proliferated throughout the house.

Does Jessica play with the bunnies?

They weren’t telling, and it was difficult to imagine seeing a ghost as we enjoyed our breakfast that sunny September morning on the inn’s third-floor deck, with its beautiful view of Newport Harbor.

Meanwhile, Mister Room 11 didn’t seem to have any tales to tell, which disappointed his friends. But other Pilgrim House Inn guests and visitors believe that the spirit of little Jessica is very real and wonder if that little shadow they glimpsed on the stairway could be the inn’s most notorious, and perhaps most well-loved, guest.

© Dominique King 2008

At Home with History

Getting a sense of how and where people lived is one of the more interesting ways to make history come alive, so we visited several historical homes during our recent trip to Connecticut.

We expected to learn about some of men and women so important in colonial America, but the real surprise was learning more about a person familiar to us because of his ties to Michigan.

Mention William Beaumont to Detroit-area residents and they may tell you about their most recent hospital visit. Local history buffs also know about Beaumont’s time as an Army surgeon in northern Michigan during the 1820s.

I live within several miles of one of William Beaumont Hospital’s campuses. I also know about Beaumont’s pioneering work and experiments in northern Michigan, where his observation of a patient with an open wound created by a musket shot built the basis for much of what we understand about human digestion. It still surprised me to learn Beaumont was born in Connecticut.

The simple white house in quiet Lebanon, Connecticut gave no hint of Beaumont’s interesting life or his time spent in several Midwestern locations before ending his career as a civilian doctor in St. Louis, Missouri.

Nathan Hale’s career and life was considerably shorter than Beaumont’s, but he surely experienced a full lifetime of adventure and drama before his 1776 execution as a spy at age 21.

Young Nathan grew up in Coventry, Connecticut before going to Yale College and becoming a teacher. His teaching career ended as he became a military officer during what became America’s Revolutionary War.

He volunteered to spy behind British lines. Captured in New York, he confessed his role as a spy and the British Army hanged him.

We learned about Hale’s life at the Nathan Hale Homestead. Hale grew up on the homestead property, although his family completed the large red house currently standing there after his death.

Hale’s pre-execution declaration that “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” earned him enduring fame as a patriot and eventual naming as Connecticut’s official State Hero.

Connecticut also recognizes the courage of Prudence Crandall as the official State Heroine.

The Rhode Island-born Quaker moved with her family to Canterbury, Connecticut. She attended a Friends’ school in Rhode Island and taught elsewhere in Connecticut before returning to Canterbury and opening a school for young women in 1832.

Women found little in the way of academic opportunities at the time, especially when it came to more advanced studies. Educational opportunities for young African-American women were even scarcer.

Young Sarah Harris, an aspiring teacher and daughter of a free African-American farmer, sought admission to Crandall’s school. Crandall admitted Harris as a student in 1833. Connecticut responded by passing a law restricting and nearly outlawing the teaching of African-Americans. Protests, harassment and violence led to closing the school and to Crandall moving out of the state.

Years later, Crandall received an official apology from Connecticut and a small yearly pension.

Today, the pale yellow Canterbury house stands as testament to Crandall’s courage and houses a chronicle of some of the early efforts in progressive educational reform.

© Dominique King 2008

Welcome to Historic Jacob Hill Inn

Bill Rezek’s enthusiasm and pride in Historic Jacob Hill Inn at Seekonk, Massachusetts is apparent the moment we arrive and check in for a four-day stay.

I can no longer find any current information on this bed and breakfast inn online

Our tour of the inn begins with the common areas and our own accommodations, the luxurious Providence Suite. We’re immediately impressed with the quality of the property and amenities. We’re even more impressed when we find that Bill and his wife Eleonora did most of the renovating and decorating themselves over an 18-year time span.

The Allyn family built the Historic Jacob Hill Inn’s original building during the 1720s. Subsequent additions and owners, including the property’s time as an affluent Hunt Club, resulted in a sprawling property with several buildings that Bill and Eleonora purchased in 1991 to transform into an inn.

Our bathroom is a luxury retreat that includes a large Jacuzzi tub, a small electric fireplace stove and sparkling white finishes. We quickly find out that Bill did plumbing and contracting in a previous career.

 It’s a weekday just after Labor Day, so we’re the only guests at the inn for the moment. Bill is willing to show us the rest of the rooms in the inn, and we quickly take him up on the offer to tour the entire property. Seeing the custom touches that make each room and suite so unique leaves no doubt as to why the inn is on the prestigious Select Registry and carries a four-diamond AAA rating.

On-site amenities include an outdoor swimming pool, tennis court, spacious grounds and a large recreation room featuring ping pong and pool tables, as well as a large plasma screen television. But, a large rack of brochures about local attractions, coupled with Eleonora and Bill’s expertise in helping countless visitors plan fun and interesting stops around the area, leaves us with the dilemma of what to do first?

We contemplate our options over the cheese plate and beverages Bill offers us (something available to inn guests each evening).

Historic Jacob Hill Inn sits on a quiet road just minutes outside of downtown Providence, Rhode Island, offering the best of both worlds--a quiet country retreat near a bustling big city.

Each day at the inn starts with a hearty breakfast featuring selections like fresh fruit and pancakes stuffed with fruit jam and cream cheese. Eleonora and Bill then help us plan our days, offering us printed driving directions for many of our destinations, making dinner reservations, suggesting places to dine while we are out during the day and helping us decide where to go.

We visit the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, wander around campus at Brown University, photograph homes and churches along Providence’s historic Benefit Street, drive down to Cape Cod and enjoy a massive lobster roll for lunch at The Dan’l Webster Inn, enjoy a great Italian meal at Zooma in Providence’s historic Federal Hill area and spend a day at the Mayflower II and Plimoth Plantation.

Hot, humid days during our stay make me especially appreciative of the inn’s swimming pool, a rarity I’ve seen at very few B&Bs and country inns. Even as Tropical Storm Hanna tripped through the area one night, Bill was out early the next morning clearing the spotlessly maintained pool of any storm debris so I could enjoy my swim later that afternoon.

While the impressive property gives the inn an air of genteel, yet comfortable formality, the hosts’ warm hospitality adds to the inn’s homey and relaxed vibe.

My visit ends all too quickly with a hug from Eleonora and Bill’s urging to “keep in touch!”

© Dominique King 2008 (updated 2020)