Triangle Trade

Eddy-Cutler House // c.1806

Buildings of New England6 Comments

Located next door to the Rebecca Maxwell Phillips House on State Street in Warren, Rhode Island the Eddy-Cutler House stands as possibly the finest brick Federal style building in the waterfront town. In July 1806, Benjamin Eddy purchased this house lot and began construction on his new mansion. Born in Warren in August 1772, he married Abigail Kelly in 1794 and began a career as a sea captain. Like many of the town’s wealthiest residents, Benjamin Eddy was engaged in the slave trade. Captain Benjamin Eddy was captain of at least three slave voyages, delivering 139 captives to the Charleston docks in June 1806 alone. In 1808, just before the “Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves” he purchased and imprisoned 176 Africans – the largest number ever carried on a Warren slave ship. Nineteen died during the return voyage. When he reached Charleston, South Carolina the remaining 157 people were sold into slavery. At the time, the sale would have returned nearly $33,000. He would return home to this mansion on money profited from human suffering, a story as American as apple pie. In 1871, the Eddy Homestead was transferred to Charles R. Cutler, a ship master and whaler who had many successful voyages to the Indian Ocean.

Rebecca Maxwell Phillips House // 1804

Buildings of New England2 Comments

Another of the “wedding gift houses” in Warren, Rhode Island is this Federal style mansion on State Street! The house was funded by James Maxwell, a wealthy local merchant who profited by the transport and sale of enslaved Africans. A large part of Maxwell’s wealth was attributable to the sale of enslaved captives, such as those aboard Maxwell’s schooner Abigail, which left Warren in September 1789. The captain of the vessel, Charles Collins, purchased 64 slaves on the coast of Africa, and sold them in the Americas by June of 1790. Of the 64 captives embarked on the ship, only 53 survived the voyage. This home was built as a wedding gift to his daughter Rebecca and her new husband, William Phillips. The three-story mansion exhibits a pedimented fanlight transom, corner quoins, and a shallow hipped roof. The property has always included two lots, the other lot has long had a Japanese Beech tree, brought from Japan by Commodore Joel Abbot in 1853.

Captain Caleb Godfrey House // c.1740

Buildings of New England1 Comment

In Newport, Rhode Island, you can find that even the more regular-looking historic buildings often hold an interesting (and sometimes troubling) past. Little information was available on this Georgian-era house, but I did some digging and turned up a lot. Rhode Island and Newport specifically had been a hub of trade going back to its founding by white settlers. Even though it was the smallest of the colonies, the great majority of slave ships leaving British North America came from Rhode Island ports. Historian Christy Clark-Pujara, in her book Dark Work, The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island, indicates that during “the colonial period in total, Rhode Island sent 514 slave ships to the coast of West Africa, while the rest of the colonies sent just 189.” Captain Caleb Godfrey, who owned this home on Franklin Street in Newport, was a sea captain and hired by wealthy merchants to pick up slaves in West Africa and bring them back to the British colonies. In 1754, Samuel and William Vernon of Newport hired Caleb to take their ship, “Hare“, taking captives from Sierra Leone and embarking them from South Carolina. Godfrey left Sierra Leone with 84 slaves aboard, but 16 died on the 10-week voyage or soon after the ship arrived in Charleston, their bodies were dumped at night into the sea. In South Carolina, a prominent slave dealer named Henry Laurens handled the sale of African captives from the Hare, placing an advertisement to attract the attention of local rice planters. Godfrey’s Newport home is a visual reminder on New England’s direct ties to the enslavement of African people and how the colonies benefited financially from this terrible trade.