Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Finding Humphrey White's House in Glocester, R.I.

I found several articles about Humphrey White online - see a short biography in the Ruth Sherman article (Ruth Wilder Sherman, "Some Descendants of Jonathan White of Dartmouth MA and of Humphrey White of Glocester RI," The American Genealogist, Volume 56, Pages 113-118) and an article in the Rhode Island vanity book (Representative Men and Old Families of Rhode Island, Volume III (Chicago, Ill. : J.H. Beers Co., 1908).

I thought that I could probably find out where his house in Glocester, Providence, Rhode Island was located.  The latter article on page 2229 is shown below:


Unfortunately, the page image is poor and cutoff on the left margin.  This article, however, says that Humphrey White bought a large farm in 1796 from John Pray;  his son, Benjamin White, lived on the farm until his death in 1863;  Benjamin's son, George Nelson White,bought the old homestead in 1869 and moved there.  

When I searched for Humphrey White profiles in family trees yesterday, I saw this photograph on the Geni.com profile:
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The photo above looks like the photographer took the photograph from the road running past the house.  The title on the photo, added by James Walter Place, says that the address is 751 Reynolds Road (Route 94) in Glocester.

Earlier, I had found the 1870 cadastral map of Glocester, Rhode Island on Historic MapWorks:


I zoomed into the area in "Shady Oak District No. 8" and saw that G.N. White was the occupant of the residence along the highway just below the work "Oak."


Is that the Humphrey White, Benjamin White and George Nelson White residence?  

Can I find it on Google Maps?  Here is the Google Map for this area, with the stick pin for 751 Reynolds Road:


There is a road just to the north of the stick pin and the pond to the east is called "White's Pond."

I switched to Satellite view and zoomed in even more:


I switched to Street View, and was able to get these views of this building:



Is that the Humphrey White house?  The views aren't exactly the same as the photograph on Geni.com, but I think that it is the same house.

My next challenge was "Who lives there now?"  I went to the Glocester Town Real estate Data site (http://www.crcpropertyinfo.com/crcdb/glocester.htm) and clicked on "Start Search" and added "Reynolds" to the "Look For" field and "Location" in the "In Field" and clicked on "Search:"  

The list of property on Reynolds Road appeared, and I found an entry for 743-751 Reynolds Rd, which opened on the "Site Data" tab:



The owner of the property is West Glocester LLC.  On the link for "Buildings" I saw:



This page says that the Barn and the Welcome Center had been built in 1780.  There are other buildings.  The "Photo and Sketch" page has a photo of the Welcome Center:


I'm pretty sure that this is the Humphrey White house that has been converted into a Welcome Center for this West Glocester LLC business.  I wonder if they are aware of the historic nature of the house?  I wonder when this house was converted from a home to a business center.

Well, that was fun!  Hunting down things like this, using a variety of sources, shows me that it's a great time to be a genealogist!  Now I need to schedule a visit to 751 Reynolds Road in Glocester.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/05/finding-humphrey-whites-house-in.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


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