Preserve America Community:
Glocester, Rhode Island
Glocester (population 9,948), which was first settled in the 1630s and incorporated a century later, developed at a river crossing on the Chepachet River where several of America's earliest turnpikes converged.
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Armstrong and Brown store and Hopkins Country Store, Glocester,
Rhode Island (Photo courtesy of Blackstone River Valley)
A self-guided walking tour of the largest of the town's villages, Chepachet, provides insight into Glocester's history as an important 18th-century rural trading center and 19th-century manufacturing community. Chepachet is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district.
The one-room Evans Schoolhouse (1867) was relocated to Chepachet in 2000. A good example of a rural schoolhouse of the Blackstone Valley during its industrial heyday, the building is now situated on town property near the Town Hall.
With support from the town, the Glocester Heritage Society is working to rehabilitate the building, open it to the public, and use it for educational programs for local school children. The Glocester Heritage Society is also raising funds to rehabilitate the Reuben Mason House (1750) as a museum of the Dorr Rebellion, an episode of civil unrest in 1842 led by proponents of expanded voting rights.
For more information
Town of Glocester
www.glocesterri.org
Updated November 23, 2004