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This is one of many tales written by J. Earl Clauson for the Evening Bulletin newspaper of Providence, Rhode Island, under the heading “These Plantations” and later collected into a book of the same name that was printed in 1937 by The Roger Williams Press (E. A. Johnson Company). The text is illustrated with drawings by Milton Halladay and Paule Loring.

 

 

"Grampa" Reynolds's Busy Night

 

Anybody with plenty of time and taste for such things probably could collect a basketful of interesting stories along the turn­pikes running out of Providence to Hartford, Danielson and other places. He'd better get about it promptly, however, because the old­timers who know them are passing.

 

The most interesting one to fall on these receptive ears has to do with grandfather's busy night at the Tug Hollow gate on the New London Pike. It was told us by John C. Lewis, who lived on the Warwick waterfront and we believe was then the only person still extant who collected toll on that now neglected highway. He was just a boy. Grandfather was Stephen Reynolds, Mr. Lewis's ancestor.

 

The New London Turnpike struck out of Providence southwest of Gorham's and followed for part of its route the present Reservoir avenue. It ran down through the Pawtuxet Valley and east of Tiogue Lake - still does, for that matter, although not many motorists fol­low it, preferring to stick to the concreted Nooseneck Hill Road.

 

It scaled Pine Hill, the capital of Exeter, making a straighter run of it than the hard road, hit into the Nooseneck Hill highway north of Wyoming, held that route to Hopkinton village, and then diverged to the southwest for a pretty direct drive across North Stonington to New London.

 

The distance from Providence to New London by the turnpike is 49 miles, materially less than the routes automobiles pursue today.

 

Going out of Providence the first tollgate was at the Gorton Arnold stand in Warwick. The second was at Westcott's, below Natick, where, said Mr. Lewis, the only original tollhouse still stands.

 

Arnold's was a whole gate, Westcott's a half gate. Whole gates were 6½ miles apart, half gates 3¼ miles.

 

The privilege of keeping gate was let out by the turnpike com­pany. Stephen Reynolds paid $35 a year for his gate at Tug Hollow. He was obligated to keep the pike in repair half way in both directions to the next gate.

 

     Toll charges at whole gates were 12½ cents for a chaise, six cents for a man on horseback, six cents for a horse and wagon.

 

A pair of horses paid ten cents. Cattle, sheep and hogs were taxed one cent per head. A "chariot," as private coaches were called, paid 30 cents, and the stage coach 20 cents. But the stage coach never was held up for payment, bills being discharged monthly or annually. When a stage coach was underway, horses at a gallop, as was their customary gait, with passengers and mails aboard, it was very questionable form to halt it between stages to settle a petty toll charge.

 

Foot passengers passed through free. There were plenty of alter­cations about charges, and often Mr. Reynolds would explain to objectors that if they didn't want to pay they could go back a quarter of a mile and find a road which would carry them around the gate and back into the turnpike again. He was easy going that way.

 

     At night the gates were left open and everybody went through free. Mr. Reynolds couldn't be bothered.

 

There was a half gate at Crompton, and the next below was Jim Webster's, a whole gate. Tug Hollow gate lay south of these, near Wyoming.

 

Mr. Reynolds - South County oldsters incline to pronounce the name Runnels - was a cooper. His son-in-law, Warren Lewis, han­dled the tollgate at the time John C. Lewis came into the picture. But grandfather's busy night happened while he himself was running the tollhouse as a sideline to his cooperage business. This was in 1832, long before John C. Lewis had been thought of.

 

In the autumn of that year a man came along and bought a load of barrels. Standing by watching the transaction was what was then known as a traveler and today is called a tramp. The Providence and Stonington Railroad was being put through, with construction camps here and there of laborers, largely raw Irish, doing the pick and shovel work.

 

The traveler, who said his name was Burke, watched interestedly when grandfather brought out a shotbag containing what looked like a lot of money. Actually it was about $60 in one dollar bills. The barrel deal was closed and the purchaser said he would be back two weeks later for another load.

 

He disappeared down the road, and presently so also did Burke. Two weeks later, on Nov. 16, 1832, at nightfall Burke turned up again. He was barefooted. He rapped at the Reynolds door and asked whether he might stay the night.

 

The hospitable and humane country people couldn't find it in their heart to turn him away into the chilly night, so they let him in, fed him and appointed him a bed in the loft. A couple of coopers' apprentices, Burgess Terry and Sam Wager, had their beds there also.

 

That night the boys went out to a party. Burke turned in. The apprentices came back late and tired, and Wager went to bed still wearing his cravat, a stiffly starched neckcloth. His slovenliness probably saved his life, although there's no moral in that.

 

Burke had taken into the loft with him a bundle which it was later found contained white pine twigs. After the apprentices were sound asleep, he broke a few of these to determine whether or not anyone was disturbed by the crackling noise.

 

Nobody stirred. Burke then got off his bed, crept to where Terry and Wager lay, and began striking at them with an axe he had brought in from the woodpile. Terry was quickly disposed of with a cracked skull, but Wager, sleeping with his arm over his head, was only hurt by the first blow and yelled. Burke struck him again, this time rendering him unconscious.

 

Wager's yell had aroused grandfather, who stood at the bottom of the stairs asking what the trouble was. Burke rushed down with his knife in his hand - a big, cheap clasp knife - and stabbed him deeply in the side. He fell, Burke on top.

 

Grandmother Reynolds, completely aroused by now, rushed to the front door to go for help. There were four stone steps. Before she could get down, Burke had caught her and stabbed her twice in the breast. Concluding she was finished, he ran back into the loft, past grandfather, who lay bleeding all over the floor, and stabbed Wager in the neck. That was where the cravat saved the apprentice's life.

 

It happened that that day a man had fallen off the roof of the Tug Hollow mill and broken his leg and people were up in the house a quarter of a mile away. Grandmother, hurt and plenty frightened but plucky, managed to make her way there and spread the alarm.

 

By the time help reached the Reynolds house Burke had run out, picked up his shoes beside the woodpile, where he had left them the night before, and fled. Twenty men and women were soon after him with guns, pitchforks and clothes tub mauls.

 

They could follow his trail across the meadows, white with rime, until it disappeared into Miry Gutter, a nearby swamp. There it was lost, and Burke was never taken.

 

The Reynoldses believed he took refuge among his fellow Irish in one of the railroad construction camps. But several years later a man before being hanged in Massachusetts confessed to killing an entire family in Exeter, R.I., and it may have been Burke.

 

     Grandfather lived nine years after that exciting night. Mr. Lewis still had the nightshirt he wore, its old bloodstains never washed "away, and the knife with which he was stabbed. Wager, recovering, ran away to sea. Terry, a silver plate in his skull, moved to Plymouth, Mass.

Original story by J. Earl Clauson, originally published in the Providence Evening Bulletin under the heading "These Plantations". Later collected into a book of the same name that was printed in 1937 by The Roger Williams Press (E. A. Johnson Company).