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Wolf Rocks

This article was written by J. Earl Clauson and published on December 16, 1936, in the Evening Bulletin newspaper of Providence, Rhode Island, under the heading “These Plantations.” The piece is untitled but tells about a curious geological formation in the southeast corner of Exeter.

 

 

Year in and year out, Wolf Rocks probably play to as small a house as any major natural phenomenon in this jurisdiction. There are various possible guesses why, such as that people don’t care about rocks or are afraid of wolves, but the more likely one is that they don’t know how to get there or why they should want to.

 

There must be a good many, however, whose curiosity is titillated as they drive along South County Trail by a colored sign, “Wolf Rocks,” and at the entrance road a gate with a padlock which says “Keep out – this means you.” That’s the owner’s private entrance.

 

A little south of there Wolf Rocks Trail leads off to the eastward, hooking into Kingston North Road. It has been graded and graveled by the CCC boys and now its surface is good enough so you can drive along at fair speed with none of this foolishness about looking at the scenery.

 

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            Wolf Rocks lie half a mile north of the Trail. There’s a boulder-stricken, undriveable road leading in, a one time driftway. Deeply cut, it may once have been a public highway or right of way. But that was long, long since.

 

The Rocks themselves are a dump deposited by a glacier 10,000 years ago come Whitsuntide. They are scattered over ten acres, huge chunks piled thick like a wall along the edge of a gorge which in its day was the bed of the glacial stream which fed into the Yawgoo River, scooped out Hundred Acre and Thirty Acre Ponds and made its way to the sea via the Pawcatuck.

 

            Quite a wild, dreary spot really and very comforting when you are in the mood for that sort of thing. It’s amusing to sit there and imagine how those boulders churned around, rumbling and groaning, in the belly of the glacier until they broke through the floor and released the accumulated flood which carved out the gorge.

 

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            As to why they’re known now as Wolf Rocks the only local tradition we have gleaned is that the last wolf in the neighborhood was killed there. That seems likely, just as that the last wild turkey in Coventry was shot on Turkey Meadow or that Cat Swamp in Providence used to be a trysting place for Toms and Tabbies.

 

            There’s a better story than the one about the wolf connected with the rocks, though, and because we’ve heard it only lately and bet you never did, nobody but the editor can keep us from telling it. It’s one of the almost forgotten legends of the legendary South County.

 

            The period is mid-eighteenth century. The countryside around Wolf Rocks was more densely populated then than now, with dirt farmer scratching out a living from thin soil, mills on every power site turning out bull rakes, jonnycake meal and other necessities and everyone so busy people had no time to realize how miserable they actually were.

 

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            One day a band of gypsies turned aside from the now abandoned driftway and made camp on the level floor of the extinct glacial river. Except for lack of water where some aeons back there was so much it’s a pretty good camping place, secluded and protected from north winds by a stone rampart.

 

            There were about 30 in the party, ten or a dozen men, the rest women and children. They were Spanish gypsies and a rather superior lot. So, too, were the horses which formed their stock in trade, and the farmers thereabouts had no objection to dealing with them.

 

            The leader of the outfit was a tall, well-built young chap, with abundant black hair, flashing dark eyes and ingratiating manners. He gave his name as Sebastian Velasquez.

 

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            Some three miles from Wolf Rocks lived and agriculturist named George Jackson who had dealings with Velasquez and his gang. He also had a daughter, Kate, a saucy, well-developed jade who – yes, you’ve guessed it. She and Sebastian fell for one another hard.

 

            Swapping horses with gypsies is one thing. Letting your daughter marry one is something else. South County people then were even fussier about such things than they are now; we told a while back how a wandering Irishman named Heenan got a job with Blacksmith Card of Charlestown, married his daughter, was ostracized because the local Baptists didn’t like Catholics and moved to Watervliet, N.Y., where she became mother of John C. Heenan, champion heavyweight.

 

            Kate and Sebastian were put to the usual devices such as meeting at neighbors’ houses or down by the spring and Father Jackson set a close watch. It all turned out as you might have expected.

 

            Every night after putting the cat out and winding the mantel clock, Old Man Jackson would knock at Kate’s door to make sure she was there. So she and her gypsy lover made a plan. One night she ducked out, climbed down the roof of the lean-to (or “linter,” as we call it down our way) and hot-footed it for Wolf Rocks.

 

            She calculated the hour so that her father would find out what was going on and wouldn’t be far behind. Nor was he. Breathing sparks at every leap, he was only a few jumps behind, when she reached the top of the appointed rock, leaped into her lover’s arms, and aboard the best horse in the outfit they struck off down the old road.

 

            It was a long time before anyone heard of them again. Then stories began to filter back of a wonderful equestrian pair with Welch & Co’s. circus. The man, one Don Sebastian, was the principle bareback rider. His wife, who had taken the name Rosina Toscani, led the female horse contingent.

 

            Jackson was so chagrined at the thought that his Kate had married a gypsy that he sold his farm and moved to the Connecticut Valley. There in later years his daughter and son-in-law visited him and were made welcome, their happiness and prosperity having given the whole affair a different aspect.

 

            That’s the story as it was told later by Harvey Jackson, who had been a slave in the family, and as we hear it and pass it on. We wouldn’t want to bet a thin dime that it’s all true; at the same time there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. Such things happen.

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).