100 Years Ago In Burrillville (Rhode Island)

Anyone who enjoys reading about “the good old days” will appreciate this highly entertaining collection of the best stories of the Burrillville News-Gazette and the Pascoag Herald from 1880 through 1917. Burrillville, Rhode Island, was a lively town whose journalists reported with humor as well as accuracy. While the News-Gazette leaned toward the sensational and dramatic events of the day, the Herald presented factual information regarding census records, town meetings, expenditures, and histories of the various churches, mills, etc. Here is an excerpt, taken from “Two Questionable Women Visit Town”, August 5, 1893: “A carriage containing two well-dressed if not gaudily attired young women entered Pascoag on Wednesday morning. From their passports it was evident the young women were taking an outing from the nearby town of Uxbridge, Mass. Their mission here was to procure some spirituous fluids for the dry, parched throats of those whom they had left behind. Soon after their arrival, they drove up to one of our most prominent saloons, alighted, had their empty bottles filled with alleged port wine and unmistakably whiskey. One of the women paid from the deep recesses of her high stocking into which she thrust her hand in such a reckless manner as to ‘call the blush to the cheek of modesty’ -- the bartender and the loungers furnishing the ‘modesty’ -- with which article they appeared to be over-stocked. These incursions from the neighboring hamlet of Uxbridge must be stopped. Otherwise, the time may come when certain residents of Pascoag will have to face a whiskey famine and go to bed at night grievously athurst.”