That makes sense. Could you have one or more shuttles meet the train in Middleboro? They'd have to meet it at the Lakeville platform I assume. Ugh, I hope they don't make the Flyer a two-seat ride instead, which is entirely possible. It's slow enough as it is, and with all those people bringing bikes having to transfer...
Usually, I don't like it when stations are named after roads or highways, but Kings Highway would've been a cool and somewhat unique name for a station. I wish they had never changed the name to Church Street, that's pretty much the worst name they could've chosen.
Too Maryland/Virginia for me. Leave the Kings/Queens to states that had landed gentry.
Kings Highway was what they were calling it in the 2013 FEIR for Phase II. Logical because it would've matched the namesake of the nearest MA 140 exit. Who knows what they were thinking with the Church St. changeover.
There were landed gentry in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they just were not as prevalent as their southern brethren.
This is splitting hairs somewhat over what "landed gentry" really means. New England was primarily comprised of port cities with mercantile interests and settled by Calvinists with a very different economic structure and work ethic than other states further south. Moreover, the poor soil meant large farming estates were impossible. Sure, there were wealthy people who owned more land than average, but you're mostly thinking of the farm-estates in places like Dover that became the summer and winter escapes for Brahmin families in the 19th century into the present day. But that was all a post-hoc constructed idea of how wealthy people ought to be--owning land in the country and maybe having some farming. So while technically yes, people like the Websters, Saltonstalls, Ameses, and others commanded large tracts of land, they were not really "landed gentry" in the true meaning of deriving their family's main income from agriculture rather than industry, trade, or shipping.
No, I am actually talking about the New England families who ran plantations -- in New England. They had large land holdings the used enslaved labor to crop the land. They also often had additional plantation holdings in the Caribbean (often Antigua) -- which they supplied from crops grown in New England* (as well as the other huge food source, salted cod). Some of the coastal plain areas were pretty rich farm land (not much of MA is).
Ah, very nice. I've never heard the term "plantation" used in this way when in New England (as in, here as far as I have seen it is refers to established farming rather than large land tracts owned by one family + staffed by slave labor). Will have to dig into this.
The full official name of the state of Rhode Island wasn't what it was until 2020 for no reason. Despite being the first to pass an anti-slavery law in 1652, it wasn't enforced and by 1755 10% of the colony's population was slaves.
I'm fairly sure that the name Providence Plantations was innocuous for its time; at the time of its naming by Roger Williams RI only had something like 500 non-native American inhabitants, and it was under him that they passed that antislavery law in 1652. Frankly, Newport, the Rhode Island (Aquidneck Island) part of the name, was a key part of the Triangle Trade, as I remember reading that something like ⅔ of the ships involved in the transatlantic slave trade called at Newport on their way to Africa. That said, even after 1755 a huge portion of RI's wealth derived from slavery and the trade, importing sugar and molasses from the Caribbean, exporting rum. At least some of the Newport estates were a product of that wealth.
The plantation reference in Rhode Island's name was not an accident.
southcountyhistorycenter.org
I can’t speak to what Jeff is referring to, but I can tell you without any ambiguity that the word plantation, “Rhode Island and Providence plantations“, just like with “Plymouth plantation“, referred to a colonial settlement, and not to a large agricultural estate… And that furthermore, for the most part (and until today, I assumed in every instance), that term meant something very different in New England than it did in the southern colonies.
See my other post. You are conflating the word “plantation“ with slavery. The word never implied slavery, and the only instance where that term did imply this was in the American south. There’s no arguing that slavery existed up here, but it’s important to understand that the term “plantation” in all of the New England plantations (perhaps, with a few rare exceptions in the book you mentioned) does not imply the existence of slavery or agricultural work at all. it refers to the “planting” of towns and colonies—of people. It was only later that the term acquired the negative and now essentially infamous connotation which people don’t realize is not an accurate reflection of what this term meant historically at all.The plantation reference in Rhode Island's name was not an accident.
The "Narragansett Planters" were a set of 25-30 large plantations in Washington County (South County) Rhode Island, that fed food resources to the triangle traders in Newport (some of whom did simpler north-south packet runs, not the full triangle trade). In the mid-18th century an estimated 15-25% of the population of South County was enslaved.
Slavery in Southern Rhode Island — South County History Center
The Center's new online exhibit of Ernest Hamlin Baker's 1939 mural "The Economic Activities of the Narragansett Planters" explores the history of slavery and the colonial economy in southern Rhode Island, and how our knowledge of that period has changed since the artist conducted his rese
It would be more apt to conflate the word "plantation" with colonialism than slavery. English first started using plantations with the colonization of Ireland and worked as a means to de-gaelicize the Irish living there. Plantations were a major tool of English colonialism by allowing a community of English men & women to live and reproduce, rather than the French model of trading posts or the Spanish model of Spanish men marrying Native women.
I love this idea. Newport accessibility by rail would be the next big step in South Coast construction I would think. Would make Fall River more of a destination (platform transfer at Battleship Cove would be perfect for tourists), and would allow Rhode Island rail to become more of a network than a strip of stations between MA and CT. Allowing Portsmouth and Newport rail access to Providence and Boston would do wonders to increase connectivity in the region.
There's a YouTube railfan who's been documenting the progress on the restoration of the Newport Railway between the transit center and Pell Bridge alongside rail-with-trail. They have I think a 40-tonner and 2 RDCs already there and operational. If they had funding they could probably easily run an island shuttle every like 30min
