The Fall 2023 Edition of the BPS Exploring History Newsletter is now available. Click the image below to open.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
2023 Plaque Program: Transformations: Wednesday 9/13 at 7 PM
Please join Barrington Preservation Society on Wednesday, September 13, 2023, at 7PM in the Salem Family Auditorium, Barrington Public Library, for our Annual Plaque Program. During this year’s event, five historic homes will be recognized and presented with new BPS historic house plaques. BPS Past President Nathaniel Taylor will provide this year’s program lecture, highlighting Barrington’s growth and development during this transformative turn-of-the-century period, as seen through this year’s plaque recipient properties, their original owners, and their neighborhoods.
2023 New Plaque Recipients:
Pary-Farina House, c. 1892/1923
100 Maple Avenue
Caleb R. Nye, 1895
50 Lincoln Avenue
Isaac F. Foster, 1910
132 County Road
C. Moulton Stone, c. 1917
37 New Meadow Road
Edmund P. Sayles, 1923
3 Glen Avenue
Belton Court informational page
The threatened demolition of Belton Court has brought it back to the fore. Barrington Preservation Society has put up an informational page on the legacy of Belton Court and its builder, Frederick Stanhope Peck.
Take a Rhode Tour: Taverns to Temperance in Old Barrington Village
Take A Rhode Tour:
Taverns to Temperance:
A Spirited Tour of Old Barrington Village
Curated by Stephen Venuti
President, Barrington Preservation Society
Before the center of town shifted further south to its current location with the opening of the Town Hall in 1888, much of Barrington life centered around the Congregational Meetinghouse at 461 County Road. This area, now known as “Old Barrington Village,” was a vibrant community inhabited by farmers, shoemakers, cabinet makers, blacksmiths, stage-coach drivers, mariners, shipwrights, ferrymen, and statesmen. It was also the home of at least four now long-gone taverns. This interactive web/smartphone tour focuses on that small but fascinating piece of Barrington history.
Click image to launch this Rhode Tour:
Rhode Tour is 
a joint initiative of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and the Rhode Island Historical Society. Rhode Tour is a smartphone app and website that uses text, sound, and images to bring Rhode Island stories to the palm of your hand.
BPS Presents: “If Jane Should Want to Be Sold,” May 1, 2019
Barrington Preservation Society presents:
‘If Jane Should Want to Be Sold”:
Stories of Enslavement, Indenture, and Freedom
in Little Compton, Rhode Island
by Marjory O’Toole
Executive Director,
Little Compton Historical Society
Wednesday, May 1, 2019, 7 PM
Salem Family Auditorium & Collis Family Gallery
Barrington Public Library Building
281 County Road, Barrington
FREE ● OPEN TO ALL ● REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED
Marjory O’Toole will present research from her 2016 book, If Jane Should Want to Be Sold: Stories of Enslavement, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island. The book represents three years of research into the topic of local slavery and freedom and uses hundreds of primary source documents to tell the stories of 250 enslaved and forcibly indentured people in Little Compton. Ms. O’Toole will share the personal stories of some of these people, including Jane, who was given the choice to be sold or not, and Aaron Biggs, whose testimony about the burning of the Gaspee was sent directly to the King of England. Through these local stories we can better understand the larger story of African and Native American slavery in New England and throughout the Atlantic world.
Barrington Preservation Society is a volunteer organization dedicated to researching, preserving, and educating about the history and heritage of Barrington. Our town Museum is open Wednesdays and Saturdays, 1-4 pm and by appointment
