Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/405

BARRINGTON FARMERS. 323 oppressors, and Barrington men and women were not slow to express their principles and purposes in opposition to both. The new order could not be worse than the old ; it must be better, they thought. The conflict was to test the experiment of a government " of the people, for the people, and by the people " in a new land, and they walked by faith, not by sight. Barrington had just asserted its territorial rights as a separate town, receiving its second incorporation in 1770. Once before, for ecclesiastical and religious reasons, had our people declared for and secured their independence, when in 1 71 7, they were set off from Swansea and became Barring- ton. Now for social and civil reasons they are taken from Warren and made a township of the original name, but less area. They had been accustomed to recognize, maintain, and secure their rights, and in the greater struggle for Colonial independence they were true to the spirit and traditions of the old town and alive to the significance of the events lead- ing up to the Revolution. Let us keep in mind that the people of Barrington were farmers, having large families, with the duties of cultivating the land, caring for stock, raising and marketing crops of corn, rye, and oats, potatoes, onions, and other agricul- tural produce, raising their own beef and pork, and buying, as their scanty means allowed the necessary groceries for household needs. They were a home-keeping people, acquainted with each other's conditions and wants, and intro- duced to the outer world by the scanty and long delayed reports of the weekly paper. The housewives and chil- dren were literally housekeepers, and they were acquainted with little beyond the round of daily home duties and the circle of their social relations. It was a simple, plain, practical life they led, free from excitement and enlivened only by the tongue of neighborhood gossip. The meeting house was the centre of their religious, social, and political life. Here they met for weekly preaching services and for social hours. Here they were baptized as children, pro-