Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/681

CHAPTER XXXVII BARRINGTO'N INDUSTRIES A Farming Town — Seafaring — Shipbuilding — Brickmaking — Salt- making — Fisheries — Gardening — City Business — Horticulture and Floriculture — Stores — Barrington Water Company — Drown- ville Water Company — The Annawomscutt Mills — Electric Tele- graph — Electric Lighting — Telephones — The Barrington, Warren, and Bristol Street Railway Company, etc, etc. Farming. BARRINGTON was well adapted to farming, the chosen occupation of most of its people prior to the middle of the present century. The fertility of the soil, the climate made genial by the nearness of the waters of the baj' and the ocean, tempered as they are by the Gulf Stream, which courses the Northern Atlantic near our shores, made this town an Eden for farmers. The sandy loam soil, usually free from boul- ders, fitted it to be the natural home and garden of the aborigines, and to these attractive fields came the yeomen of England, who had been accus- tomed to similar conditions of soil and climate in their native land. Born to conditions of constant toil on the other side of the Atlantic, we find our ancestors and their descendants, industrious, skillful, frugal. The plough was their representative instrument of husbandry and they illus- trated Franklin's maxim, " He that by the plough would thrive, Himself, must either hold or drive." The farm was the mine of wealth in which they delved and found the materials which brought them many home comforts, with but few of the luxuries of life. At the beginning of the present century the labors of a century and a half had created less than $200,000 in house and land values, by a population of over 500 people. Seafaring. The attractions of a sea faring life have led many of our boys and young men in the past " to go down to the sea in ships and to do busi- ness on the mighty waters." Many of these sailors have become accom- plished seamen, and attained positions as officers and masters of the ^rgest ships. The title of captain was once as common among Barring- ton men as was the title of colonel in the South, before the war. The