Just like changing a car tire, wheels had to be periodically removed from wagons of all types. Sometimes the metal rims had separated from the wooden wheel, or perhaps a wooden spoke of the wheel had broken. The muddy roads of spring and the iron hard ruts of winter were the most likely causes of these problems. Having a wagon jack enabled a fairly easy removal of a wheel for repair. Clouds Hill has both a wooden and a metal wagon jack in the Carriage Museum. They worked essentially the same way a car jack works today and were a most essential tool to be carried in the Conestoga wagons that opened up the West, for these were traveling vast areas of road-less
This metal pail with the handle on top was a great aid to the cooks who regularly produced many loaves of bread in the kitchens of the late Victorian and early 20th century homes. Made by the firm of Landers, Frary, and Clark of New Britain, Connecticut, in the early 1900s, this example is a gift from Mr. and Mrs. James Suttles. Directions were to mix the bread dough in the pail by turning the handle attached to the dough hook. The dough was left in the pail to raise, then formed into a ball with the hook, and lifted out of the pail with the hook after removing the lid. It saved many aching wrists and sore arms at the end of a long day in the kitchen! The firm, originally founded in 1842 as Dewey and Landers, and in 1862, becoming Landers, Frary and Clark, manufactured food scales, coffee grinders, cake mixers, food choppers, and other kitchen items – developing a long line of electrical appliances once electricity became common in homes. Many were marketed under the brand name Universal. In 1965, most of the firm was taken over by G. B. Williams Co. of New York, with the food choppers going to Union Man’f. Co. and the electrical appliances to General Electric. Clouds Hill has several of the firm’s kitchen wares from the Victorian period.
country through all kinds of terrain. The Rhode Island Bicentennial Covered Wagon is housed in the Carriage Museum at Clouds Hill and displays many of the items that formed part of the essentials packed by the pioneers to establish life in the uncharted territory of the West.
A gift to Clouds Hill from Mary Jane Wilkinson, this beautiful set of oblong wooden blocks covered in paper designs, is Victorian and well played with. The manufacture of blocks began in the late 18th century, although children had already played with homemade wooden blocks for centuries. Blocks have always been associated with learning and education through play – a relationship beginning in the late 17th century with John Locke’s concept of the “alphabet” block. While children are just having fun playing, it has been proven that block activity improves eye-hand coordination and strengthens fingers and hands; encourages interaction with others; develops vocabulary, math skills, and experiences with gravity, balance and geometry; and increases imagination and creativity. That’s a lot for a little block of wood!
Adjacent to Clouds Hill to the west was Cedar Hill Farm, a full working farm providing the vegetables, eggs, meat, and fruit used at the four family houses in Cowesett, as well as the Providence houses – with surpluses sold to Calef Brothers markets in Providence and Boston. February and March were times for poring over seed catalogs, the ladies looking at flowers, while the boss farmer, Alfred and his son, Alfred Slater, looked for new and better vegetables and fruits. In America, the first seed house was Landreth’s in Philadelphia, established in 1784. By 1838, Frank G. Comstock was decorating his seed packets with pictures of the plant, quickly adopted by other seed companies. After the Civil War, mail order catalogs proliferated, with fancy illustrations of fruits, vegetables, and flowers as part of the packages. N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish were later artists contributing to these designs. One of the catalogs shown is from Sharpe’s Hardware of East Greenwich, whose building stands at the corner of King St. and Main St., although the hardware store closed in the mid-20th century.
