Letter: Tiverton house plaques – A unique gift for the holidays

Posted 11/22/17

To the editor:

Want to give a unique gift to someone special who lives in an old house? Order an historic plaque from the Tiverton Historical Preservation Advisory Board for only $40! In order to …

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Letter: Tiverton house plaques – A unique gift for the holidays

Posted

To the editor:

Want to give a unique gift to someone special who lives in an old house? Order an historic plaque from the Tiverton Historical Preservation Advisory Board for only $40! In order to be eligible for an historic plaque, the building must be older than 1925. Contact susan@tivertonhistorical.org or put a note in the HPAB mailbox at Town Hall if you would like to order a plaque. As historic research and plaque-making take a while to complete, gift notices will be mailed in time for holiday gift-giving, so you’ll still have the element of surprise for your gift recipient.

The Tiverton Historical Preservation Advisory Board (HPAB) began the historic plaque program in January 2016, starting with a list of around 150 historic houses from the 1983 Architectural History conducted by the RI Historical Preservation Commission, with 1925 as the “youngest” date the Board took from this document. Letters were sent to the owners explaining the historic plaque program with a response form to be sent back to the HPAB with $40 per plaque if they wished to participate.

Since then, HPAB has received requests from non-residential building owners, as well as owners of houses not on the original list. As of November, order forms have been sent to 177 historic building owners. Of those, ten were owner-requested (i.e., not on the original list). There are 76 plaques that have been ordered and completed and given to the owners via the Town Clerk’s Office. And in case you were wondering, 23 are on the National Register of Historic Places – but not all have ordered a plaque. Incidentally, 25 of the 192 buildings taken from the state’s list of those older than 1925 have either been demolished or moved from town – 16 of which were on the National Register.

Each plaque comes with a brief history of the building, and/or its former occupants, and/or deed excerpts. In some cases, the date found in the original deed is not the same as that published in the state’s 1983 history for the town. In other cases, even the name of the house was incorrectly identified in the state’s document. Because of these errors, the deed research is now being done first before the plaque order is given to Tiverton Sign Shop.

Researching the old deeds can be frustrating at times, trying to read the faded ink and the poor penmanship, but mostly it is interesting with the language, description of the properties, and things one reads in the Land Evidence books in the Town Hall vault.

For instance, there are numerous Indentures, documents setting slaves free, receipts of goods and chattel for debts owed, land problems resulting in sheriff orders, and other notable documents. However, it was the preface to one of the books that caught my eye.

The Preface to Book 31 states:

“In the volume preceding this, I have aimed to imitate the absurdities in penmanship which I have found in the instruments which I have copied. This has made the task of copying more difficult, and required more time to be spent in the work, and has injured the appearance of the page; but it seemed to be necessary to make the record a true copy.

“In this volume, I wish it to be understood that, when I certify the record to be “a true copy of the original”, I mean that it is a true copy of what the original would have been if it had been printed instead of having been scribbled.

John T. Cook, Town Clerk

Tiverton July 3rd, 1884”

I guess I’m not the only one who gets frustrated in reading the hand-written deeds!

Susan Anderson

Chairwoman, Historical Preservation Advisory Board

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