Summer Reading: Warwick Villages: Glimpses from the Past
Posted by Keith R Wahl, Made From RI on Jun 16th 2021
This book is so much fun for me to talk about. It tells all about where the "village" concept grew from in the United States. The independent spirit of towns within towns. And where did it start?
Rhode Island. Warwick, Rhode Island. Samuel Gorton gets the credit (full disclosure, I am a product of Samuel Gorton Junior High School). There, we knew who was from Warwick Neck, Bayside, and Conimicut immediately. It was the independent villages of Samuel Gorton in his namesake school.
This is history on display. If you ever wanted the means to explain that a zip code refers to a village within a town, this is the place to start. It was all Made From RI. Click the picture link below to pick up this historical gem for yourself...
"Since Samuel Gorton's first settlers on the Conimicut shore agreed to live without formal government, the villages of Warwick have been fiercely independent. Despite their individualism, however, their histories are inextricably bound. Tracing the history of five villages, Warwick's beloved historian Donald D'Amato reveals how Rhode Islands second-largest city has retained the feel of a small, close-knit community."