Gloucester Heritage Society Endowment Fund

The Gloucester Heritage Society was established “to identify, acquire, hold, arrange, restore, maintain, and preserve for posterity buildings, tracts of land and objects of historical, educational, architectural, cultural, and other similar interests of outstanding value within the Town of Glocester, RI.” At the same time, members of the 42-year-old Society are working to preserve something else: the organization itself.

“Rose LaVoie (past GHS president) initiated and insisted on the importance of this endowment,” says Edna Kent, the Society’s current president. “Our members agree that we need this income (that the endowment will generate) to help maintain our buildings.” The income will supplement membership fees and fundraising events that run the gamut from house and garden tours to plant and food sales, and from Heritage Day to Peddlers’ Faire and Candlelight Shopping, all of which support the Society’s work.

Leafing through the yellowed pages of a decades-old scrapbook, Ms. Kent, a founding member of the Society, shares the organization’s accomplishments through the years, including the restoration of its headquarters, the 1813 Job Armstrong Store at 1181 Putnam Pike on Chepachet’s Main Street.

“This was the largest of 13 dry goods and grocery stores in Chepachet in the early 1800s. Of course they’re all gone now, but back then old trading centers like Chepachet were the ‘hub of the wheel’ with folks coming to town to trade from communities a day’s travel away,” Ms. Kent explains.

Among other notable projects was the restoration of the 1867 Evans School House, numerous historic houses saved from demolition, and the Society’s current undertaking, the restoration of the Dr. Reuben Mason House at 1043 Putnam Pike in Chepachet. The Society intends to create a Dorr Rebellion Museum within the 1747 Mason House to commemorate the effort led by Thomas Dorr in 1842 to extend voting rights to every free man in Rhode Island. At the time, voting was limited to land owners.

“Glocester is an old town. There is so much history here…and we’ve had some wonderful support to help preserve it,” Ms. Kent says, concluding with the hope that the momentum will continue.

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