Squire Livsey

A photograph of Squire Livsey shows a balding, stolid man in late middle age with a long, full white beard and no mustache. It was a style popular with seafaring men of the time. A blacksmith, machinist, foreman and marine engineer, Livsey was never one of Providence’s elite, but the shifts in his life reflected the shifting nature of daily existence throughout the decades of nineteenth century Providence, a city under full sway of the Industrial Revolution. 

Born in 1817 to English parents in Boston, Massachusetts, Livsey came to Providence with his family as a young child. And in a life that spanned 88 years, Livsey saw the proliferation of the mills and factories, and lived through the devastation of the Civil War and the financial depression that followed. He loved boat races and witnessed a rise in the popularity of steamboat travel, and worked on many of the boats that traversed Narragansett Bay. He lived to see the century turn. 

In 1839 Livsey was 22-years-old and working 11-hour days as a blacksmith. He was considered a skilled laborer and was making about $1.80 a day. Providence was a boomtown and would remain so for the next twenty years. 

That year on Dec. 30, Livsey married 15-year-old Clarissa Slocum. At the time, the popularity of the Universalist church was on the rise in New England, and Providence in particular embraced the religion. William S. Balch, a prominent minister in the Universalist movement and a noted editor and abolitionist, married Livsey and his bride. The newlyweds boarded at a house on South Street near where the Providence River flowed into the harbor and Narragansett Bay, and where Squire Livsey was close enough to walk to the machine shops and steam-mills that required his services. 

In those days Providence was already a bustling city, but there remained several undeveloped sections. The area where the State House stands today was a swamp called Jefferson Plains, and 160 years before the Providence Place Mall was a gleam in any local politician’s eye, the land it now sits on was known as Carpenter’s Point. Both were part of one large body of water called the Cove. But the area close to the Providence River where Livsey and his wife resided had docks, factories and shops dominating the landscape. 

In 1844 the Livseys moved one street south to Point Street, and it was there on April 9, 1845 that Clarissa gave birth to a baby boy they named Theodore. 

That same year, Thomas J. Hill, a key figure in Rhode Island’s textile industry, began building a new factory nearby at 37 Allens Ave. for his growing company, the Providence Machine Company. 

Previously, American cotton-cloth manufacturers had to buy their cloth-making machinery, called roving machines, from England. But now the Providence Machine Company was building them and had developed a roving machine that rivaled the English-made version. The Providence Machine Company was the first American company to create an international industry standard with this new machine. Cloth manufacturers from all over the world started buying roving machines from the Providence Machine Company and the company remained the foremost manufacturer of these machines well into the early 1900s. 

The Allens Avenue factory was finished in 1846 and Livsey went to work for the company as a blacksmith and machinist a short time later. 

A day for the Livseys, if their lives were like those of typical working-class Providence families, started before dawn with Clarissa Livsey waking by 5:30 a.m. to shovel coal into the stove to heat the family’s room. She would feed Theodore and then make breakfast for Squire before sending him off to work. 

Setting out every morning down Point Street, Squire Livsey walked towards the waterfront and turned south on Allens Avenue. As he got closer to the triangle between Crary and Henderson streets where the Providence Machine Company was located, 

he could look out across the river and see the ferries crossing over to Fox Point or watch the busy railroad depot at India Point. 

There must have been many mornings in the early 1850s that Squire took this daily walk in a state of anger and sadness. Looking out over the river he may have 

wondered why his marriage was starting to fall apart. By 1855, he and Clarissa were fighting a lot and court documents from their 1857 divorce suggest that during one 

particularly heated battle, Clarissa tried to burn Squire, although the document doesn’t say how or why. 

But the Livseys stayed together and even continued to sleep in the same bed until January 1856 when it was discovered that Clarissa was having an affair with Emery Ayers, a watchman and boarder at the Point Street tenement where Clarissa and Squire lived. 

At the time, Squire’s brother and sister-in-law Caroline were visiting the Livseys for about six weeks. Clarissa was ill and confined to her bed, but found sufficient energy to engage in a fiery argument with Squire one night while the rest of the house was in bed. 

At 10 p.m. Squire’s sister-in-law Caroline and her husband were lying awake in a bedroom that opened onto the kitchen. According to a deposition Caroline Livsey gave during Squire and Clarissa’s 1857 divorce trial, she and her husband heard Clarissa in the kitchen screaming to Squire, “I burnt you once and I will again if I get the chance!” Squire was standing in the kitchen’s doorway, and though Caroline Livsey’s deposition doesn’t relate Squire’s response to his wife’s outburst, she does say that Clarissa moved out five days later and moved in with the family downstairs. 

Two weeks later, Clarissa left town and took 11-year-old Theodore with her. 

Clarissa and Theodore traveled by boat to stay with Clarissa’s friend, Harriet Trask, in New York City, according to a letter Clarissa wrote to Emery Ayers at the time. Theodore eventually returned to his father, but Clarissa would never again live with Squire. 

In 1857 Squire Livsey was granted a divorce. He moved to 29 Ship St. and began putting his life back in order. 

With the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, 23,236 Rhode Island men left to fight in the war, including Theodore, who was then 16. 

Theodore Livsey eagerly answered Gov. William Sprague’s call for soldiers and enrolled on Sept. 30, 1861 in the 4th Regiment of the Rhode Island Volunteers, Company K. He then left for Camp Greene, near Apponaug, where the regiment was supplied with new blue, woolen uniforms and muskets, and formally inspected by Sprague and Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. 

On Saturday Oct. 5, 1861, Theodore and his regiment traveled by train into Providence where they marched a five-mile route from Dorrance Street to Broad Street, and down High and Cranston Streets before reaching Dexter Training Ground. The men then marched back down High Street, Westminster Street and South Main Street. They reached Fox Point late that afternoon and boarded the steamship Commodore bound for Elizabeth Port, New Jersey. 

At 5 p.m. the ship left the wharf and Squire stood among the throngs of families standing at the water’s edge shouting and waving goodbye to their young men, many of whom, like Theodore, had not even reached their eighteenth year. 

Squire Livsey couldn’t have known what lay in store for his young son, but with prayers and hopes he had to believe Theodore would make it through and return to Providence by the war’s end. 

Nearly a year went by. Squire continued to work at the Providence Machine Company and Theodore traveled with his regiment from Washington, D.C. to Virginia and back into Maryland. On Sept. 17, 1862 Theodore Livsey fought in the Battle of Antietam at Sharpsburg, Maryland. The men of Company K fought the Confederate Army in the cornfields and roads of the abandoned farms near Antietam Creek. Over 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died in the battle, including about 2,200 Rhode Island men. One of them was 17-year-old Theodore Livsey, Squire Livsey’s only child. 

It’s not known when they met, but on March 3, 1864 Livsey married 25-year-old Celia Ann Osbrey of New York. He was 45. The Civil War finally ended in 1865 and two years later, Squire was promoted to the position of foreman at the Providence Machine Company. On May 1 of that year the Livseys’ first daughter was born. They named her Ida May. 

With his new position as foreman, Livsey and his wife were able to move from their tenement house at 6 Lockwood St. to a nicer home at 25 Lockwood, directly across the street from his boss Thomas Hill’s estate at 20 Lockwood. Resting on 33,390 square feet of land, Hill’s estate consisted of a large mansion with several outbuildings. It provided an idyllic view for the Livseys and would later become part of the land where Rhode Island Hospital stands today. 

In August 1873 a second daughter, Annie Eliza, was born to the Livseys, and a year later the family moved several blocks south to a wood-frame house with a semi-circular porch at 210 Public St. 

The years following the Civil War were a time of financial uncertainty for many Providence citizens. There was a halt to most building because few businesses and factories were demanding more space, but by the 1880s the city began to recover financially from the loss of so many of its men. Somehow the Livseys were able to keep afloat during these hard times and Squire continued his job as foreman until 1874. 

That year, after more than 25 years with Hill’s company, Squire Livsey made a career change. He became a marine engineer for the steamboats he was so fond of. Although there are no official records tracking him during the next 20 years, historians say it’s likely he served as an engineer on the steamers that traveled from Providence to ports in New York and Florida. He was 78-years-old when he decided to retire. 

In 1900, Squire, now 83, and Celia, now 60, moved into the home of their youngest daughter Annie Eliza and her husband Claude P. Harris at 589 Public St. The century was turning and Livsey had seen Providence go through many changes. At the time of his first marriage in 1839, the city’s population was slightly over 17,000; by 1900 it had grown to 175, 597. The home the Livseys shared with their daughter and her husband had indoor plumbing, and in 1901, there was a new State House on what had been formerly known as the Cove. 

When Squire Livsey died of old age on June 10, 1905 he was considered one of the oldest residents of the city. He is buried in Grace Church