The Waterman Family

On West Fountain Street, at its intersection with Cargill Street, an abandoned warehouse sits. Back in the 1890’s, the address of this brick giant used to be 369-379 Fountain Street. And instead of the dust and grime, instead of the barbed wire fence and the green metal grates that cover the windows, there were horses. Lots and lots of horses. 

Alpheus Smith Waterman ran a livery stable here with his son, Frank Alpheus Waterman. Both men, along with five of their relatives, are buried in Grace Church Cemetery. 

The Watermans have a rich lineage. Jeremiah Randall Waterman and all of his progeny are descendents of Richard Waterman, who was banished to Rhode Island with Roger Williams. 

A street on the East Side, Waterman Street, is named after the Waterman family. Richard Waterman’s family lived in a house on Waterman Street that has long since been razed. The RISD Textile Building and a bus tunnel now stand where Richard Waterman once lived. And the University Club now occupies the house that one of Richard Waterman’s descendents built as his family residence. 

And so it is a small wonder that Jeremiah Randall Waterman, his son Alpheus Smith Waterman, and his grandsons Frank and Jeremiah II all led humble lives in Providence, despite the rich heritage they were born into. 

Three generations of men more or less follow the same career path – clerk, then butcher, and finally stable keeper. 

Jeremiah Randall Waterman was born on November 11, 1815 in Johnston, RI. When he was 21 years old he was made a freeman (a term which at the time meant any man given privileges to vote in a town) in Johnston. Later, he became a surveyor of highways like his ancestor, Richard Waterman. He also served on the Johnston School Committee, and was the town’s tax collector until 1844.

Around 1850, Jeremiah Waterman moved to Providence and started a new life as a butcher. He owned a butcher shop, called Fenner & Waterman. But after a few years he got out of the meat business to start the Wilbur & Waterman livery stable at 174 High Street (now Broad Street). 

Jeremiah lived with his son, Alpheus Smith Waterman, at 264 High Street, just down the road from the stable. Alpheus at the time was a clerk in Providence, but at age 22, he left that job to become a butcher, just like his father had been.

Alpheus Waterman also became known as a pork packer. An advertisement he placed in the 1860 Providence city directory reads, “A.S. Waterman, curer and packer of provisions, and dealer in fresh lard and sausages.” A drawing of two juicy pork chops placed next to the ad’s text attempted to lure hungry customers into his shop.

Jeremiah and his wife, Polly S. Knight Waterman, who is buried with her husband in Grace Church Cemetery, had a very close relationship with their son. The three never lived apart, despite frequent address changes. Waterman also had a second son, George Mathewson Waterman, but he died when he was four years old. 

In 1878, when Jeremiah was 63 and getting on in years, Alpheus stopped selling meat and started helping out at his father’s stable which by then had moved to Cranston Street. The Waterman family was then living at 22 Knight Street on Federal Hill. Jeremiah died on September 30 1892. 

Around this time, Alpheus’s son, Frank Alpheus Waterman - a child by his first wife, Betsey Harris Parkis Waterman - was 24 years old and working hard as a clerk on Canal Street for the Ivy Mason & Co. Meat Packers. He lived in the same house as his father and grandparents; his mother had died of consumption seven weeks after his birth.

In 1895, the family’s stable moved from Cranston Street to 369-379 Fountain Street, and nine years later, Frank joined his father in business there. The stable was now called Alpheus S. Waterman & Co. But three years later, on October 25, 1907, Alpheus Waterman died of heart disease.

According to The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Frank “was a business man of keen foresight, and fine executive ability, and was well known and highly respected in business circles in Providence.” After his father’s death, the stable became known as the F. A. Waterman stable. 

Frank Waterman’s half brother, Jeremiah Randall II, the son of Alpheus Waterman and his second wife Rebecca Potter Remington Waterman, also had a hand in the family business. He was a clerk until the turn of the century but then he started his own stable at 391 Fountain Street. When his father died a few years later, he joined his half brother at the other Waterman stable on Fountain Street. 

Richard Waterman, whose presence in Rhode Island led to this long line of Watermans, shared religious beliefs that conflicted with the leaders of the Salem colony they lived in, and was driven from Massachusetts soil, along with the other families who moved to Providence. When Roger Williams bought the land that would be Providence from the Narragansett Native Americans in 1634, he gave some of that land to Waterman.

“I communicated my said purchase unto my loving friends John Throckmorton, William Arnold, William Harris, Stukley Westcott, John Greene, Thomas Olney, Richard Waterman and others who then desired to take shelter here with me,” he said.

Waterman, a former wolf hunter who was born in England in 1590, received confirmation of his share of land in 1637. He also had his hand in other historic events; he signed the Contract at Providence that proposed a form of government, and was one of the eleven Rhode Islanders that Chief Miantonomi sold Warwick to in 1642 for 144 fathoms of wampum. He was arrested, but later released on bond, during a period in which Massachusetts persecuted settlers from the Ocean State. His persecutors called him “erroneous, heretical, and obstinate.” The penalty if he returned to Massachusetts was death. 

Richard Waterman also served Providence as town deputy, commissioner, surveyor of highways, and warden.