In 1768, the local blacksmith Samuel Bissell had a small house constructed on the lot on the corner of Main St. and what is now Fountain Street that he had purchased previously from John Weight. The builder was most likely Robert Potter as Potter and Bissell had numerous land transactions between them in that time frame.
In 1771, Bissell sold the house and property to Deborah Fowler Whitford and her husband Pasco Whitford. Deborah was a local baker, and perhaps one of the region’s earliest female business owners of which we have record. A small building on the lot, referred to as the bake house, has in its foundation and chimney arrangements, direct evidence indicating that this was the location of Whitford’s bake ovens.
It is thought that Whitford’s primary money making product was the hard tack utilized by the numerous sailing vessels working out of Wickford Harbor at the time. This supplemented her line of traditional baked goods for the time, primarily bread. In 1805, Deborah, by then a widow, sold the home to her younger brother, Benjamin Fowler, the president of the Narragansett Bank, and he built an addition to the house, making it into a combination banking house and private home, incorporating the 1768 structure into the new building. In 1837, ownership of the building was essentially split in half when Fowler sold the upstairs portion of the home to his daughter and son-in-law Mary (Fowler) Weeden and Peleg Weeden. The Weeden’s gifted the upper floor to their daughter Hannah, who, after the bank relocated, purchased the entire building.
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