![]() ![]() ![]() It was mirrored by Fort Greene near Point Judith. The fort was intended to protect the approaches to Narragansett Bay and its easternmost arm, called the Sakonnet River, as part of the Harbor Defenses of Narragansett Bay. Fort Church also had a rare casemated 8-inch gun battery. Ammunition magazines and the 16-inch guns would be in casemated bunkers to protect against air attack. Lighter weapons would be replaced by 6-inch guns on high-angle shielded barbette carriages. The goal was to replace all previous heavy weapons, many of which were over 35 years old, with long-range 16"/50 caliber Mark 2 guns. The fort was named for Colonel Benjamin Church (1639–1718), considered a forerunner of the United States Army Rangers and buried in Little Compton. ![]() Together with Fort Greene near Point Judith, it superseded all previous heavy gun defenses in the Harbor Defenses of Narragansett Bay.įort Church was built as part of a general modernization of US coast defenses that began in 1940 with the outbreak of war in Europe and the Fall of France. 6-inch gun M1905 on shielded barbette carriage at Fort Columbia State Park, Washington state, similar to the guns of BCN 212 near Sakonnet Point.įort Church was a World War II United States Army coastal defense fort in Little Compton, Rhode Island. 8-inch Navy MkVIM3 gun on barbette mount M1A1, as used at Fort Church. In few other places can a nonagenarian comepon poke trinkets, trifles and detritus and some of it older than he.41☂8′46″N 71☁1′00″W / 41.47944°N 71.18333°W / 41.47944 -71.18333ġ6-inch casemated gun, similar to those at Fort Church. For $1, I also picked up four-ounce block labeled "Great Face Soap." Yvonne found a pair of sterling earrings for $25.60 and I bought Joseph Alsop's biography of Franklin Roosevelt for $2.40. It is stacked with domestic jetsam and flotsam, including a mirrored pine medicine cabinet for $25, jewelry, nearly all costume, stacks of China, books and magazines. Also, nothing in the store is new, though little is bona fide antique either. Just one car and a pickup fit in the parking lot. Reopened three years ago, its tenant storekeeper's merchandise is as varied as a Walmart's, although it will take a while to catch up in traffic. Now, happily, Adamsville has reclaimed its status as site of the nation's oldest general store, if not the oldest in continuous service. ![]() The closing of Gray's left Adamsville with only one monument, a granite statue of a chicken, the Rhode Island Red, the source of all kitchen tables of the brown egg and Little Compton' claim, back then, as the "poultry Capitol of the World." This was a sad and humbling moment for minuscule Adamsville, an appendage of Little Compton, RI, no metropolis itself with just 3,500 people. One family, presumably named Gray, owned it for 91 years until another family, the Waites, took it on and held until 2012, when sixth generation Grayton Waite died and his heir, a son, closed it. George Washington wasn't yet president, and the flag had just 13 stars. Opening in 1788, Gray's General Store in Adamsville, RI, was the oldest, after 224 years and by all credible accounts, general store in the United States. ![]()
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