Howard M Grant, Moshassuck Cemetery, and the Saylesville Labor Riot

I wrote about my great-uncle Howard Mellor Grant and his service during World War I in this post a few months ago. Since then, I have come across a few more photos of Howard, and an interesting account written by my great-uncle George H. Wood. George was married to Howard's twin sister, Marion Mellor Grant. In Uncle George's account of Howard's service and burial in Moshassuck Cemetery, he writes:

"Lot is in front row - turn right as you enter the cemetery and it has a large stone with a marble statue of Christ, with arms extended and mounted on the same base as the stone. His grave was marked with the usual granite marker on a base, as used then for veterans. The stone was broken off from the base during a strikers riot at Sayles Bleachery. Several fingers and the head of the statue was broken off at the same time. The statue was repaired by the Taylor Monument Works just across the street from the cemetery and the stone was laid against its base and partly buried. In the years since, the stone has almost completely sunken into the ground."

In his notes (written in 1980), Uncle George talked about his plans to order a new stone marker for his brother-in-law and to see if he could get a new bronze VFW flag holder to denote a veteran's gravestone. I do not know why this work was never completed - Howard's stone is still partially buried. Another veteran gravestone in the same family plot, that of George S Grant who served in the Union Army in the Civil War and died 16 January 1963 from consumption after being discharged, does not appear to have been damaged in the riot, but is almost totally unreadable today. In the photo below, Howard's stone is on the right, and George's Civil War Veteran's stone is just behind and to the right of the statue.

Grant Family Plot
Moshassuck Cemetery, Central Falls, RI
Clematis Avenue, Section A, Lots No. 123 & 124

When I last visited the cemetery, I enquired about getting Howard's gravestone reset. I also placed flags on both graves, indicating their service in two of our country's wars.

Howard M. Grant Gravestone
Moshassuck Cemetery

When I drove through Moshassuck Cemetery last summer, I noticed a monument commemorating the riots of 1934. It is located not too far from the Grant plot, on the same side of the road. I had not previously known of the 1934 Labor Riots or the history of damage both to Howard's gravestone and the family monument statue. From an account of the riots by the Rhode Island Labor History Society :

"On Labor Day, 1934, a national textile strike began in Rhode Island and spread to southern cloth mills in an attempt to raise wages and improve working conditions during the Great Depression.

The event turned ugly when local management ask for protection at the non-union Sayles Finishing Company. National Guardsmen, with fixed bayonets, confronted hundreds of unarmed strikers and chased them into the Moshassuck Cemetery. Ironically, union picketers too cover behind headstones in the graveyard. The bullet holes remain dozens of stones to this day. Strife there lasted almost three weeks resulting in the injury and wounding of hundreds of protesters and the deaths of several others. The strike would erupt in violence in Woonsocket as well."

Saylesville Massacre Monument
Moshassuck Cemetery

 

My Great-Aunt, Marion Grant Wood

 

I was setting out Christmas decorations yesterday and found these in the bottom of one of my boxes. Both are quite small lacquer metal trays, about 6" on the longest side. They have sepia-toned drawings (cut-outs from Christmas cards?) glued to the tray and painted on decoration. The trays are shellacked. I'm not really sure that they can be used for anything other than decoration. They were made by my great Aunt Marion years ago and were given to my parents at some time in the past.

My great aunt, Marion Mellor Grant,  was born in Central Falls, Rhode Island on the 27th of January 1898 to William Sprague Grant and his wife, Mary Helen Mellor. Marion and her twin brother, Howard Mellor Grant, were the younger siblings of my grandfather, Ralph Westcott Grant.

Aunt Marion was the wife of  George Henry Wood, Jr. They were married in 1920 in Central Falls and lived in the Grant home there until around 1939 when they moved to East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

When I was a kid, we would stop by Uncle George and Aunt Marion's house on our way to Cape Cod. It was from Aunt Marion that I learned alot of our family history but unfortunately I never took notes and was unable to recall much of what she had told me when I started doing genealogy years later. As a kid, it was just a jumble of names of people who I never knew and were no longer living. I remember her showing me many old family photographs, but to me at the time, they all looked the same - lots of  black and white photographs of stiff looking people dressed in what to me were formal and funny-looking clothes. Now I have all those photographs and wished I knew who was who in them. Aunt Marion did mark the names on some of them, but not all. I would give anything now to have ten minutes with her - I bet she could give me the answer to many of my brick walls! And I think she would be very pleased to know that even though alot of the family history didn't soak into me back when I was a kid, she did plant a seed in me. It just took many years to take hold.

Grant family home in Central Falls, Rhode Island

Around 15 years ago, I asked my father, Warren W. Grant, to drive us past what had been his family's home in Central Falls, Providence County, Rhode Island. My father had never lived in the home since his father, Ralph W. Grant and his mother, Florence Hazel (Hazel) Skinner, moved from Central Falls to New Jersey around 1920.


54 Jenks Avenue, Central Falls, Rhode Island



The lot this house was built on was purchased for $100 by Lydia B. [Leach] Grant (Ralph's grandmother and my g-g grandmother) from Jas. H and Jonathon Chase on 4 April 1891. Lydia 's husband, Joseph Goff Grant had died around 18 months earlier.


Deed for sale of lot from Jas. H and Jonathon Chase to Lydia B. Grant, 4th April 1891.
Recorded in Book 67, page 61 of the Record of Deeds in the Town of Lincoln, RI

Presumably, the house was built soon after the lot was purchased and Lydia moved into the new house with her son William Sprague, and daughter Mary Elizabeth by 1892 when William appears at that address in a Pawtucket and Central Falls City Directory. Lydia died there on 9 June 1900, on the day that the census enumerator visited the property. Living there at that time were her son William Sprague Grant with his family, as well as William's un-married sister, Mary Elizabeth Grant.

My great-aunt, Marion Grant Wood (Ralph's sister) was the last Grant to live in the house. The house was sold around 1940 when Aunt Marion moved with her husband, George Henry Wood, Jr, to East Greenwich, Rhode Island. I remember Aunt Marion telling me it took a long time to clean out the house and the "burn barrel in the back yard was going for days." Luckily, she saved family heirlooms and family records - it was the family stories I heard on our visits to her when I was a child that piqued my interest in family history when I became an adult. What I would give to just have 10 minutes with her now to confirm some family lore!