RHODYLIFE

The story of Orrin Harris

By KELLY SULLIVAN
Posted 9/23/20

By KELLY SULLIVAN After having stood for almost 200 years, the stones in Noah Mathewson Cemetery tip sleepily. Greenish-gray moss creeps up their faces, over the earthly names of those who repose beneath the ground there. Among the population of this

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RHODYLIFE

The story of Orrin Harris

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After having stood for almost 200 years, the stones in Noah Mathewson Cemetery tip sleepily. Greenish-gray moss creeps up their faces, over the earthly names of those who repose beneath the ground there.

Among the population of this aged burial place, set with 25 markers sacred to memories, is Orrin Harris; a brave soldier, adventurous gold-seeker, and innovative innkeeper before his shocking and untimely death.

The son of blacksmith Jencks Harris and his wife, Rachel, Orrin was born in Smithfield on Sept. 26, 1809. His mother died when he was just 2 years old and his father soon remarried and provided him with a handful of half-siblings.

As a young man, Orrin left his father’s farm and went to Providence where he secured work as a clerk at the large American House Hotel on North Main Street. But soon, Orrin and approximately 300,000 other Americans, caught gold fever.

On Jan. 24, 1848, carpenter James Wilson Marshall had discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in California. With dreams of striking it rich, Orrin left Rhode Island and crossed the country to earn his share of the fortune working as a gold-miner.

Millions of dollars worth of gold was removed from Sutter’s Mill before the end of the rush in 1855. Some men returned home with a new status of wealth. Harris wasn’t one of them.

On July 25, 1862, his name was added to the enlisted men of the 7th RI Regiment and he headed toward Washington, D.C., and the future battlefields of the Civil War that September. The following month he marched into Harper’s Ferry and then on to Fredericksburg.

The Battle of Fredericksburg raged for five days that December. The 7th RI ran out of ammunition on the third day and retreated a few hours after darkness fell. Six months later, the regiment entered the Battle of Vicksburg, which resulted in nearly 5,000 Union casualties.

Harris had survived the warfare. He had survived the heat and humidity, the mosquitoes and malaria, the lack of food and clean water. But he wasn’t faring well. Beginning in December of 1863, he repeatedly fell ill and was hospitalized. On Aug. 4, 1864, he was given a surgeon’s discharge for disability and sent home from a Virginia medical center.

Back in Rhode Island, he found work as a bartender at the Hoyle House Hotel, built in 1739 on Cranston Street in Providence. His half-brother, Jenckes Harris, was the proprietor of the hotel and committed suicide there on July 15, 1869. He was found hanging in his bedroom, suspended by his linen overcoat with his knees almost touching the floor.

After his brother’s suicide, Orrin took over the running of the hotel, which served savory meat entrees and kept kept six barrels of intoxicants on tap.

On Jan. 1, 1879, he was walking home along the railroad tracks that snaked through Providence to Pawtucket when he was struck by a train of cars and killed instantly. He left behind two children; two others had died young. He also left his wife Sophia Olney (Mathewson), who would join him in eternal rest, in her family’s little burial yard, in 1896.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.

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