After 51 years researching for the Bristol Historical & Preservation Society’s Historic Plaque Program, historian and librarian Rei Battcher has seen a lot. He estimates he’s researched six homes a year in that time, close to 300 properties in all.

But his recent undertaking — researching the provenance of the house at 82 Thames St. — was full of surprises. The biggest one? It is nearly a century older than it has long been thought to be.

The small house with the gambrel roof was recently purchased by Dan Barnes. Originally from Connecticut, he has family in the area and wanted to relocate here from Austin, Texas a couple of years ago. He looked for homes in Jamestown and Newport, where his father and uncle live, respectively. But he did not find anything suitable — until he and his dad were walking down Thames Street one day and they saw #82. At first Barnes was put off by the amount of work he thought the property would need, but he came around after it languished on the market for a bit.

“I guess you could say I'm handy to the extent of being dangerous,” Barnes said. “I've never done anything like this. So I figured if I'm going to do something I might as well pick the toughest one to learn everything.”

Armed with help from his father and some YouTube videos, Barnes launched his renovations shortly after purchasing the property in late 2022; he brought in construction help at the end of last summer. He says they are still doing finish work, but the end is in sight. “It's been a learning experience.”

Late last year, Barnes reached out to BHPS and Battcher, hoping to obtain an official Historic Plaque. The house had an unofficial plaque that dated it to 1771, but Battcher had no record that the title chain had ever been properly documented.

“The first thing I do is I go and look at the property,” said Battcher. “I came down and saw the gambrel roof and thought for sure, 1770 to 1790s.”

Almost as old at the Town itself
When researching a title chain, Battcher immerses himself in the Town vaults, pouring over land records, wills, and vital records, to reconstruct a property’s ownership history.

“I traced it back to 1770 and it kept going, all the way back,” said Battcher of Barnes’ house. “I said, I can't go back too much further because you know, Bristol won't be here.”

He traced the deeds all to way back to the purchase of the lot on May 30, 1690. For perspective, one of Bristol’s four founding fathers, John Walley, recorded that deed; Nathaniel Byfield, another of the founders, owned the property next door.

The purchaser of the land was Colonel Nathaniel Paine, who was born in Rehoboth on Oct. 18, 1661. He married Dorothy Raynesford of Boston and would serve as a colonel in the Rehoboth militia, a judge of the Court of Probate and Common Pleas, and a counselor for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Together he and his wife had 12 children, of whom 9 survived him when he died and was buried at sea in February, 1724. Dorothy lived until 1755 and she died at age 91, leaving 6 surviving children.

Both died intestate — leaving no last will — and if you think that’s not something that should matter to a researcher who is looking at the details of your estate 300 years later, you would be very wrong. Following those many divergent threads made this one of the more challenging chains Battcher has ever reconstructed.

“It took 16 weeks,” he said. “And I figured I did about three hours a day Monday through Friday, so that's a little over 300 hours of research.”
Originally the lot went from the east side of Thames Street to the west side of Hope Street, and across Thames Street to the water. A fire in the late 1840s or early 1850s took out many neighboring houses, but this one was spared.

Battcher dates the house to c. 1695, largely based on an educated guess.
“We know he buys a lot in 1690 and by 1695 they have a bunch of kids — so the house has got to be here by then,” Battcher said.
A second date, c. 1884, is also on the Plaque, representing when the building was raised one story. “The way I found that out was there were two ‘birds eye views’ of Bristol, and in the 1877 one this house appears as a one and a half story structure; in 1891 it appears as a two and a half story structure,” said Battcher. “I split the difference. The median was 1884.”
In the nearly 330 years since the little house at 82 Thames was built, there were over 70 deed transactions identified by Battcher, with the house actually changing hands more than 25 times. It was owned by Paines and Phillipses, several different deWolfs, Russells, Barretts, Knights, and Rosses, among many others.

One of only 3 remaining 17th century homes
Though Bristol was incorporated in 1681, two attacks by British forces during the Revolution destroyed much of the housing stock in downtown at that time, so now most of the oldest extant homes date from that period or later. The 1695 date makes the Nathaniel Paine house older than all but one property in town: the 1683 Nathaniel Bosworth House at 814 Hope Street. It is older than the 1698 Joseph Reynolds House at 956 Hope Street, from which the Marquis de Lafayette executed the Battle Of Rhode Island during the Revolution.
“I can’t thank Rei enough,” Barnes said “It’s a great thing to have as a resource and fun to read through. Just to know the history, it's the icing on the cake. It's awesome.”
For Battcher, deed research is a labor of love that lets him keep a hand in one of his passions. “I wanted to be an architect when I was a kid, but I found out you have to do math,” he laughed.

Historic Plaque Program
Do you want Battcher to work his magic on your historic home? If your house is at least 50 years old, retains most of its original exterior architecture, and represents the period and architecture in which it was built, contact the BHPS to determine whether your house is eligible and if any research has already been done on it.
All houses are researched prior to the ordering of the wooden plaque from the sign-maker. The $500 cost includes the personalized wooden plaque itself and research for the title chain and for checking mortgages, tax records, maps, newspapers, genealogies, wills, probates, town directories and other primary sources to prove the date of construction. Although the method for the research is standardized, no two title chains are identical so the time may vary greatly. Research through probate records is especially time consuming and often requires genealogy work to be undertaken at the same time to reveal the heirs and administrators of the estates.
To begin the process of ordering your plaque, call the BHPS at 401-253-7223 or email info@bhpsri.org. Please be sure to include the property address in your message.