In researching for Little Compton's upcoming 350th birthday celebration, I have found a few facts that would probably not fit in a column by themselves, but I found them interesting and fun. So here goes:

• The upstairs of the town hall was the three-year high school until 1929, when the Josephine Field Wilbur School was opened.
• The Palmer Bakery was located in what is now the gymnasium parking lot. They made deliveries house to house by horse and wagon.
• There used to be a picket fence around the west end of Pike’s Peak.
• P.F. Little was the editor of the “Village Bell,” published in Little Compton during the mid-1800s.  Mr. Little also published “The Comptonian Platonic” which was “issued semi-occasionally at Little Compton, R.I.”  The price of the Platonic was two cents.
• There was a nursery-kindergarten in the Methodist church, run by Avis Bliss. She had quite a large class until there was a gas shortage during the war and no one wanted to use their gasoline to bring the children to school!
• There were two bowling allies in town — One on the Commons end of Willow Avenue, and one at Sakonnet Point, underneath the Fo’c’sle. In Ida Wilbur Smith’s diary she mentions a weekly bowling league consisting of Ida and Fred Smith, Edith and Otho Wordell, Mae and Brooks Dennis, and Julia and Fred Bodington. They bowled at the Sakonnet Point alley.
• In 1939, the phone number for Little Compton Town Hall was 4.
• Leo Gallagher, lighthouse keeper, reported that during the hurricane of 1944 a wave went over the top of the lighthouse, which is 80 feet high!
• In 1930, John Ganze was transferred to the Sakonnet Light from a comfortable post as assistant at New Jersey’s Highland Light. The Treasury Department ran the lighthouses then and supplied only one cord of wood for the winter, and when that ran out, you were on your own. He remembered the Sakonnet Light as being so cold he had to sleep with five or six blankets. And all this for $110 per month!
• The Sakonnet Light’s signature flash was a fixed white light, followed by three red flashes equally spaced. After the 1938 hurricane a foghorn was installed.
• Colonel Henry Tillinghast Sisson, whose statue stands at Union Cemetery on the Common, invented the three-ring binder.
• J. Edgar Newton invented the FLIP FLOP fly bat.  From what I can see this invention had to have the full cooperation of the fly!
• Wilbur’s Store was not always Wilbur’s Store.  Before 1894, Wilbur’s was owned by the Richmonds and was called P.B. Richmond’s.  In 1894, Maria Richmond sold the store to Charles R. Wilbur and William S. Wood (Charles’ brother-in-law), and it was then named Wilbur and Wood. In 1897, William Wood decided to move to Fall River and open a fish market, so he sold his share to Charles Wilbur, and the store became known as Charles R. Wilbur’s Store. When Charles died in 1914, the store became known by its current name, the Estate of C.R. Wilbur, Wilbur’s for short.
• Lewis Rogers, in addition to housing and maintaining Little Compton’s school buses, drove the bus routes for 53 years!
• Edward H. Bowen, as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, introduced the legislation that made the Rhode Island Red our state bird.
• Abel Head (Shanghai) Pierce, born in Little Compton in 1834, served in the Confederate Cavalry during the Civil War.
• Bertrand Shurtleff, born in Adamsville in 1897, authored and published 14 books and sold stories to over 60 magazines. He was a professional football player and wrestled professionally under the name “Mad Murdock.”
 
Some of these facts, and more, can be seen in the Men & Women from Little Compton’s Past, 2025 calendar, published by LC350, and available for purchase from www.LC350th.com, or at the LC350 store in the north end of the Brownell House, open Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 1.
The first event of the 350th birthday year for Little Compton will be a POLAR PLUNGE on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2025, at noon at Sakonnet Harbor. Come on down and plunge, or just cheer on the brave souls who do! And don’t forget to wish Little Compton a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

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