Gaspee Days CommitteeHistory Files

Gaspee celebration:  From ideas to action Gaspee Days supplement to the Warwick Beacon, June 7-8, 1978, Page 10 By CLAUDIA AGRESTI L. Hazard Knowles, charter member of the Gaspee Day Committee, would like to see history books changed. If the Gaspee Days celebration accomplishes anything for all its work to commemorate the burning of the Gaspee, he hopes it would be to incorporate the event into teaching it as the ‘First Blow for Freedom.’ "The Boston Tea Party was just a copy of the Gaspee incident," he says, but regrets that that event gels more play in history books than the Gaspee incident. Of course, he added, "there is always a tendency to glorify the history that meets with approval." The burning of the Gaspee evidently didn't. But, he says, he wishes there were some way to find 'out what kind of credit should be given the incident that provided "more than just verbal resistance" against the British Crown. To Knowles, that is the Real purpose of Gaspee days. "If you tell' something long enough, it becomes the truth," he says. So in 1965, he joined with David Ludlow Stackhouse and formed the Gaspee Day Committee, so that the story could be told. At that time, he said Stackhouse approached the Mayor of Warwick, Horace Hobbs, with an idea for a celebration to mark the burning of the Gaspee. Hobbs sent Stackhouse to Knowles, who "thought it was a good idea." "We then prevailed upon Forrest R. Sprague to preside over meetings," he explained. "Stackhouse was the driving force. Without him, we couldn't have done it." The first meeting was composed of volunteers from local organizations who had been invited to participate. They met in Knowles' home in Pawtuxet, which had been the old Carder Tavern before Knowles' family converted it into a home in 1835. The city of Warwick and the State each contributed about $3000 to the first celebration. Knowles said the entire event cost only about $7000. They had a parade, in 1966, which was strictly colonial, he said. Relatives and friends dressed up as characters from history. They held a colonial ball, and had a fireworks display which Knowles ran himself "for years" afterwards. And the First Ward Republican Club held a clambake, from which the $400 proceeds were donated to the Committee to set up a building fund to provide a home--eventually, they hoped--for the Gaspee Day Committee. The Committee's first problem, from there, became a political one, but  worked to their advantage. "People began to think it was a bunch of Republicans running things," Knowles said. To alleviate the problem, he asked the Democrats to do something. They began running carnivals which not only eased the political problem, but ,expanded the celebration. The next year there were more problems. Charter members concur that there was a: fraction among them that was dissatisfied with Stackhouse for various reasons. It looked -like their problems would get the best of them. "I didn't want to be President in the first place," Knowles said, but in 1968 he took, over the chair in an effort to keep unity among the members. With Knowles as President, and with the added participation of the Democrats, the celebration grew again. "If it had been left up to the old Yankees," he said. "it would never have become this big. Yankees have a tendency to be over-conservative--they are frightened to death of red ink. When the Democrats came in with more liberal ideas and more nerve things began to improve we added on speedboat races and ball games." Knowles stepped down in 1969 and left the Presidency to Rene O. Bellavance, “Bellavance was left, with the political problems,” Knowles said, but he and his successors carried the celebration to where it is today, a more than .$30 thousand, more than week-long festival. "I look at these thousands of people," Knowles remarked, "and I think, that in many ways I am responsible for this:" Knowles would have liked the parade to have stayed with "the purity of colonialism," he said. "It should never become cheapened to a point to where just everybody marches in there--we have to draw a line.” But he doesn't object to the modern units. "You can't ask somebody else with more progressive ideas to take over and then hold them back,” he said. He was glad Gaspee days grew, so that word could be spread about Gaspee and so people would stop telling "a 200 year old lie." "And we're not trying to, get bigger than' Bristol," he said, "We're getting better," He even thinks Bristol is celebrating the wrong thing, because "the 4th of July is not Rhode Island Independence Day." He wishes the fireworks could be reinstated. They had been the big draw, he said. But, he agreed, he would not want to be responsible for what goes on in Salter Grove when fireworks are held. The fireworks were dropped when the Grove became a haven for trouble seekers. "The main idea," he reiterated, "is to get across, that the spark of the revolution was the Gaspee incident. After the burning, the House of Burgesses in Virginia wrote lo the other colonies, and formed Committees of Correspondence. And you know what the became, don't you? Within a year they changed the name to the First Continental Congress." Knowles' own great great grandfather, Christopher Sheldon, was a skipper on one of John Brown's long boats, he said. His ancestry dates back to the original commander of the Pawtuxet Rangers, Samuel Aborn whose sword Knowles carries as a member of today's Rangers. Knowles, in fact, is well read on his own ancestry and on the details of the: Gaspee incident. His family owned the land he lives on since 1635, when William Arnold came as an original settler of Pawtuxet, he said. The name Hazard Knowles has passed through generations, and came to Pawtuxet after a history in Jamestown and Newport. Knowles is proud of his ancestry, and wishes everyone were. He says the tendency to be proud is greater with a heritage to take pride in. But, he added, an individual has no right to take pride in his name if he does not live up to his reputation. As a descendant of the very earliest Americans, Knowles is a member of several organizations for the sons and daughters of families who date as far back as the Mayflower. Knowles believes in his heritage, and in the family, and most of all, he believes in honesty. He agreed that honesty is sometimes tactless, but says, "The best way to be disliked, is to be honest, because you are embarrassing somebody…who isn't."

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