Késsinnimek - Roots - RacinesMon Petit Coin by Norm Léveillée
Harris Village and Harris Mill
Coventry & West Warwick, Rhode Island
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In my previous articles, I mentioned the village of Harris, located in the towns of Coventry and West Warwick, Rhode Island. In this article, I would like to give an historical background to the village of my birth.
(Click on photos for enlarged view)
Harris Mill was one of the sprawling textile mills built along the northwestern branch of the Pawtuxet River. Elisha Harris commissioned David Whitman in 1850 to build a mill on the shore of the Pawtuxet River. It contained carding machine rooms, looms and spinning frames with spindles, dye rooms and hand looms to weave yarn into cloth, all necessary to operate the cotton mill. Richard Arkwright built a textile mill north of Harris, on the same branch of the Pawtuxet, in Fiskeville. 
One of the employees of Harris Mill, as a boy, was Eben Tourgee, founder of the New England Conservatory of Music. Eben received his first music lesson from Elisha Harris' daughter Catherine.
At first, the superintendent of the mill used a horse and wagon to ride into the countryside to pick up his workers. Oftentimes, he returned with no or few workers. Elisha Harris decided to follow the example of John Slater who built multiple duplex houses surrounding his textile mill in the town of Smithfield. There, Slater created the first mill village in Rhode Island which later became known as Slatersville. Elisha Harris built some 35 or more two-family houses in rows behind his cotton mill, which became Harris Village.
Each house contained a home on the right consisting of three rooms downstairs, with a pantry and three bedrooms upstairs. There was a dirt cellar. The home on the left of the duplex was designed in the same manner. Several homes shared a well and retrieved their water through a hand-operated pump. There were outhouses scattered between the rows shared by the families. At the turn of the century, the houses were modernized with indoor plumbing and electricity.
Elisha Harris built himself a mansion at the outskirts of the village, facing the Pawtuxet River, halfway between his Harris Mill and the one at Arkwright, both eventually becoming the Interlaken Mills in the early part of the 20th century. Elisha Harris became Governor of Rhode Island. Henry Howard, a later superintendent of Harris Mill, married the daughter of Elisha Harris and also lived here. He also became Governor of Rhode Island. Today, the Harris Mansion is a nursing home. It might be of interest to our readers that Alexander Graham Bell was a guest in this mansion.
Until the 1870's, 1880's and 1890's, there were very few French-Canadians who migrated to the Valley of the Pawtuxet. There were a few Québecois who settled in Jericho (today's Arctic section of West Warwick, RI). Antoine FOURQUIN dit LÉVEILLÉE, my great-grandfather, was born and baptized 18 May 1834 in St-Michel d'Yamaska. He married Sophie LAMBERT on 20 Jul 1852 in St-David, Yamaska, Québec. With his family, he came to Harris Village in Coventry, RI on 7 February 1869, through the port of St-Albans, Vermont to work in the Harris Cotton Mill. Antoine worked in the mill for several years. Coincidentally, he lived in a mill house, on Mill Street, right next door to the house where I would live from 1935 to 1941. A cousin Pierre LÉVEILLÉE also worked in Harris Mill and lived on Harris Street, two houses up from where I was to live from 1941 to 1963. Antoine and his family returned to St-Aimé in 1879. It appears that Antoine was in ill-health because he died on 24 Jan 1880 at the age of 45 years in St-Aimé, Richelieu County, Québec.
One of Antoine's sons, my grandfather Joseph LÉVEILLÉE, returned to Harris Village around 1909. My grandfather dropped the "FOURQUIN" part of the family name. My father, Jean-Baptiste LÉVEILLÉE, was one of these sons. He was born in St-Aimé de Richelieu on 23 June and baptized on 24 June 1905. My great-grandfather Cyrille BÉLANGER, a maternal French-Canadian ancestor, Gédéon BÉLANGER Jeannette BÉLANGER I am sure that the reader has become aware in this and in previous articles that Harris Village played an important part in my life, as well as in the lives of my direct ancestors. When Interlaken Mills closed down its Harris Mill textile plant in the late 1940's, all my relatives who worked there were stranded out of work and were left to look desperately for other places to make a living. My father was one of the lucky ones since the Arkwright plant did not close its doors. He was able to continue to work for Interlaken Mills until 1965. Many of the sons and daughters of my parents' generation moved away from their mill village.
Recently, I visited the village of my birth and early life. There were memories of my childhood and of my ancestors strangely stirring within me as I revisited Mill and Harris Streets. The Mill is vacant now, having been used since 1950 to house various businesses; an art center has been proposed. The village itself has changed over the past 50 years. There are newer houses built now in the fields where we played; the old mill houses have been modernized. The families living therein are not my relatives. Harris Village no longer has the intimate feeling of my original mill village!
In order to assimilate themselves within this community, their French names changed into English: Paquin became Perkins, Leduc to Duke, Arpin to Harper. The French-Canadian-American mill village had not really come into existence prior to 1870. However, the Sprague brothers, William and Amassa, owners of most of the textile mills in the area, opened offices in the Province of Québec and their agents recruited hundreds of French-Canadian families to work in the mills.
These French-Canadians were hard workers, family oriented, religious and readily proved efficient at the loom or spinning frame. Several families notably from the Richelieu and Yamaska Counties of Québec, among them the family of my great-grandfather Antoine Fourquin Léveillée, joined together first for a boat ride down the St. Lawrence River, and then a railroad trip from Vermont to Rhode Island. Another group from Dorchester and Beauce Counties, west of Québec City, included my maternal great-grandfather Cyrille Bélanger, his wife Victoire Fournier and his family. Most of these families settled in the mill villages surrounding the Harris, Arkwright, Fiskeville and Hope Mills.
He came with his older children at that time and ironically settled in the same house on Mill Street that he had lived in with his father and mother from 1869 to 1879. In his natal village of St-Aimé de Richelieu, now called Massueville, my grandfather attended not only the Catholic elementary school, staffed by nuns, but also the "Collège", the high school taught by a religious order of brothers. Since Joseph had learned some English during his early years in Harris Village as well as at the "Collège", he was hired as a yard supervisor for Interlaken Mills at the Harris Mill complex. Since he was bilingual, he was able to interpret between the French-Canadians and the English mill owner and superintendent. His children, both sons and daughters, were hired to work in Harris Mill.
He came to Rhode Island in 1910 along with his pregnant mother, his younger brother and sister. They were accompanied by an older male cousin who served as chaperon for this trip. When my father completed the eighth grade at the Notre-Dame Catholic School, he went to work, at the age of 14, in the yard at Harris Mill. He married Jeannette BÉLANGER on 5 Sept 1932 in Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in West Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island. My father worked for Interlaken Mills, for 45 years: first in the yard and then as a truck driver for Harris Mill. Finally he worked at the Arkwright plant of Interlaken Mills as a boiler operator, until his death in 1965. I wrote fond memories about my father in the ancestry section of my site.
was born in 1839 in Ste-Marie-de-Beauce, Québec. He married Victoire FOURNIER on 7 Jun 1859 in St-Bernard, Dorchester County, Québec. He migrated to the Pawtuxet Valley around 1880 with his wife and four of his children, one of whom was my grandfather Gédéon. Five other children were born in Harris Village. He worked in Harris Mill from his arrival in Rhode Island until around 1905. His children also worked in Harris Mill. Cyrille died on 1 Jun 1918 in Coventry, Rhode Island at the age of 79 years.
was born and baptized on 6 Feb 1877 in St-Bernard, Dorchester County, Québec. He came to Rhode Island with his father, mother and three siblings around 1880. He married Mélina THÉROUX on 8 Jun 1896 in Notre-Dame, mission church of St-Jean-Baptiste Parish, West Warwick, RI. He became an American citizen on 24 February 1912 in Superior Court, Providence, RI. He worked both in the mill yard as well as in the warehouse of Harris Mill. Most of his children, one of whom was my mother Jeannette, worked in Harris Mill also. He died on 1 Nov 1948 in Coventry, Rhode Island. He was buried in Notre-Dame Cemetery, West Warwick, RI 4 Nov 1948.
was born on 1 March 1911 in Coventry, Kent County, Rhode Island and baptized 5 Mar 1911 in Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, West Warwick, Rhode Island. As a young girl of 14, she started working in the carding room of Harris Mill, 40 feet directly across from our 74 Mill Street home. As a child of 5 years old, I remember bringing supper to her with my father across the street. I also remember her leaning out the window of that workroom to wave a good night kiss to me, every weekday night. Her sister, my aunt Clarinda, worked alongside my mother. When our family moved to Harris Street, she no longer worked in that cotton mill. She died 4 Nov 2000, at the age of 89 years and 8 months, in Coventry, RI.
Material for this article came from my memory of stories that my father, my mother and grandfathers related to me years ago. Some of the photos and material came from Mathias P. Harpin (Arpin) in his books "The High Road to Zion" (1976) and "Trumpets in Jericho" (1961)
Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines
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Created 1 Feb 2003