Coventry Roots: Anthony

The town of Coventry was originally part of the 1643 Shawmut Purchase which also consisted of Warwick and West Warwick.  The Purchase went all the way to the Connecticut border and in 1741 the citizens of this section of Warwick petitioned the General Assembly to form a new town. 

The petition passed and the Town of Coventry was formed.  The reason the citizens gave for forming a new town was that they were tired of having to travel to Warwick to conduct their civic business.  At this time many families had been living here for generations and with the coming of the industrial revolution the town of Coventry was divided into separate villages. In this piece we will be exploring the history of the Village of Anthony.

Anthony was originally known by the names, Greenville and The Quaker Village. The village is located on the southwestern part of the Pawtuxet River, more commonly known as the Flat River. Anthony consists of the following streets, Anthony, Arnold, Boston, Mapledale, Meeting, Taft, Washington and Laurel Avenue. 

The name of Greenville came about as the site was once owned by the Greene Family.  In the eighteenth century, the family ran a forge, gristmill and saw mill in this section of Coventry.  Most of the villagers, including the Anthony brothers were members of the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, who had been residing in this area since the mid 1700s and were part of the Greenwich Monthly Meeting.  They attended meetings at the Quaker Meeting House located today on Meeting Street.  The Quakers constructed the building in 1825 and used this structure until 1915 for their meetings. Today the building is used as a club.

In the nineteenth century Anthony was referred to as the capital of the town of Coventry.  This label was given to the village because it was the social and political hub of the village. 

In 1805, the brothers William Anthony, Richard Anthony and a few others purchased the water rights from the Greene family and formed a corporation called the Coventry Manufacturing Company. The village of Anthony was established in 1806 when the textile firm called the Coventry Manufacturing Company constructed one of the first cotton mills near the homestead of General Nathanael Greene, Rhode Island’s Revolutionary War Hero.  In 1810 the Anthony Mill was the largest mill in the state, standing six stories high. The original mill was converted to a three-story warehouse and in 1874 the Coventry Company constructed the stone mill you see standing alongside Route 117 and Laurel Avenue.  

The modern village of Anthony is hard to distinguish from the villages of Washington and Quidneck because of the widening of Route 117, but as you are driving along, you can still see the buildings and the factory that differentiated this village.