Westerly Sun Column | Celebrating the 4th Through the Centuries

Tomorrow, the library will be closed in celebration of the 4th of July. We tend to associate Independence Day with activities like parades, picnics and barbeques, fireworks displays, baseball games, and large gatherings, which made me wonder: has it always been this way? How did our ancestors celebrate the birth of our nation? I decided to dip into the Westerly Sun archives that we have on microfilm to find out. Spoiler alert: it was not all that different!

Our microfilm goes back to the mid-1800’s, when the paper was known as the Narragansett Weekly. I started with the celebration in 1876, which was printed on July 6th. The paper declares that the “Centennial Fourth-of-July appears to have been celebrated with a ‘pomp and circumstance’ hitherto unknown.” The day began at 4 a.m. (oof), when “all the bells of the village commenced ringing, which was kept up for half an hour.” Later in the day there was a massive parade through town, which included an Antietam statue, mounted on a stone wagon and drawn by eight oxen. Pretty typical. Of course, the day ended with fireworks. In a town council meeting on July 3, permission was granted to those who wished to “explode fireworks” on the land of Rowse Babcock … now known as Wilcox Park.

The 150th anniversary was quite similar, though it did include the addition of (quite a few) automobiles. The paper notes that the traffic broke all previous records, especially coming into Westerly from Connecticut. In the afternoon, there was a massive jam along Broad and West Broad Street, caused by an out-of-town driver who “stopped his car close to the traffic signal opposite the Christ Church, and took his time to consult his guide book to find his way to Providence.” If we replace “guide book” with “smartphone,” it’s absolutely something that would happen today. Aside from this, it seems the holiday was fairly low-key, with the paper declaring that “Although fireworks were plentiful [...], Westerly for the most part observed the Fourth of July in an orderly manner that left no bad after effects such as often accompany Independence Day celebrations,” and later commenting that “it is a rather remarkable fact that not a single accident from the use of fireworks came to the attention of the police.” Let’s try for the same this year, folks!

Festivities from the following years (at least, 1951 and 1976) were astonishingly similar. Tons of traffic. Record-breaking crowds. Family picnics in the park. Yada, yada, yada. Aside from a few (ok, a lot) more fireworks injuries than I hope we encounter these days, our celebrations now and two centuries ago are nearly identical. I’m not sure what I expected, but — honestly — this wasn’t it! So what did we learn today? Plan your travel routes in advance to avoid clogging up traffic. Enjoy your long-held family traditions. And, finally, although so much has remained the same, you no longer have permission to set off fireworks in Wilcox Park. Enjoy your holiday!

by Cassie Skobrak, Adult Services Librarian