[Rarebooks] F/S Rhode Island Broadside / Mandatory Road-Mending c1810

[Garry R Austin]

We offer for your consideration the following, net to all and postpaid @$20
From
Austin's Antiquarian Books
PO Box 730
Wilmington, Vt. 05363
mail at austinsbooks.com
802 464-8438


(Broadside) Extracts From Statutes of Rhode Island; Digest of 1798, Page 
384. (Providence: State of Rhode Island,  c1810.
Printed on full margined paper with black ink measuring 7" x 8.25"; Near 
fine; We were unable to locate any Institutional copies nor any in the 
cyber marketplace. Ink notation in left margin by lower paragraph, 
"Supplement...." "June 1808".  This broadside prints the two sections of 
& supplement to the laws regarding mandatory road work from the 
citizenry. It clearly defines the work and fines for evading the 
obligation for men and for men with teams of horses.

See History below;

Each New England town was responsible for building and maintaining all 
roads within its limits. Colonial laws originally had required all adult 
males with few exceptions to work a certain number of days each year in 
the roads. These laws were revised during the eighteenth century so that 
by 1800 most towns annually voted a highway tax assessed in proportion 
to the value of property holdings. But these taxes continued to be paid 
in labor, and in halfhearted labor at that. Although conditions varied 
somewhat from town to town, indifference in most cases prevented 
significant improvement. A Connecticut man complained in 1797 that the 
people of many towns in that state "have gone fifty or an hundred years 
through sloughs, as often as they have gone to the house of God, and 
probably they would be content to do the same fifty years more unless 
the public relieves them." Even the main street of "a flourishing and 
beautiful country town," according to an account written in 1803, was 
likely to be littered with pieces of old fences and firewood, "old sleds 
bottom upwards, carts, casks, weeds and loose stones, lying along in 
wild confusion." The roadway itself would be "scandalously bad; foot 
ways, or cross paths, ruts and gutters, with stones at every step, 
disturb the traveler in his carriage, and the teamsters with their 
loads. In a road of 80 miles, the worst part is that which passes 
through this charming street!" And voters indifferent to their own 
convenience, were even less inclined to exert themselves for the benefit 
of outsiders who passed through town on the main highways.
-- 
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