We assume that the places we live in, work in, and travel through every day tell an accurate story about the history of that place. In reality, all that we have is such a tiny portion of all of the buildings, squares, gardens, markets, schools, and neighborhoods we’ve constructed over time. And although historic Benefit Street and surrounding College Hill in Providence is in many ways an exemplar of historic preservation, with many 200-year-old buildings still intact, it presents a narrow view into this neighborhood’s history. Part of the work of preservationists is uncovering and animating the lost histories so we can see the past and our present moment in full technicolor.
The Bethel A.M.E. Church at 185 Meeting Street in 1956
In the latter half of the 19th Century, a small but vibrant community of Black citizens lived on Meeting Street in Providence, immediately to the west of Thayer Street. The heart of this enclave was the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was founded in 1795 had occupied a number of temporary buildings in the area before a permanent brick church structure was built in 1865.[i] Today, essentially no trace of this neighborhood remains, with Brown University buildings, restaurants, and parking lots occupying the block. A small bronze plaque marking the former location of Bethel A.M.E. Church[ii] is the only evidence of this once-thriving community.
However until the late 1990s, a small, unassuming Greek Revival cottage stood at 215 Meeting Street, a photograph of which was found in PPS’s recently digitized architectural slide collection. Research revealed that this house (located to the rear of the Avon Cinema) was the last standing 19th century residential structure on the block, and that it had been owned by a single family for more than 100 years before it was torn down and replaced with a parking lot.
215 Meeting Street in the 1970s
Built sometime around 1850, the home mostly served as a rental property for a series of working-class Irish and Black families and then owned by members of the Jackson family[iii] until it was sold in 1894 to Samuel John Abrams and his wife, Henrietta. Samuel was a Pennsylvania-born Black man who had moved to Rhode Island as an adult with his mother Catherine, and stepfather Nathan Green in the 1870s. Samuel was a Civil War veteran who served as a Sergeant in the 127th US Colored Infantry Regiment.[iv] He worked as a nurse, and was active in many of Providence’s Black Masonic organizations.
In 1882 he married Henrietta Elizabeth Jefferson, a Providence-born woman who was an alumna of the Meeting Street School. Henrietta and her siblings had grown up just a few houses down from 215 Meeting Street, with her widowed mother, who worked as a laundress.[v] In 1862, 11-year-old Henrietta signed a petition to the Rhode Island legislature for equal school rights, indicating a notable level of civic engagement for a girl of her age.[vi] Her mother died when Henrietta was still a teenager, leaving her a rental property that provided her a reliable income,[vii] though she also worked as a domestic servant in the household of Stephen A. Cooke, who was the assistant city solicitor of Providence.[viii]
An 1862 petition for equal schooling, signed by Providence residents, including Henrietta Jefferson
Henrietta and Samuel had a large family together and continued to live on Meeting Street during the 1880s and ’90s. By 1894, they saved enough funds for their own home and bought 215 Meeting Street,[ix] becoming one of the few Black homeowners (as oppos
ed to renters) in the area. The property was valued around $1,460 for tax purposes shortly after its purchase.[x] After the death of Samuel’s stepfather in 1902, the family also rented the house across the street at 212 Meeting as a residence for their eldest son and Samuel’s widowed mother Catherine (who also worked as a nurse). Various family members split their time between the two properties[xi] until Catherine’s death in 1919 at the age of 96. A detailed obituary and portrait of her was printed in the Providence Journal.[xii]
Esther Julia Abrams – 1910 RI Normal School class photo
The Abrams family included eight children who reached adulthood. A daughter, Esther Julia, graduated from the Rhode Island Normal School in 1910[xiii] and later received a BS in Education from Hunter College,[xiv] teaching in public schools in Maryland, Delaware, New York, and Connecticut. Another daughter, Etta Catherine, followed in her father’s footsteps and became a nurse, training at Lincoln Hospital in New York, and working at a home for orphaned African-American children in Philadelphia for many years.[xv] A son, Chester Nathaniel, was a World War I veteran, a member of the VFW, and worked as a custodian in the Wayland Square neighborhood of Providence after the war.[xvi]
Though many of their children lived in other cities and states at different points of their lives, the house at 215 Meeting
Street in Providence remained a constant in the Abrams family. Throughout the 20th Century, family members continued to populate the home, even as the surrounding buildings in the neighborhood (including the Bethel A.M.E Church the Abramses were members of) were torn down to make way for university buildings and gas stations. The last surviving Abrams sibling, Mabel, who never married and worked as a Girl Scout troop leader for many years,[xvii] was still living in the home by herself at age 100 in 1992.[xviii] It wasn’t until 1998 (a year before Mabel’s death) that the home was finally sold out of the family[xix] and was torn down shortly afterward and replaced with a parking lot.
The demolition of the home at 215 Meeting Street seems to have been met with no public opposition, including from PPS. Though the home was documented in Providence: A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources as “the only surviving structure of a small black community,”[xx] contemporaneous PPS newsletters do not include any mention of the loss of this important part of the city’s Black history. Unfortunately, the story of 215 Meeting Street reflects of the fate of many of Providence’s Black neighborhoods, which have disappeared via the steady transfer of property into the hands of institutional and commercial interests, frequently leading to wholesale demolition and redevelopment. It is also a cautionary tale of what has happened and continues to happen to properties that lack local historic district protections. Although PPS cannot recover these lost buildings, we can share the stories of the people who once cared for them and called them home, providing a glimpse into the vibrant but vanished history of our city.
Samuel John Abrams (1845 – 1930) and Henrietta Jefferson Abrams (1851 – 1917)
The PPS Staff, led by Kate Blankenship, continues to uncover the histories of the Meeting Street School — the first public school for students of color in Providence — and the community it served on College Hill during the 19th Century.
[i] “Ceremony of Laying of the Corner Stone of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Meeting Street,” Providence Evening Bulletin, June 23, 1865
[ii] “East Side Underground Railroad site to be commemorated Oct. 28,” The Brown University News Bureau, October 20, 1995
[iii] Providence: A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources
[iv] “Catherine N. Green, Colored, Dead Here at Age 96,” Providence Evening Bulletin, September 26, 1919
[v] 1865 Providence City Census
[vi] “Petition of Joseph Dailey and other asking for equal school rights,” January 1862
[vii] Will of Esther Ann Jefferson, March 1869
[viii] 1880 US Federal Census
[ix] “Transactions in Real Estate,” Providence Evening Bulletin, December 22, 1894
[x] 1897 City of Providence Tax Book
[xi] 1915 Providence City Census
[xii] “Catherine N. Green, Colored, Dead Here at Age 96,” Providence Evening Bulletin, September 26, 1919
[xiii] “Graduating Class, State Normal School,” Providence Evening Bulletin, June 24, 1910
[xiv] “Sixty-Fourth Commencement,” Hunter College of the City of New York, June 14, 1933
[xv] “Etta C. Abrams,” Providence Journal, June 24, 1980
[xvi] “Chester N. Abrams,” Providence Journal, July 7, 1965
[xvii] “Mabel L. Abrams,” Providence Journal, June 12, 1999
[xviii] “100 Now: Mabel Abrams,” Providence Journal, August 6, 1992
[xix] “Real estate transactions,” Providence Journal, July 4, 1998
[xx] Providence: A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources