The George Douglas House is an historic house at Tower
Hill and Gilbert Stuart Roads in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Its
oldest section dated to the 1730s, it is one of a small number of
surviving colonial-era stone ender houses in the state. This original
block is three bays wide and two stories high, with a massive fieldstone
chimney at its north end. Its exterior ornamentation is minimal, limited
to pilasters on either side of the main entrance, and a triangular
pediment above. A small kitchen ell was added to the north side (next to
the chimney, which remains exposed), probably early in the 19th century,
and a bedroom further extended this ell in the 1940s.[2]
The house
was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975
George Douglas (or Douglass)
bought two acres of land in North Kingstown from one John Watson in
1737. The house he built on that land still stands in a charmingly
landscaped setting set back from the corner at the intersection of Tower
Hill and Gilbert Stuart Roads. Although it has twice been restored, Its
original character has been preserved and, except for an ell that was
added in modern times, the external appearance of the simple two-story
dwelling remains unchanged. A particularly striking architectural
feature is the bee-hive oven which extends from the end chimney.
The date of construction, 1738, is carved in this chimney, as are the
initials GM set above the letter D to indicate the name of the builder
and owner, George and Mary Douglass.
Although the house was not
large, the family was. There were seven children, the oldest of whom was
a son John. He became a blacksmith and established himself in Little
Rest in 1753 where he was well known for some twenty years.
Court
records indicate that the homestead in North Kingstown continued to be
in the hands of the Douglas family through most of the nineteenth
century. One such record in 1828 indicates that a member of the family
was awarded fifty dollars in damages for a blow on the nose delivered by
one of his neighbors, but the cause of this altercation remains unknown.
Happily such contentious incidents were few and the Douglass family
pursued the usual pattern of the hard-working resourceful, and
law-abiding people of South County.
See also:
George
Douglass House, Pennsylvania
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