Matthew’s Church in Cranston where they had been Sunday regulars. Peckham while both attended the University of R.I. By 1953 they were married, with 2 children and living in a run-down rental at the top of Peckham Road, while her husband returned to work on the family farm. Mary Jane lost her idolized father during this transitional period and her mother struggled to cope with widowhood. Ella moved to LC to be near her daughter and bought a small house not far away. We understand that she lived there for less than 2 months when a violent thunder storm scared this urban senior over to Al and Mary Jane’s place…and she never left.Īs descendants of Irish Catholics, mother and daughter were devout members of that faith and got used to the more modest Catholic church at The Commons, compared with the cathedral-like St. Mary Jane, a graduate of Providence’s prestigious Classical High School, had met Albert R. Mary Ellen Gillis Barry (Ella) and her daughter Mary Jane Barry Peckham came to live in Little Compton from Providence RI in the early 1950s. I am recording 2 such women in my life. My mother and her mother. I am the 5th generation to be raised in the same farmhouse on the corner of Peckham and West Main Roads. The “outsider” label seems irrelevant. Many of our greatest Community Leaders moved to town from elsewhere and we are better off for their contributions. The history of Little Compton women is filled with those who felt like outsiders or newcomers even though they had spent much of their lives in town or made a big impact on our community.
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