But on September 16, the French minister, the chevalier de la Luzerne, met with Washington at West Point, New York to discuss strategy for the 1780 campaign. Up until the summer of 1779, even General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, had had reservations about the deployment of French ground forces in America. The decision in January 1780 to dispatch ground forces formed the core of a new strategy for the war in America in which the alliance was about to prove its greatest value. In 1778, France had hoped for a short war, but Sir Henry Clinton's successful foray into Georgia and South Carolina, and the failure of the combined operations at Newport and Savannah in 17, and an equally disastrous attempt at an invasion of England in the summer of the same year had dashed all hopes of a quick victory for the Franco-American alliance. Both sides were all too well aware of the historical and cultural obstacles that had grown up during decades of hostilities to assume French forces would be welcome in the United States. The possibility of sending ground forces to fight on the American mainland had been discussed and rejected as impracticable even before these treaties were signed. France had aided the colonies since the summer of 1775, well before their final break with Great Britain on July 4, 1776, and had formalized the relationship in two treaties of February 1778. Salve Regina University, which currently surrounds the area around The Breakers, would also not be founded until 1934.The arrival of 55-year-old General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, with an army of 450 officers and 5,300 men in Narragansett Bay off Newport, Rhode Island, on July 11, 1780, marked the beginning of a most successful military cooperation that culminated 15 months later in the victory at Yorktown. Learning from the past: Tiverton restaurant's anti-Semitic meme leads to lessons on Holocaust horrorsĬornelius Vanderbilt II would later purchase the land and the mansion on it in 1885 and build The Breakers mansion we see today after the original was destroyed in a fire in 1892. This property was purchased by a man named Pierre Lorillard IV the year this map was drawn, whose summer home, called The Breakers, would be completed on said property that same year. An atlas from Newport Public Library dated 1878 reveals a plot on Ruggles Avenue bordering the ocean owned by former R.I. Lt. Likewise, the 1777 map does not extend southeast enough to show the future location of the Bellevue Avenue summer mansions which began cropping up around the mid 19th century. Fort Adams, which sits near the southernmost tip of Aquidneck Island, would not be built until 1799 as a part of the newly independent country’s First System of coastal forts. The 1777 map, although limited in scope, may omit most of what we know as Newport today for a reason. We're not alone: A look at other places named Portsmouth around the world Fort Adams While most of Newport’s oldest historic landmarks, such as Old Stone Mill Tower, Great Friends Meeting House and White Horse Tavern pre-date the 1700s, there are some iconic fixtures of modern Newport missing from older maps. This is because the street would not be called Memorial Avenue until the late 1960s after it was combined with Levin Road and Cannon Street. A later map from 1936, which is available through the Newport Public Library archives, also shows Bath Road in the location where Memorial is today. Memorial Avenue is visible on this map, however, it's labeled as Bath Road. Saving history: 'It’s a piece of history': A homeowner's fight to save one of Newport's oldest buildings Memorial AvenueĪlthough the 1777 map does not extend past downtown, another map of Newport hosted on the Library of Congress’ digital archive, dated 1878, has a much larger and more detailed view of the rest of the city. This is because, although the neighboring synagogue was established 14 years before the map was drawn, it wouldn’t get the name “ Touro Synagogue” until 1822, when Newport native Abraham Touro’s will bequeathed $10,000 to the synagogue. The street listed as “Jew Street” at the top of the 1777 map, for example, is the original name for Bellevue Avenue, and the attached “Griffin Street” would later be named Touro Street. Many Newport streets and wharfs have the same names as they did back then, including major thoroughfares such as Thames Street, Spring Street and Long Wharf, however many streets and wharfs received major rebranding over the years.
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