Woonsocket, Rhode Island, USA
1895 - Woonsocket

Woon'sock'et, a city of Rhode Island, and one of the capitals of Providence co., is situated at the northern boundary of the state, on both sides of the Blackstone River, 16 miles N. by W. of Providence, 37 miles S.W. of Boston, and 28 miles S.S.E. of Worcester. It is on the Worcester division of the New York, New Haven & Hart ford Railroad, and the central division of the New York & New England Railroad. Branch trains connect with the main line (eastern division) of the New York & New Eng land Railroad, which passes 1 1/ 2 miles N. of the centre of the city. Woonsocket contains 6 national banks, 4 savings: banks (with deposits of over $7,000,000), a building and loan association, public and free schools (including high, manual-training, and kindergarten schools), the Harris Institute (with a free library of 20,000 volumes), 3 daily (l in French) and 2 weekly newspapers, 12 churches, 16 religious societies, with parochial and convent schools, and parish house theatre, gymnasiums, etc. It has a county court house (erected in 1895), an opera-house, a public cottage hospital, water-works, electric street-railway, streets lighted by electricity, and other modern municipal conveniences. Eight highway bridges span the Blackstone, one (completed in 1895) costing $300,000. Over 100 acres are in public parks. The city is the trading centre of northern Rhode Island and adjoining Massachusetts towns. The prosperity of the city is chiefly due to its manufacturing: There are ten cotton-cloth manufactories, employing 2" persons; 8 woollen- and worsted-mills, employing 1800, 2 rubber-shoe-factories, 1500; and manufactories of knit. goods, wringers, mill and general machinery, boxes, harness-pads, spools and bobbins, and other products, 1500 more. There is extensive water-power. More than half the inhabitants are of French-Canadian nativity. Pop, in 1880, 16,050; in 1890, 20,830; in 1895 (estimated), 27,000.

Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World: A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer Or Geographical Dictionary of the World Containing Notices of Over One Hundred and Twenty-five Thousand Places ... Joseph Thomas January 1, 1895 J.B. Lippincott

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