Fulton/Howe Family Papers (UA 2012.02)

Historical note

In the early 1960s Mary Howe DeWolf Fulton and her husband Marshall N. Fulton, owners of Ferrycliffe Farm in Bristol, learned that Roger Williams College, then housed in the basement of the YMCA in Providence, was looking to build a new campus. The College acquired 63 acres of farmland from the Fultons, and in 1967 construction began. The remaining 50 acres of land were sold to the University in the early 1990s.

Ferrycliffe Farm dates back to 1875, when the 130 acre property was purchased by Dr. Herbert Marshall Howe for $20,000. The son of Mark Anthony DeWolf Howe, Herbert came from a prominent Philadelphia and Bristol family whose father was the Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, and who fathered 18 children with 3 wives. The family lived at "Weetamoe," a farm to the north of where Bristol Landing condominiums stand today.

At the time, Ferrycliffe lands extended across Metacom Avenue to the west shore of Bristol Point. Herbert grew up knowing Bristol Point well, and when he purchased Ferrycliffe, he also bought the200-acre Hog Island from his friend Samuel Pomeroy Colt. Both Howe and Colt raised Jersey dairy cows, and must have spent many hours comparing notes about the herds at Ferrycliffe and Colt Farms, now Colt State Park. Dr. Howe took great pride in his Ferrycliffe Jerseys. The prize of the herd was a magnificent bull named Gilderoy.

After Herbert's death in 1916, the farm was taken over by his daughter Edith and her husband Dr. Halsey DeWolf. Ferrycliffe’s cows continued to win acclaim. Under the management of Dr. Howe's granddaughter Mary Howe and her husband Marshall Fulton, farming continued on a smaller scale into the 1950s.