The Newport area has many connections to famous explorers. Verrazano was in Narragansett Bay in 1524 and Capt. James Cook’s ship Endeavour rests in Newport Harbor near Rose Island. James Gordon Bennett of Bellevue Avenue and his New York Herald bankrolled Henry Morton Stanley’s search for the lost missionary explorer, David Livingstone, in Africa.
In Tiverton, on 10 May 1755, William and Elizabeth Gray’s son Robert was born. Robert served in the American Revolution and later commanded the ship Columbia, which was the first vessel to sail into Oregon’s newly discovered Columbia River on 11 May 1792. The mouth of the river was later called Gray’s Harbor.
The Gray House in Tiverton, RI, birthplace of explorer Capt. Robert Gray. Image from the NHS collection.