LCHS Annual Meeting

Wednesday, August 14, 7 PM

Free and Open to the Public

At the United Congregational Church, 4 South of Commons Rd, Little Compton

Featuring Steven Lubar’s Presentation, “Little Compton: Connected and Unconnected”

The Little Compton Historical Society will hold its annual meeting on Wednesday, August 14 at 7 pm at the United Congregational Church on the Commons. The event is free and open to the public.

After a 15-minute business meeting and the election of officers and board members, Little Compton Historical Society Board President Steven Lubar will present a slide lecture on how it was that Little Compton came to seem “so far away.”

Mention Little Compton, and you get two responses. “It’s so beautiful.” And, “It’s so far.” The first is certainly true. But the second? Why do we think of Little Compton as being far away? One of the first to claim that the town was hard to get to was Sarah Helen Whitman, a Providence poet and frequent visitor. In 1869 she writes of her summer in the town, noting its “charm of remoteness” and sighing, “So near, yet, oh, how far.” She compared the town to Walden, and Shangri-La. This talk will trace the history of the idea of Little Compton as an isolated, distant place, exploring the way it shaped the development of the town.