In 1770, twenty-seven-year-old Quaker and iron-master Nathanael Greene built this house, a well-preserved eighteenth-century structure of simple yet refined design, beside an iron forge on the Pawtuxet River that manufactured ship’s anchors and chains and, as part of industries owned and managed by the Greene family, served as the primary source of employment for the men of Coventry. Greene’s sense of responsibility to his employees and his respect for formal education, which he lacked, led him to open his home and provide a teacher for local children, giving the house the name “Spell Hall.” In 1774, Nathanael married Catharine “Caty” Littlefield of Block Island, but the quiet married life they envisioned was overtaken by the political conflict between the American Colonies and Britain. Immediately after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, militia private Nathanael Greene was promoted by the Rhode Island General Assembly to brigadier general and given command of the Rhode Island militia regiments, then quickly marched his troops to aid Massachusetts; during the war, his brother Jacob and Jacob’s wife Peggy moved into the house with Caty. The Continental Congress later promoted Greene to major general, and the former Quaker, self-educated and without military experience, became known as the Strategist of the American Revolution. At Valley Forge in the winter of 1777/78, Major General Greene accepted a demotion to quartermaster general, bringing stability to that office and provisions to an army in desperate condition. In the autumn of 1780, as the British Army focused on the South, Congress and General Washington placed him in command of the Southern Campaign to subdue the British; through keen tactics, including guerrilla warfare and planned retreats, he weakened the British and gradually drew them into Washington’s snare and ultimate defeat at Yorktown in 1782. Even after victory, he continued for another year to lay siege to the British in the South and was forced to assume personal financial responsibility for supplying his troops when other means of support failed. Shortly after the war, Nathanael signed the house and forge over to Jacob and moved his family to Savannah, Georgia, in 1785. On June 19, 1786, Nathanael Greene died at age forty-four; some believed he died of sunstroke, while others questioned whether the hardships of the Southern Campaign and the stress of his enormous financial burden caused his death. In 1791, Catharine Greene successfully petitioned Congress and received money toward repaying the debt Nathanael had incurred supplying his troops during the war. The house remained in the Greene family for two more generations before being sold in 1915, and in 1919 four members of the Kent County Chapter of Sons of the American Revolution purchased and restored it, giving it the name Nathanael Greene Homestead.
