Haunted New England places - -Hanton City, Smithfield, Rhode Island

Hanton Smithfield Trail Photo

Here's the first of several blogs about Haunted New England places. It is one in a series from the Quincy Mass. Patriot Ledger newspaper.This one is Hanton City, Smithfield, Rhode Island.

  Hanton City, Smithfield, Rhode Island In the woods off the Hanton City Trail between Auxiliary Road and DeCotis Farm Road, enterprising explorers may find the remains of Hanton City, once a “lively and enterprising place,” according to Tom Hanton, who was the last of the Hantons to inhabit the town.

 Called by such ominous names as “Ghost City” and “Haunted City” and rumored to have been started by a colony of escaped slaves or quarantined plague victims, the origins of Hanton City are actually much more mundane.

 According to historians, the area was likely founded by three English families, one of which was the Hantons, who likely received the land as payment for fighting in King Philip’s War. Far from plague victims, the residents worked in nearby stone quarries and made shoes — until the quarries closed and factories made more shoes than they could ever cobble together by hand. Their income dried up and Hanton City’s residents moved on until it was slowly reclaimed by Mother Nature.