John Mawney appears in two different tours on this site. He achieved fame and notoriety in Rhode Island for his role as a Gaspee Raider, and he appears in the Gaspee tour. As a physician (or at least a medical student) he tended to Lieutenant Dudingston’s wounds after that 1772 raid, and in 1775 became a charter member of the Captain General’s Cavaliers.

And, as the original owner of the house at 135 Benefit St. made famous by “weird fiction” author H.P. Lovecraft as “The Shunned House,” he appears in the H.P. Lovecraft Tour.

His home at 135 Benefit Street was likely built by his mother, as guardian for her son, since it was constructed in 1764 when John was about 13 years old. Amey Gibbs Mawney had been widowed when John was a toddler, and she, John, and her daughter Hannah occupied the house.

John’s sister, Hannah, married Stephen Harris (a fellow member of the Cavaliers) in 1775. It’s interesting to note that the wedding ceremony was performed by Darius Sessions, Deputy Governor of the Rhode Island Colony, and one of those officials who thwarted any attempts to identify the Gaspee Raiders. (He must have known that John was among them.) John sold the 135 Benefit Street House to Stephen Harris in about 1785.

The house became known as “The Shunned House,” since “weird fiction” writer H.P. Lovecraft set a story of that name in the house in the 20th century. Lovecraft uses the Harris name for the fictional family whose sad history hangs over the story; he also makes use of the Mawney connection by describing Huguenot ancestors who were buried in the ground where the house was eventually built. Mawney was a Huguenot descendant—the name is a corruption of the French “LeMoine.”

Catherine Beyer Hurst, MBA, Writer and Community Historian

Further Reading

The Gaspee Virtual Archives, a site established and maintained by the Gaspee Days Committee, contains an excellent summary of the extant information about Joseph Brown, including research culled from a number of cited sources.

A history of the 135 Benefit Street house is contained in a WORD document that can be downloaded here