Alice Smith was born November 22, 1733 in Providence, Rhode Island as the fourth child of Daniel and Dorcas (Harris) Smith. Her biography reveals something of the joy and suffering typical of 18^th century family life. Alice was twenty when she married Ambrose Page in Providence in 1753. Their first son Benjamin was born in March the same year. She bore ten children in all, including seven sons and three daughters. Unfortunately, only four of them survived childhood. William was the second son, born in 1754, followed by Job in 1756 and George in 1757. Sadly, the infant George died in 1758 at fourteen months and nine days old. A year later Alice gave birth to her fifth son, also George, and another two years passed before Henry was born in 1761. Tragedy struck the Page family in the autumn of 1762 when eight year old William died on October 6 ^th, followed by one year old Henry just seven days later. Five days after Henry's death, three year old George died too. In the wake of all this heartbreak, Alice gave birth to their first daughter, Sally, in August 1763. The seventh son, William, was born two years later, and two years after that came Molly, their ninth child. Finally, Dorcas was born in 1771; she was just nine months and nineteen days old when she died on December 10, 1771. This marked the beginning of another round of tragedy for the family, as five year old Molly died on February 27, 1772 and then Alice herself died on March 13, 1772, nine days shy of her eldest son Benjamin's nineteenth birthday. Not every woman in colonial America bore ten children, but such a figure was not unusual. Unfortunately, the high rate of childhood mortality within the Page household also was not uncommon and the pain Alice and Ambrose Page experienced in losing six of their children would have been well understood by their friends and neighbors.

The roots of the Page family extend back to the beginning of Rhode Island's history. Ambrose Page was the son of William and Mary (Soule) Page. William Page's father was from Rhode Island but moved his family to Massachusetts. William and his wife Mary (Soule) Page moved to Providence from Dartmouth, Massachusetts in 1718. William began his working life as a blacksmith and later became a merchant. In 1729 he donated his property at 24 Meeting Street in Providence for the construction of the first county courthouse. The courthouse was completed in 1731 and was large enough to be used as the Towne’s Publick House. William Page died in January 1758 so he did not live to see the accidental fire that burned down the court house on December 24, 1758. The property reverted back to William’s heirs. Today, 24 Meeting Street is home to the Old Brick School House that was originally constructed in 1769.

Ambrose Page inherited his father's merchant business and several properties, which included four lots, several acres, a house, a store, and a barn on the wharf. Ambrose was a sea captain during the Seven Years War and also a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly. He first married Robe Carpenter in 1743 and after her death he married Alice Smith. When she died in 1772 he was remarried later that year to the widow of Captain Christopher Hopkins, Sarah Jenckes. Sarah had seven children from her marriage to Hopkins and Ambrose Page and Sarah had one child a year after their wedding. They named him George William Page. Ambrose Page died in 1791 and Sarah died in 1812. She also was buried at the North Burial Ground.

Benjamin, the oldest of the Pages’ children, followed in his father's footsteps and became a sea captain. His mother Alice did not live to see her son take part in the revolutionary burning of the British tax ship Gaspee on June 10, 1772. Benjamin served in the Rhode Island Militia and Continental Navy from 1772-1783 (the Navy’s first Commander in Chief was Esek Hopkins, Christopher Hopkins’ uncle). He married Ann Sweeting, the daughter of Captain Job and Lydia Sweeting, and they had one son, Ambrose S. Page. Ann died in 1799 she is buried at the North Burial Ground in front of Dorcas, Molly and Alice Page. Benjamin was remarried to Sarah Read Wamer and they had seven children. Benjamin and Sarah moved to Ohio and they are buried there. The only child of Benjamin's buried at the North Burial Ground is Ambrose S. Page.

Alice Smith Page is buried at the North Burial Ground alongside her daughters Molly and Dorcas. The North Burial Ground is the resting place for five generations of Alice's family starting with her Grandmother Abigail (Whipple) Harris, her parents Daniel Smith and Dorcas (Harris) Smith, her daughters Molly Page and Dorcas Page, her daughter-in-law Ann (Sweeting) Page and her grandson Ambrose S. Page.

Lisa Boutin, Student at Rhode Island College

Further Reading:

Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997.

Conley, Patrick T. Rhode Island's Founders: From Settlement to Statehood. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2011.

Norton, Mary Beth. Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.