By Adam Sweet, Granby
https://youtu.be/5C_FghN1egM
Long before there were orthopedic surgeons, there were the Sweets. In southern New England, if you broke a bone or threw a hip out of joint, you sent for "Doc Sweet." He had no medical degree. Most days he was a farmer, a carpenter or a blacksmith. But he could set a bone, and so could his father, and so could his grandfather.
The family came from Wales. John Sweet was in Salem by about 1630 and moved on to Rhode Island with Roger Williams' people. His son James settled at Ridge Hill, now Shermantown, in North Kingstown, and the bonesetting line runs through him. The skill was passed father to son, along with liniments made from roots and bark. Our family archives say some of that knowledge came from the Narragansett.
Some of the stories are hard to beat. During the Revolution, Job Sweet set the bones of French officers in Newport, and he was called to New York to set the dislocated hip of Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosia. During the War of 1812, a Benoni Sweet, a blacksmith by trade, was summoned to New London to fix a British officer's hip after the Royal surgeons had given up. He put a pine board against the joint, gave it one sharp blow, and had the man on his feet.
The old Benoni Sweet homestead stood on Shermantown Road for nearly three hundred years, until Henry Ford bought it and had it moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts. The family burying ground is still there in North Kingstown. In 1954 the Sweets even got their own paper in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, "The Natural Bonesetters, with Special Reference to the Sweet Family of Rhode Island."
I'm a retired music teacher and fiddle and mandolin player here in Granby, and I've been writing a ballad about them, built from a document in our family archives. It follows the Sweets from Wales to Salem, down to Buzzards Bay and the shipyards, and on to the bonesetting. Right now it's just mandolin and voice, with a little fiddle trying to sneak in.
A folk ballad tracing one family’s passage from the hills of Wales to the shores of New England in 1630. Bone-setters, carpenters, and ship captains who turned privateer out of necessity, they later learned the quiet arts of healing from the Narragansett. When a Providence elder’s daughter lay dying of consumption, that knowledge brought her back. The city answered by naming the first physician of the place, and the line has carried the remedy ever since. Sparse guitar, steady voice, and the long memory of the Atlantic.
I Call It "From The Welsh Hills"
A folk ballad of the 1630 crossing, privateers, Narragansett medicine, and the first physician of Providence. The healing line still walks.
#narragansett #bonesetter #doctor #providence
In sixteen-thirty they left the Welsh hills
And sailed the cold gray water west
They came ashore at Salem town
With nothing but their hands
They took up land on Buzzards Bay
And cut the oak and raised the frames
They built the ships for trade and war
And sailed them when they had to
Chorus
The Narragansett showed them
Which root and leaf to use
How to set a bone, how to wait it out
How to bring a body back
And it came down through the family
Father to son to me
In Providence an old man's daughter
Was coughing her life away
They sent for the young one from the woods
Who knew the plants by name
He gave her herbs and open air
And sat with her through the nights
By spring she was walking in the road
And the town knew his name
They called him the first physician
And the name stayed with the line
Through timber and sail and broken bones
Passed down from hand to hand
From the Welsh hills to the Rhode Island shore
The same hands, the same work
Bone and timber, root and sea
It's still in the blood
Final chorus
The Narragansett showed them
Which root and leaf to use
How to set a bone, how to wait it out
How to bring a body back
And it came down through the family
Father to son to me
Still coming down to me
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