History of West Greenwich, (Kent County) Rhode Island United States of America

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Charles Tillinghast James, senator, was born in West Greenwich, R.I., in 1806. He received a district-school training and learned the trade of carpenter, working in cotton mills and assisting Samuel Slater in constructing machinery for his mills. He was superintendent of Slater's steam mills, Providence; superintended the construction of steam cotton mills in Massachusetts, and furnished plans for mills in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Tennessee. He was a Democratic U.S. senator from Rhode Island, 1851-57, and was an advocate of a protective tariff. He was a prominent member of the state militia, gaining the rank of major-general, and early became interested in rifle practice, becoming an expert marksman. He invented a rifled cannon and an effective projectile, and became an expert in the construction of firearms and explosive shells. He received the honorary degree of A.M. from Brown university in 1838. He edited the American Railroad Journal and prepared a series of papers on the Culture and Manufacture of Cotton in the Southern States. While experimenting at Sag Harbor, N.Y., with a rifled cannon, an explosive shell was prematurely discharged, and he was fatally injured and died there, Oct. 17, 1862.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of West Greenwich, (Kent County) Rhode Island

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