Sprague Mansion

The rambling white mansion on Cranston Street began as a modest Sprague family farmhouse. In 1806 William Sprague turned the family’s grist mill into a textile mill that became the Cranston Print Works, among the first calico printers in the country. After his death in 1836 his sons divided the work: Amasa ran the business and enlarged the house, while William Sprague III went into politics as a congressman, governor and U.S. senator.

On the last day of 1843, Amasa Sprague was found shot and beaten to death near the Pocasset River, on his way home from the mill. Suspicion fell on the Gordons, Irish Catholic immigrants whose liquor licence Sprague had blocked. Three brothers were tried; only John Gordon was convicted, on circumstantial evidence, in a trial marked by open anti-Irish prejudice – the judge reportedly told jurors to give more weight to “Yankee” witnesses than Irish ones. Gordon was hanged in February 1845, the last person executed in Rhode Island, and the state soon abolished capital punishment. In 2011 Governor Lincoln Chafee granted him a posthumous pardon.

The family’s fortune collapsed in the 1870s, and the mansion passed through several hands before the Cranston Historical Society saved it from demolition in 1967 and made it its headquarters. Ghost stories, said to go back to 1925, gathered strength after a séance held in 1968 by a Brown University student who was living in the house as caretaker. According to the account, a Ouija board spelled out “My land!” and named two spirits – Amasa Sprague and a butler of the 1890s who expected an inheritance that never came, remembered in local lore as “Charlie.”

The historical society embraces the stories alongside the history: it shows period rooms and a collection of antique dolls, hosts ghost-themed events, and has welcomed television investigators. For many visitors the more haunting tale is the real one – a murder never solved and an immigrant who was very likely hanged for a crime he did not commit.

The best-known report is the apparition of a man walking down the main staircase. Visitors also describe cold gusts and a figure in the wine cellar, footsteps and lights switching on and off in the doll room, and a sense of presence in the basement. The 1968 séance is said to have produced messages from Amasa Sprague and a former butler.

The main staircase, the wine cellar, the upstairs doll room and the basement.

The Sprague case inspired plays and books about the Gordon trial – a stage play prompted the 2011 pardon resolution – and the mansion appears in nearly every list of Rhode Island haunted places, with ghost tours and paranormal events run by the Cranston Historical Society.