(see The Old Court Bed & Breakfast, 144 Benefit Street, at the excellent H. P. Lovecraft Archive)

"The doctor was a bachelor; a white-haired, clean-shaven, old- fashioned gentleman, and a local historian of note, who had often broken a lance with such controversial guardians of tradition as Sidney S. Rider and Thomas W. Bicknell. He lived with one manservant in a Georgian homestead with knocker and iron-railed steps, balanced eerily on the steep ascent of North Court Street beside the ancient brick court and colony house where his grandfather--a cousin of that celebrated privateersman, Capt. Whipple, who burnt His Majesty's armed schooner _Gaspee_ in 1772--had voted in the legislature on May 4, 1776, for the independence of the Rhode Island Colony." -- The Shunned House