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CHACE BUILDING SUPPLY OF CT

BUILDING ON FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESS

(Based on an article from the SE Connecticut/SW Rhode Island Edition of Builder/Architect Magazine by Claudia Moose)

Over five generations ago, in 1885, President Grover Cleveland was in the White House and Mark Twain had just published Huckleberry Finn, when Peleg Durfree Humphrey first opened the doors of his lumber company on the riverfront wharf in Tiverton, Rhode Island. For many years the P.D. Humphrey dock was the hub of community activity. Crowds gathered whenever the Alice Wentworth, a 72 foot schooner, arrived with a shipment of lumber from locations in Maine and Florida. As the main suppliers for local business and residential construction, the company grew with the area and became the largest employer in Tiverton. Several generations later, P.D. Humphrey was instrumental in rebuilding the coastline areas of southern Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut after the devastating hurricane of 1938. A subsequent hurricane in 1954 finally resulted in a move to higher ground after company employees watched most of their inventory float away down the Sakonnet River. To read this full article, click here.