My great grandfather Clinton Colburn built both of these houses in the Washington Park section of South Providence. He built the one on the right, and lived there while he built the other on the left—his eventual home for the rest of his life. He described himself as a carpenter when he was a young immigrant, and later as a builder. For a period of time, he served as the building inspector for the City of Providence. In a much shorter time than my other immigrant great grandparents, he had established himself in middle-class America.
The Colburn side of the family always seemed so far away to me, although they lived in the same city as all my other ancesters and at the same time. Unlike the Lynches, O’Connors and O’Keefes, the Colburns were not from Ireland. Clinton Colburn emigrated from northern Nova Scotia in 1889 along with his future wife, Alberta Ripley. They were the children of huge rural families whose roots in North America went back for generations.
The Ripleys came to Canada as part of group referred to as the Yorkshire Emigration. They were granted land to settle in Nova Scotia, and arrived in 1774. Coincidently, the name of the ship that the Ripleys took to the new world was called Providence.
Through the years, the Ripleys intermarried with Loyalist families (relocated Americans who had supported the British in the Revolutionary War) as well as Scottish immigrant families. Through my research, I have found to my dismay, that some of those Loyalists and early settlers had slaves.
The Colburns have been in North America just as long, or maybe longer than the Ripleys. Richard (Colbourne) served as a defender of Fort Cumberland (in New Brunswick, Canada) in the Eddy Rebellion of 1776. For his military service, he too, was granted land to settle. Where he was from has not been definitively answered. Perhaps he was originally a Loyalist from America.
Visiting the Relatives 