Abigail Stoneman (b. after 1740; d. after 1777) was a formidable Newport–Middletown entrepreneur with a talent for hospitality. Likely widowed by 1760 from her first husband, probably Lt. Samuel Stoneman of the Rhode Island regiment, she later married the Englishman John Treville on August 28, 1774, in Hampton, Connecticut. Contemporary notices styled her “Mrs. Treville.” She is said to have had several sons and two daughter, though surviving sources do not document their names.
By 1767 she was running the Merchant’s Coffee House at the Sign of the King’s Arms in Newport; she soon multiplied venues, advertising “genteel lodgings,” music, dancing, and even billiards, with men paying the dance fee. She curated sweets with flair, offering syllabub, orange and lemon cheesecakes, cakes, and tarts. Thursday evenings brought the Newport Assembly to her rooms.
In 1768 she opened a summer house in Middletown and, by 1769, added an “elegant ballroom.” That October she shifted her operation into Whitehall, George Berkeley’s former home, rechristening it “Vauxhall” after London’s famed pleasure garden. There she furnished entertainment “for large & small companies in the genteelest manner,” drawing seasonal visitors with music, dancing, and refined refreshments.
Stoneman’s business acumen showed in court as well as in her parlors. She extended credit, published collection notices in the Newport Mercury, and used litigation strategically. Her most memorable case involved an IOU scrawled on the nine of clubs: when Benjamin Wickham Jr. failed to pay £13, she produced the playing card in court as evidence. The episode survives as a vivid glimpse of eighteenth-century credit culture and her willingness to press claims.
Across Rhode Island, Boston, and seasonal Middletown, Stoneman’s rooms buzzed with commerce and conviviality, making her one of colonial New England’s best-documented women proprietors.
Having the very colorful Abigail Stoneman as a Qualifying Female Ancestors is a very special honor for the Rhode Island Dames. Whitehall, now a house museum, is one of NSCDA’s Great American Treasures. It was rescued by three Newport women who turned it over to the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Rhode Island in 1899.
