How did Jerusalem and Galilee, Rhode Island, get their names? We asked around.
NARRAGANSETT — Sometimes, you're just sitting there having breakfast when curiosity strikes.
That's what happened to this What and Why RI reader.
“We were having a wonderful breakfast in Snug Harbor Marina, and we were looking down Salt Pond and saw the two towns facing each other, Galilee and Jerusalem, and we were wondering how they got their names,” she wrote. “What's the origin?”
With that, we set out to find the story behind Rhode Island's most famous fishing village.
What’s the folklore around the name?
The story that’s most often shared is best told on the cover of the George’s of Galilee’s menu.
It reads: “In 1902, the story goes, Thomas Mann, a fisherman from Nova Scotia, who had settled here, felt the village that had sprung up with its fishing shacks should be called Galilee, after the fishing village of biblical times. One day, an old timer sat on the docks repairing his nets, when a stranger called out to him, Where am I? The answer was Galilee. And, what is that? asked the stranger pointing to the land on the other side of the channel. The old timer thought for a minute, nodded his head and replied, Must be Jerusalem. And so, the names Galilee and Jerusalem have been used to denote a most picturesque part of Rhode Island.”
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The story has been on George’s menu for as long as anyone can remember. It catapulted the story into The New York Times in the 1970s and seems to be what set it in the culture.
Kevin Durfee, the owner of George’s, said he started managing at the restaurant in 1995 and the passage was on the menu cover decades before that.
“I have no idea how that came about or where it came from," he wrote in an email. "I think it's just a myth.”
He wasn’t the only one with suspicions about the story.
The Narragansett Historical Society pointed to Richard Vangermeersch, a former University of Rhode Island professor and local historian, as another person to ask. He said he’s heard the story, too, but described it as “folklore” with no real documented history that he knows of.
How did Galilee and Jerusalem get their names?
The earliest reference to the two villages in The Providence Journal archives is in 1922, in a Sunday piece about places to visit in South County.
“Beyond Sand Hill one may visit if he will Galilee, a fishing hamlet holding forth on the edge of the breachway which opens the outer worlds into the greatest of salt ponds. Galilee is more seaport than its ancient counterpart,” the article reads. “Across the breachway from Galilee is its younger sister, 'Jerusalem,' less a fishing community and more a cottage colony than Galilee.”
The article gives the nod to communities being named after their biblical counterparts but doesn’t come right out and say it.
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In a later Sunday article, from 1946, the writer offered this explanation for how Galilee and Jerusalem were named.
“Founded by a group of rugged, hardy fishermen with a sense of humor, Galilee and its neighboring village of Jerusalem, across the breach, received their names as a joke early in the present century,” the article reads. “But the fishing colonies are no joke today.”
To this day, Galilee is home to the largest fishing fleet in Rhode Island, according to the Rhode Island Party and Charter Boat Association. It’s also the fourth-highest-value fishing port on the East Coast as of 2021, according to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
The fishing certainly lived up to the name.
What and Why RI is a weekly feature by The Providence Journal to explore our readers' curiosity. If you have a question about Rhode Island, big or small, email it to klandeck@gannett.com. She loves a good question.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: How Jerusalem and Galilee in RI were named: Is George's menu correct?
