Prentice K. Stout escapes to the oasis of Point Judith Pond – where he has spent many days since his arrival at the University of Rhode Island in 1975 – for relaxation and research of organisms in the pond.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

Stout hopes researchers can reap the benefits of his interviews with local people in his 300-page book.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Prentice K. Stout feels a deep connection to local history, as if he were born here 73 years ago rather than in his native New York City.

The local past surrounds him – from the walls of his 1721 house where his guest room and office were a way station for Colonial-era travelers to his property which seems sodden with local lore to the old Post Road that runs past his front door.

Since arriving in South Kingstown in the early 1970s, the local past has often arrived at his doorstep by way of legend and legacy. Old photos and documents seem to find him, as do the old-timers handing them over.

But old-timers get even older and pass on, and Stout, who along with his wife Patty, has long enjoyed preserving the past, decided it was time to do more than just enjoy the stories of days gone by. He needed to document them.

“It sort of seeped into my conscious that I could do this and do it properly,” he said, of the 300-page project he completed this year, called A Place of Quiet Waters, The History and Natural History of Rhode Island’s Point Judith Pond and the Harbor of Refuge.

“This history of the Pond is a result of my passion for its peaceful waters, the delight as I view the flashing beacon of Point Judith Lighthouse, and the sense of wonder I receive from viewing the magnificent embracing stone arms of the giant Harbor of Refuge breakwater,” he wrote in his preface. “This is something I want to do for the community.”

But knowing that he could never leave a Hazard-like legacy behind with buildings or parks, Stout decided to pursue some of what he knows best – research and science – and combine them with boating and Point Judith Pond. That’s where he has spent part of almost every day since arriving to work at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography in 1975.

“I’m a pond man,” he said, “I love things I can embrace in my mind. It is so contained.”

So he pecked away at his project, as he described it, eventually building a tribute – part historical, part natural history – to the small New England salt pond.

The history of the pond and the neighboring Harbor of Refuge are two areas he considers interconnected – and often mis-documented. “I had just heard so many stories and some of the dates in the stories seem to differ.”

So Stout squirreled away the information, and word must have gone out because “people started coming out of the woodwork,” he said.

He was standing in line at a local framing store when he struck up a conversation with a fellow customer about the pond, the lighthouse, the old fishing shacks, and the customer told him “You have to meet my aunt.”

He did, and six hours later walked away with tape recordings of local fishing family lore and old photographs. The same thing happened on a train out of Kingston as his seatmate looked over his shoulder as he typed on a laptop and the person spotted the words Point Judith. That conversation led him to a man in Brooklyn and a three-hour conversation about South County fishing families.

Some conversations ended up lasting the entire day, but in the end, Stout came away with information about people named Whaley, and Champlin, and Perry, and Carpenter, and Burdick. He wove what was remembered with what he could document.

“People sort of fell in my lap,” he said. And when they didn’t, he sought help from sources ranging from the Army Corps of Engineers archives dating to the 1880s, to newspaper articles, to 14 pages of books and other sources.

“I wrote for almost two years,” he said, taking breaks to explore the pond by boat and by shore, sometimes alone, oftentimes with grandchildren or campers from nearby Camp Fuller where Stout often guides marine programs. Those excursions helped him document some of the organisms of the pond that he gives life to in a literary way in several chapters.

He stayed motivated by reminding himself of the words of his late father: “If you start it, finish it.” Though his father was a New York banker, he was also on the Board of the National Audubon Society and was president of the American Museum of Natural History.

When Stout was a teenager, he worked at an Audubon camp in Maine where he was influenced by natural history enthusiasts and scientists there, and where he learned to take a closer look at the world around him.

It was also there that he met his wife of 51 years, Patty. They married when she was 18 and he 21, and they had two sons. He graduated from Denison University and did graduate work at Wesleyan University, Hunter College and Harvard. He worked at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography from 1975 to 1994.

Though the project has cut into other retirement projects – he builds furniture and boats – Stout said he was bent on doing it because “people forget, and a lot of the old-timers are gone. It’s my way of paying back the community.”

He hopes to present local libraries with copies of his book so that researchers can reap the benefits of his interviews with local people. Personal copies can be obtained by contacting him at 783-0838, he said.

Said Stout of the South County history that surrounds him: “It all vanishes so fast.”