Arthur Steere

was born in Glocester, Rhode Island, on September 3, 1865, to Seth Hunt Steere and Lucy L. Smith.

[1][2] As a youth he worked on his family's farm in Glocester and then went to Scituate, Rhode Island, where he engaged in the teaming business for three years.

[3] Eventually, Arthur Steere became the owner of over one thousand acres (4 km2) of property in the Rhode Island towns of Johnston, Burrillville, Foster, Scituate, Smithfield, and Glocester, making him one of the state's largest landowners.

Steere sold hundreds of acres to the state of Rhode Island for the creation of the Scituate Reservoir in the 1920s.

He owned various businesses on this land, including lumber yards, which produced railroad ties and telegraph poles, and also dairy farms, fruit orchards, refrigeration facilities, and a teaming business that first paved the majority of the roads in northern Rhode Island.