Image

Latest Posts

Gordon Wood, Long-time Brown History Professor and Preeminent Historian of the American Revolution Dies: A Recollection
5 days ago

Gordon Wood, Long-time Brown History Professor and Preeminent Historian of the American Revolution Dies: A Recollection

On Sunday, June 7, at the Shaw’s supermarket parking lot on Taunton Avenue in East Providence, Professor Gordon Wood was struck by an automobile and seriously injured. He died at …
Read More

Benoni Simmons: Long-Serving Hero of the American Revolution
2 weeks ago

Benoni Simmons: Long-Serving Hero of the American Revolution

The amazing story of Benoni Simmons’s military service in the American Revolution spans some fourteen years, perhaps the longest term of service by anyone in that conflict. More so, his …
Read More

A History of Lobotomies in Rhode Island
4 weeks ago

A History of Lobotomies in Rhode Island

Charles Henry Gosselin had not yet turned two years old when the probate court of Providence committed him to the county orphanage in 1924. He spent his infancy there …
Read More

A Survey of Rhode Island in 1789
1 month ago

A Survey of Rhode Island in 1789

[Note from the editor:  Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826) prepared surveys of each of the states of the new United States in the 1780s. He prepared one for Rhode Island in 1789; …
Read More

Griffin Greene’s Water Pump Raises a Sunken British Warship in 1780
1 month ago

Griffin Greene’s Water Pump Raises a Sunken British Warship in 1780

Griffin Greene of Warwick was a mechanical genius, despite having little formal education. His most impressive achievement: he made a water pump that was used to raise a sunken British …
Read More

Ensuring a Prolific Fishery—Early Rhode Island Efforts to Manage Freshwater Fisheries
2 months ago

Ensuring a Prolific Fishery—Early Rhode Island Efforts to Manage Freshwater Fisheries

The earliest efforts in Rhode Island at what we might call “fisheries management” occurred before the arrival of the first White settlers. The Blackstone River had an enormous run of …
Read More

Quaker Expulsions in Portsmouth During the Revolutionary War
2 months ago

Quaker Expulsions in Portsmouth During the Revolutionary War

[Note from the editor: The Society of Friends, informally known as the Quakers, in the seventeenth century had a major influence in Rhode Island, particularly in Newport County—the towns of …
Read More

Anti-Catholic Know-Nothingism in Rhode Island, 1854-1856
2 months ago

Anti-Catholic Know-Nothingism in Rhode Island, 1854-1856

[Note from the editor: The Know-Nothing Party, which became formally known as the American Party, made a splash in Rhode Island briefly from 1854 to 1856. Supporters of the Know …
Read More

A Day in the Life: The Curious Rediscovery of Henry Bowen’s Day Book at the Providence City Archives
3 months ago

A Day in the Life: The Curious Rediscovery of Henry Bowen’s Day Book at the Providence City Archives

The Providence City Archives houses more than 24,000 cubic feet of archival material throughout the city, and only 75 percent of it has been accounted for thus far, so the …
Read More

Why Captain Wallace Failed to Prevent the Revolutionary War
3 months ago

Why Captain Wallace Failed to Prevent the Revolutionary War

From December 1774 to March 1776, Captain James Wallace of the British Navy patrolled Narragansett Bay.  He had two objectives:  first, to minimize smuggling that evaded imperial custom duties; and …
Read More