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Last spring, Patrick Donovan, the talented and hardworking curator at the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum in East Greenwich, announced his discovery of  a handwritten letter from a formerly enslaved man …
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Rhode Island’s first lighthouse was constructed in 1749 on Beavertail Point, the southern tip of Conanicut Island (better known as Jamestown). Initially named Newport Light, Beavertail followed Massachusetts’s 1716 Boston …
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[This article originally ran in the Journal of the American Revolution, at www.allthingsliberty.com]

In July 1780, after three and half months at sea, nearly 6,000 thousand men[1] and supplies crammed …
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This essay, on the character of Bishop Harkins and his career as an administrator, and on the bishop’s social apostolate, were written in 1978 for the projected second volume of …
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In light of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, I thought it might be somewhat of a mildly amusing diversion to tell a few stories of my …
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On May 2, 1935, the Boston Traveler published an article comparing the career of two professionals: the first, Rhode Island-born James Howard McGrath, represented moral certitude and industry, a model …
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One would expect that a country that had been at war for five years would welcome its first ally with open arms. We might have mental images of civic officials …
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Despite its familiarity to students of Rhode Island history as the site of one of this country’s early nineteenth century race riots, occurring the night of October 17-18, 1824, the …
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Five years ago, my wife Margaret and I purchased a home on Queen River in West Kingston, north of historic Usquepaugh and its Kenyon’s Grist Mill. In that time, I …
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[From the editor:  This article first appeared on December 5, 2020. It has been updated by (i) deleting the article’s last paragraph and adding two new paragraphs, including about a …
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