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In its current form, the Masonic fraternity dates back to the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. The new fraternity used stonemasonry and the biblical account of …
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In 1863, Providence photographer Francis Hacker bragged he’d photographed one thousand public buildings and manufactories. In a city with close to fifty-one thousand residents, that’s one picture for every fiftieth …
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Rhode Island is fortunate to still have five working grist mills, four of which are open to the public. One of them stone grinds, produces and sells johnnycake meal as …
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The hallmark of a great democracy is that its leaders reflect the composition of the electorate. It has been the case that for each new wave of immigrants the first …
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[Note from the editor:  An updated version of this article is in a chapter of my book Machine Guns in Narragansett Bay: The Coast Guard’s War on Rumrunners (History Press, 2023).  The …
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[Editor’s note: When interviewed in 1991, Ron Deaver was 97 years old and resided in a nursing home. Some sixty years earlier, in early 1930s Rhode Island, he actively participated …
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To our contemporary eyes the Victorian mansion at 299 Broadway in Providence is an ostentatious mash-up of architectural styles—a little bit of Gothic, a little Romanesque, with a four-story octagonal …
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After the French Revolution, while tensions between Great Britain and the new French revolutionary government were growing, the disruption with trade to the West Indies was acute, especially for Rhode …
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Rebecca Chase Herreshoff was born on December 2, 1894, on Prudence Island, Rhode Island, the daughter of Captain Halsey Chase and Lizzie Kelly Studley. Also called Becky, she was …
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[From the editor: This charming article is short, but packs a powerful punch. Its author, Rachel Chase Boynton, was born in December 1894, the daughter of Captain Halsey Chase, the …
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