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About That Lake in Westerly’s Wilcox Park
10 years ago

About That Lake in Westerly’s Wilcox Park

The fountain in Westerly’s Wilcox Park Lake (more often called the Pond) started sending streams of water twenty feet into the air on Thursday, September 8, 1908. Remarkably for the …
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Zachariah Allen: Scientist, Inventor, and Visionary
10 years ago

Zachariah Allen: Scientist, Inventor, and Visionary

By  •  Biography

Zachariah Allen was born to Zachariah and Anne (Crawford) Allen in Providence on September 15, 1795. While little is known of his early years, it is evident by eighteenth century …
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The Prisoner-of-War Camps at Forts Getty and Wetherill in Jamestown:  Reeducating World War II German POWs with the Best of Intentions
10 years ago

The Prisoner-of-War Camps at Forts Getty and Wetherill in Jamestown: Reeducating World War II German POWs with the Best of Intentions

This article focuses on the “top secret” World War II German prisoner of war camps at Forts Getty and Wetherill in Jamestown, Rhode Island. A companion article, “The Top Secret …
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The Top Secret World War II Prisoner-of-War Camp at Fort Kearney in Narragansett
10 years ago

The Top Secret World War II Prisoner-of-War Camp at Fort Kearney in Narragansett

The site of the former Fort Kearney, at the end of South Ferry Road and about one mile south of the village of Saunderstown in Narragansett, is now occupied by …
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Newport Philips: A North Kingstown Slave Negotiates his Way to Freedom
10 years ago

Newport Philips: A North Kingstown Slave Negotiates his Way to Freedom

I have no idea exactly when during the mid-eighteenth century that Newport Philips entered this world but I do know the ”where” and the ‘what” of his beginnings. What he …
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Mayor Thomas P. McCoy (the “Prince of Pawtucket”)  and the Building of McCoy Stadium (“McCoy’s Folly”)
10 years ago

Mayor Thomas P. McCoy (the “Prince of Pawtucket”) and the Building of McCoy Stadium (“McCoy’s Folly”)

By  •  Sports

[Editor’s Note:  The following article is excerpted from Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game (Harper Collins, 2011).  This book focuses on the Pawtucket Red …
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Top 10 Early Rhode Island History Books
10 years ago

Top 10 Early Rhode Island History Books

Rhode Island history books have surrounded me for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Warwick, I remember reading battered copies of such classics as Trumpets in Jericho, …
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Gertrude Johnson and Mary Wales: Two Trailblazers in Rhode Island Education
10 years ago

Gertrude Johnson and Mary Wales: Two Trailblazers in Rhode Island Education

The story of Gertrude I. Johnson and Mary T. Wales and the founding of Johnson & Wales University is truly an American success story. Given the times in which they …
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Silas Cooke’s War: the Sufferings of a Civilian on the Front Lines
10 years ago

Silas Cooke’s War: the Sufferings of a Civilian on the Front Lines

In any war, some of the people who suffer most are almost entirely overlooked by the subsequent histories: the people who happened to live where the fighting occurred or near …
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Tom Dorr: Up Close and Personal
10 years ago

Tom Dorr: Up Close and Personal

Back in the late 1970s, while exercising shared custody of my four oldest children in the wake of a failed first marriage, my Sundays were a time for visits …
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