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An astonishing 75,000,000 board feet of timber lying on the ground—this was the aftermath of the Great Hurricane of 1938 in Rhode Island. The federal government estimated that from this …
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The Gilbane family, like the Banigans and the Hanleys, were driven from Ireland to America by the potato blight that caused Ireland’s Great Famine. William Gilbane, who was born in …
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Comte Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector d’Estaing (1729–1794) held positions as admiral in the French navy and major general in the French army. Five weeks after King Louis XVI signed …
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The Providence author Catharine Read Williams often liked to refer to the tumultuous political and constitutional storm that swept Rhode Island in 1841-42 as a “tempest in a teapot.” …
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In the past fifteen years or so, there has been, happily, an explosion of books published on battles and other military aspects of the American Revolutionary War. In the same …
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Historian Seth Rockman’s deeply researched and thoroughly engaging new book, Plantation Goods, deserves to be on the shelf of all those interested in late 18th and 19th century America. Many …
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[From the editor: This article quotes at length from chapter 8 of the following book published in 1904: Half a Century with the Providence Journal, Being a Record of the …
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I have lived with the ghosts of the past for over twenty years. Since early in 2000 when I discovered that I had a great-great-great uncle, Alfred Sheldon Knight, who …
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[From the editor: This article quotes at length from a chapter on child newspaper carriers from the early years of the Providence Journal. The children were required to appear early …
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Bostonian merchants, sailors and dockworkers hated the Stamp Act enacted by Parliament in early 1765.  What right did Parliament have to tax Americans when they were not represented in Parliament?

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