About Christian McBurney

In early October 1927, baseball sluggers Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig arrived at Providence to play an exhibition baseball game.  It was a memorable day for kids and adults alike.

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The Great Gale of 1815 was one of the three strongest hurricanes ever to hit Rhode Island. Communities throughout the state suffered damage. This article quotes from three histories containing …
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The Great Swamp Fight on December 19, 1675, in King Philip’s War, forever destroyed the power of the Narragansett tribe. What is less well known are earlier destructive raids, including …
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The letter penned by Sullivan Ballou, a major in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry Regiment hailing from Smithfield, one week before he fought at the first Battle of Bull Run, …
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After a British fleet of seventy-one warships and transports entered Narragansett Bay on December 7, 1776, and the next day landed soldiers that occupied Newport, Rhode Island, as well as …
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God War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England, by James A. Warren (Scribner, 2018).

In God, War, and …
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On May 27, 1791, Thomas Mount, a white man born in New Jersey, was hanged in Little Rest (now Kingston). Hanging was never particularly common in Rhode Island. What makes …
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This is the third article in a row providing book reviews of recent Rhode Island history books. Surprisingly, each of the three books here is a historical novel that …
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The year 2017 was another good one for the publication of Rhode Island history books.  While we cannot possibly review all of them, I review several of them below …
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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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