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American Revolution and Revolutionary War

The Declaration of Independence in Rhode Island
1 week ago

The Declaration of Independence in Rhode Island

The Rhode Island General Assembly voted to repeal Rhode Island’s allegiance to King George III of Great Britain on May 4, 1776. Rhode Island was the first and only one …
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Nathanael Greene and His Contradictory Roles as Revolutionary War Hero and Enslaver
1 month ago

Nathanael Greene and His Contradictory Roles as Revolutionary War Hero and Enslaver

Many Americans are aware of the Founding Fathers’ contradictory owning of enslaved individuals while fighting in word and deed for liberty from the “slavery” imposed upon them by Great Britain. …
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Gordon Wood, Long-time Brown History Professor and Preeminent Historian of the American Revolution Dies: A Recollection
2 months ago

Gordon Wood, Long-time Brown History Professor and Preeminent Historian of the American Revolution Dies: A Recollection

On Sunday, June 7, at the Shaw’s supermarket parking lot on Taunton Avenue in East Providence, Professor Gordon Wood was struck by an automobile and seriously injured. He died at …
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Griffin Greene’s Water Pump Raises a Sunken British Warship in 1780
3 months ago

Griffin Greene’s Water Pump Raises a Sunken British Warship in 1780

Griffin Greene of Warwick was a mechanical genius, despite having little formal education. His most impressive achievement: he made a water pump that was used to raise a sunken British …
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Quaker Expulsions in Portsmouth During the Revolutionary War
3 months ago

Quaker Expulsions in Portsmouth During the Revolutionary War

[Note from the editor: The Society of Friends, informally known as the Quakers, in the seventeenth century had a major influence in Rhode Island, particularly in Newport County—the towns of …
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A Day in the Life: The Curious Rediscovery of Henry Bowen’s Day Book at the Providence City Archives
4 months ago

A Day in the Life: The Curious Rediscovery of Henry Bowen’s Day Book at the Providence City Archives

The Providence City Archives houses more than 24,000 cubic feet of archival material throughout the city, and only 75 percent of it has been accounted for thus far, so the …
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Why Captain Wallace Failed to Prevent the Revolutionary War
4 months ago

Why Captain Wallace Failed to Prevent the Revolutionary War

From December 1774 to March 1776, Captain James Wallace of the British Navy patrolled Narragansett Bay.  He had two objectives:  first, to minimize smuggling that evaded imperial custom duties; and …
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John Manley’s Bad Day in Newport in December 1776
5 months ago

John Manley’s Bad Day in Newport in December 1776

Most of this article is an inventory of the items that Newport merchant John Manley owned at the end of 1776 at his modest home in Newport on Touro Street, …
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What Colonel Christopher Greene Owned (and Did not Own) in 1779 and 1781
6 months ago

What Colonel Christopher Greene Owned (and Did not Own) in 1779 and 1781

Christopher Greene was one of Rhode Island’s greatest heroes of the Revolutionary War, but his life was tragically cut short.  He was appointed a lieutenant in the Kentish Guards, an …
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Governor, Chief Justice, and Signer  Stephen Hopkins
7 months ago

Governor, Chief Justice, and Signer Stephen Hopkins

Stephen Hopkins (1707–85), statesman, pamphleteer, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born on March 7, 1707, in Providence easterly of a former Indian village called Mashapaug. This site …
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