Rhode Island – General

[From the editor: This charming article displays the author’s wonderful humor and eye for detail. Its author, Rachel Chase Boynton, was born in December 1894, the daughter of Captain Halsey …
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I have been thinking an awful lot about Russell Smith lately. I have pondered the life of this early nineteenth century ship carpenter, thinking about the unimaginable trials and tribulations …
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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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During the period when slavery was lawful in America, it is claimed that the underground railroad assisted more than 100,000 African-American slaves reach freedom.  (The underground railroad was not a …
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On February 6, 2019, Dr. Patrick T. Conley, president of the Heritage Harbor Foundation, announced that the Foundation has awarded $86,155 in grant money for 2019 to twelve local organizations. …
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[Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from an address Patrick T. Conley gave at the Old Colony House in Newport on May 3, 1976]

I have chosen to examine an …
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Two thousand workers marched in to history 125 years ago when they participated in the state’s first Labor Day parade in 1893 in Providence, while a crowd of ten thousand …
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On the morning of January 20, 1887, Isabelle Bourne, who lived in the village of Greene in Coventry, told the police that her husband, Ansel, a clergyman, had been missing …
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Throughout the village of Wickford, Rhode Island’s three centuries of existence, thousands of people have come and gone. Lives of all sorts have played out in Wickford and its nearby …
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The stock market crash of 1929 sent America into the throes of the Great Depression.  The levels of unemployment and suffering among ordinary Americans were unlike anything that had ever …
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