Rhode Island – General

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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

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. …
Read More

[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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

Many Rhode Islanders are familiar with the sinking of the U-853 off Block Island in May 1945 at the very end of World War II. German U-boats had been …
Read More