Recent Posts
- Book Review: Seth Rockman, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (University of Chicago Press, 2024)
- The Providence Journal Publishes Despite the Historic 1886 Flood and the Blizzard of 1888
- Till We Meet Again: A Farewell (For Now) from Robert Grandchamp
- Boys Hired to Deliver the Providence Journal from 1833 to 1873 Reveal Their Pranks and Challenges
- Victims of Newport’s Stamp Act Riots Reimbursed (Not)
- “I Had Like to Have Forgot to Mention a Famous Sham Battle”
- Mary Cowley: Eighteenth Century Rhode Island Entrepreneur
- Railroad Signal Tower 133+ at Kingston Station Reconsidered
- Lafayette in Rhode Island
- Why Did Rhode Island Merchants Resist Non-Importation in 1767?
- “We got the worst of it yesterday:” A Rhode Island letter from Spotsylvania Court House
- The Westerly Post Office Mural Mystery
- Newport’s Last Slave Auction: Rochambeau’s Prizes
- Business Owners Try to Control How Their Employees Vote in 1876 Election
- The Smith Granite Company of Westerly: A Short History
- Indian Forts in Early Rhode Island
- Rhode Islanders Insist on No Compromise with the South after Lincoln’s Election
- Rhode Island Fails to Vote for Lincoln for President at Nominating Convention!
- Governor’s 1708 Report Tells Where the First Black Enslaved People Who Arrived in Rhode Island Came from and About the Arrival of the First Slave Ship from Africa
- A Retrospective on Spartina, a Novel Based in South County
- Water Rights and Dams in Early Rhode Island
- Roger Williams: Founder of Economic Development
- A Book Review: Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence by Shirley L. Green (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2023)
- A History of Election Tickets in Rhode Island
- The Murder Trial of the Reverend Ephraim Avery at Newport (Part II of II)
- The Murder of Sarah Maria Cornell in Tiverton in 1832 (Part I of II)
- Benoni Sweet: a 19th Century Rhode Island Daredevil Worth Remembering
- Sam Patch: a 19th Century Rhode Island Daredevil Worth Remembering
- How Providence’s Federal Hill Got Its Name
- Teaching a Class of 920 Students at URI in the 1970s
- Gaspee Raid Inspires Boston Tea Party Raiders to Disguise Themselves as Narragansetts
- Narragansetts (Not Mohawks) Blamed for Boston Tea Party
- Samuel Casey, Talented Colonial Silversmith and Notorious Counterfeiter, Escapes the Hangman
- The First Female Scientist at Naval Underwater Ordnance Station, Newport
- Roger Williams in Rhode Island
- A Book Review: Rhode Island Election Tickets: A Survey of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paper Ballots (Rhode Island Publications Society, 2023). Compiled by Russell J. DeSimone. Introduction by Patrick T. Conley.
- The Sloop Providence: Its Role in the Revolutionary War and its Rebuilding
- The Last Dozen: The Final Survivors of the Seventh Rhode Island Volunteers
- Lonnon Philips’s Sharecropping Agreement in 18th Century North Kingstown
- “Hope Deferred”: George T. Downing and the Post-Civil War Civil Rights Movement
- George T. Downing and the Black Convention Movement
- Whale Sinks Whale Ship Commanded by Newport Captain
- Providence Merchant John Brown Gets Rich Privateering in 1776 and 1777
- General Isaac Peace Rodman, Citizen-Soldier and Martyr for the Union Cause
- Banister’s Band of Brothers: Fox Hunting in South Kingstown and Narragansett After the American Revolution
- New York’s Izzy Einstein Raids Rhode Island Saloons During Prohibition
- Book Launch: Machine Guns in Narraganset Bay: The Coast Guard’s War on Rumrunners
- Block Island Rumrunners, Rum Row and a Pirate Ship
- Did Rhode Island Matter in the American Revolution?
- Book Review: Revolutionary War Defenses in Rhode Island by John K. Robertson
- Ann Bates: British Spy Extraordinaire
- Rhode Island’s Surviving Town Animal Pounds—Relics of the Past
- When the Roma Came to Rhode Island
- Rhode Island’s Millionaires in 1892 and How They Made Their Money
- Teaching the Story of “Universal Liberty” in Revolutionary Rhode Island: A Review of Edward J. Larson’s American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of the Nation, 1765-1795
- Colonel Daniel Hitchcock in the American Revolutionary War Remembered
- Rebekah Harkness, the Scorned Socialite of Watch Hill
- South Kingstown at 300 – Part 2: From King Philip’s War to 1723
- South Kingstown at 300 – PART 1: From the Narragansetts to the First White Settlers
- The Founders of Providence’s Five Industrial Wonders
- The French Depart Newport
- Diary of a Soldier in the Dorr War, May 17 to July 2, 1842
- The Armenian Diaspora in Rhode Island
- “Third Century of Liberty”?: Thomas Wilson Dorr and Debate over the Gag Rule in Rhode Island, 1835-1836
- The Alexander Sails for California in 1849
- Newporters Catch Gold Fever, Sail to California in 1849
- Saving and Restoring Kingston Station, and a Railfan’s Life: Part II
- Saving and Restoring Kingston Station, and a Railfan’s Life: Part I
- Narragansett Bay Freezes Over in the Winter of 1740
- Foster Boys in the Seventh Rhode Island
- Four Extraordinary Popular American Historians from Brown University’s Classes of 1978 to 1983
- Book Review: Meet Me at the Biltmore, 100 Years at Providence’s Most Storied Hotel
- Q&A with John K. Robertson, Author of the New Book, Revolutionary War Defenses in Rhode Island
- Rhode Island’s Whaling Industry, Once Led by Warren
- Remains of a Wrecked Whaling Ship from Warren Identified in Argentina
- The Irish of Rhode Island (Part II, 1922-1999)
- The Irish of Rhode Island (Part I, 1638-1921)
- Meeting Queen Elizabeth in Newport in 1976—and the Secret Service
- A Bicycle Paradise: Peter Laudati, Vincent Madonna and the Providence Cycledrome, 1925-1934
- Rhode Island’s U.S. Senators and Congressmen Who Held Enslaved People
- Narraganset Pier Railroad’s Operations in 1964 Described by the Company’s President
- The Hessians Are Coming! German Auxiliary Forces in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War
- Rhode Island’s Four Stages of the American Revolutionary War
- Printing in the Rhode Island Courts, 1800-57
- Benjamin Church, The First American Ranger
- Newport Tennis Continues After It Loses the Championships and It Gains the Tennis Hall of Fame
- New Rhode Island History Book: Christian McBurney’s Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade
- The Banisters of Rhode Island in the American Revolution, Liberty and the Costs of Loyalties: A Book Review
- “Ours was a desperate position to hold:” The First Rhode Island Cavalry at Middleburg
- The Gaspee Affair: A Rhode Island Perspective on Its 250th Anniversary
- A Prison Ship in Providence Harbor and Enemy Prisoners of War in Rhode Island During the Revolutionary War
- The Recovery of Beaver, Bobcats, Fishers and More in Rhode Island
- When Deer Became Extinct in Rhode Island
- Wolves, Moose, Mountain Lions and Bears Once Roamed Rhode Island
- Rhode Island’s 19th Century Experiments with Prohibition
- A Kingston Woman Supports Lincoln During the Civil War
- Portsmouth’s Founding Mother: Anne Hutchinson
- Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt and his Newport Legacy
- Movie Theaters and Trolleys in Providence, 1940-1955
- Growing Up Italian in Providence in the 1940s
