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Evidence Suggests that Enslavement of Native Peoples in Rhode Island was Rare After 1750
3 days ago

Evidence Suggests that Enslavement of Native Peoples in Rhode Island was Rare After 1750

Recently there has been new scholarship focusing on the enslavement of Indians in Rhode Island as well as the rest of southern New England in colonial times. This has been …
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The Declaration of Independence in Rhode Island
2 months 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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Book Review: Roger Williams and His World: A History in Documents, by Charlotte Carrington-Farmer (Broadview Press, 2025), 175p.
3 months ago

Book Review: Roger Williams and His World: A History in Documents, by Charlotte Carrington-Farmer (Broadview Press, 2025), 175p.

Roger Williams may be the most written-about person in 17th century New England, as pointed out in this anthology. Several books have addressed his remarkable career, including Edmund Morgan’s …
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Nathanael Greene and His Contradictory Roles as Revolutionary War Hero and Enslaver
3 months 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
3 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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Benoni Simmons: Long-Serving Hero of the American Revolution
3 months ago

Benoni Simmons: Long-Serving Hero of the American Revolution

The amazing story of Benoni Simmons’s military service in the American Revolution spans some fourteen years, perhaps the longest term of service by anyone in that conflict. More so, his …
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A History of Lobotomies in Rhode Island
4 months ago

A History of Lobotomies in Rhode Island

Charles Henry Gosselin had not yet turned two years old when the probate court of Providence committed him to the county orphanage in 1924. He spent his infancy there …
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A Survey of Rhode Island in 1789
4 months ago

A Survey of Rhode Island in 1789

[Note from the editor:  Jedidiah Morse (1761-1826) prepared surveys of each of the states of the new United States in the 1780s. He prepared one for Rhode Island in 1789; …
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Griffin Greene’s Water Pump Raises a Sunken British Warship in 1780
4 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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Ensuring a Prolific Fishery—Early Rhode Island Efforts to Manage Freshwater Fisheries
5 months ago

Ensuring a Prolific Fishery—Early Rhode Island Efforts to Manage Freshwater Fisheries

The earliest efforts in Rhode Island at what we might call “fisheries management” occurred before the arrival of the first White settlers. The Blackstone River had an enormous run of …
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