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Barrington’s Nockum Hill, Oliver Cromwell, and the English Civil War: A Prelude to King Philip’s War
2 weeks ago

Barrington’s Nockum Hill, Oliver Cromwell, and the English Civil War: A Prelude to King Philip’s War

In the Barneyville Historic District of Swansea, Massachusetts, near Old Providence Road and the Palmer River, there is a granite monument erected in 1912 with a bronze plaque that reads …
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John Manley’s Bad Day in Newport in December 1776
3 weeks 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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The Ku Klux Klan Attempts To Take Over Rhode Island Militia
4 weeks ago

The Ku Klux Klan Attempts To Take Over Rhode Island Militia

Rhode Island’s First Light Infantry (called the FLI for short) was disintegrating fast. It was 1927, more than a century after its 1818 founding, and it was able to count …
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Riding the Rails
1 month ago

Riding the Rails

Today, when only two rail lines exist across Rhode Island, the main Amtrak line and the Providence and Worcester tracks, and stations on these routes are very limited, it may …
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Teaching The American Revolution Using Ken Burns’s Documentary—Episodes 4, 5, and 6
2 months ago

Teaching The American Revolution Using Ken Burns’s Documentary—Episodes 4, 5, and 6

In early 1778, from the headquarters of the Continental Army in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, General George Washington’s aide-de-camp, John Laurens, wrote several letters to his father Henry who had recently …
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What Colonel Christopher Greene Owned (and Did not Own) in 1779 and 1781
2 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
2 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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Teaching The American Revolution Using Ken Burns’s Documentary—Episodes 2 and 3
2 months ago

Teaching The American Revolution Using Ken Burns’s Documentary—Episodes 2 and 3

“Long did I endeavor with unfeigned and unwearied Zeal, to preserve from breaking, that fine and noble China Vase the British Empire: for I knew that being once broken, the …
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Pokanoket or Wampanoag?: The Origins of Names
3 months ago

Pokanoket or Wampanoag?: The Origins of Names

The Indigenous people who first interacted with the Pilgrims in 1620 identified as Pokanoket, not Wampanoag. The widespread use of “Wampanoag” to describe this group is a colonial-era distortion that …
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Job E. Townsend Coffin Accounts and Newport Town Council Records: Research of African American Ancestors
3 months ago

Job E. Townsend Coffin Accounts and Newport Town Council Records: Research of African American Ancestors

Newspaper obituaries for African American residents who died in Newport, Rhode Island, in the decades after the American Revolution are sparse in number. When they were in the Newport Mercury, …
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