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Historian Seth Rockman’s deeply researched and thoroughly engaging new book, Plantation Goods, deserves to be on the shelf of all those interested in late 18th and 19th century America. Many …
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[From the editor: This article quotes at length from chapter 8 of the following book published in 1904: Half a Century with the Providence Journal, Being a Record of the …
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I have lived with the ghosts of the past for over twenty years. Since early in 2000 when I discovered that I had a great-great-great uncle, Alfred Sheldon Knight, who …
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[From the editor: This article quotes at length from a chapter on child newspaper carriers from the early years of the Providence Journal. The children were required to appear early …
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Bostonian merchants, sailors and dockworkers hated the Stamp Act enacted by Parliament in early 1765.  What right did Parliament have to tax Americans when they were not represented in Parliament?

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With the Naval War College on Aquidneck Island, we island residents have a familiarity with the idea of “wargaming” or rehearsing the decisions leaders would make during warfare involving joint …
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Eighteenth-century American society allowed women to take on some roles outside of homemaker. Women were plaintiffs in court cases, administrators of wills, held powers of attorney, and were property owners. …
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In the hamlet of Kingston, stands—barely—a twentieth century railroad signal tower, outdated, outmoded, and tumbledown, composting in place, partially hidden by the Route 138 bridge, and mostly unnoticed by those …
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“The moment I heard of America, I lov’d her.” The Marquis de Lafayette wrote this in a letter from his camp near Warren, Rhode Island, on September 23, 1778. It …
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It’s a great puzzle of the Revolutionary era.  Before 1767, Rhode Island was one of the most gung-ho colonies in resisting British intervention.  Newporters had fired on imperial customs enforcers, …
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