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Rhode Island Celebrates 125th Anniversary of Its First Labor Day Parade
6 years ago

Rhode Island Celebrates 125th Anniversary of Its First Labor Day Parade

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 …
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African Americans in Rhode Island Who Used Food to Achieve Independence
6 years ago

African Americans in Rhode Island Who Used Food to Achieve Independence

Among the gifts that immigrants have brought to the United States are their native cuisines. Indeed, opening a restaurant or food-related business was—and still is—a traditional recipe for financial …
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“Strange Mismanagement:” The Capture Of The HMS Syren
6 years ago

“Strange Mismanagement:” The Capture Of The HMS Syren

After a British fleet of seventy-one warships and transports entered Narragansett Bay on December 7, 1776, and the next day landed soldiers that occupied Newport, Rhode Island, as well as …
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An Enemy Creeps In
6 years ago

An Enemy Creeps In

By the late summer of 1918, the World War had achieved the nadir of state authorized mayhem. Millions were dead, diseased, and wounded. Homeless, starving men, women, and children stalked …
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Beavertail Lighthouse on Conanicut Island, 1712-1793
6 years ago

Beavertail Lighthouse on Conanicut Island, 1712-1793

The present Beavertail Light Station, with its 1856 granite light tower and two almost identical white painted brick keeper’s houses is located on Rhode Island’s Conanicut Island in the middle …
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God, War, and Providence Book Review
6 years ago

God, War, and Providence
Book Review

God War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England, by James A. Warren (Scribner, 2018).

In God, War, and …
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Two Selves in One Skull: Ansel Bourne’s Strange Interlude
6 years ago

Two Selves in One Skull: Ansel Bourne’s Strange Interlude

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 …
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Thomas Careless of the Royal Navy:  Tried for Murder in Newport, Court-Martialed for Tossing a Block Islander
6 years ago

Thomas Careless of the Royal Navy: Tried for Murder in Newport, Court-Martialed for Tossing a Block Islander

On May 3, 1768, a man was killed in Newport, Rhode Island, in a fight on Thames Street near Green Dragon Lane.[1] Four days later, Sarah Goddard and John Carter …
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Roger Williams’s Opening Argument: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty
6 years ago

Roger Williams’s Opening Argument: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty

The question of church and state is probably—not probably—is the oldest argument in American history. It was first articulated almost 400 years ago by John Winthrop, the most important figure …
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Mabel Hayward, Wickford’s Con Artist Extraordinaire
6 years ago

Mabel Hayward, Wickford’s Con Artist Extraordinaire

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 …
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