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The last two years, 2017 and 2016, were good ones for the publication of Rhode Island history books. This week, I review some of them. Last week, Christian McBurney …
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The year 2017 was another good one for the publication of Rhode Island history books.  While we cannot possibly review all of them, I review several of them below …
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While tiny Rhode Island contributed her fair share of men to serve in the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps during World War I, only one organized unit of …
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When the United States declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary on April 6, 1917 and entered the Great War, it created an urgent need to train members of the armed …
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The American Revolution was fought from Maine to Illinois, hundreds of military encounters occurring in what eventually became the United States of America. Among those events were two skirmishes on …
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In its current form, the Masonic fraternity dates back to the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. The new fraternity used stonemasonry and the biblical account of …
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In 1863, Providence photographer Francis Hacker bragged he’d photographed one thousand public buildings and manufactories. In a city with close to fifty-one thousand residents, that’s one picture for every fiftieth …
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Rhode Island is fortunate to still have five working grist mills, four of which are open to the public. One of them stone grinds, produces and sells johnnycake meal as …
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The hallmark of a great democracy is that its leaders reflect the composition of the electorate. It has been the case that for each new wave of immigrants the first …
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[Note from the editor:  An updated version of this article is in a chapter of my book Machine Guns in Narragansett Bay: The Coast Guard’s War on Rumrunners (History Press, 2023).  The …
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