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Teaching a Class of 920 Students at URI in the 1970s
11 months ago

Teaching a Class of 920 Students at URI in the 1970s

“Unh, Biology 2?” the secretary replied, “That’ll be in Edwards Auditorium.” It was the Fall of 1969, and I was the newest faculty member in the old Department of Zoology. …
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Gaspee Raid Inspires Boston Tea Party Raiders to Disguise Themselves as Narragansetts
11 months ago

Gaspee Raid Inspires Boston Tea Party Raiders to Disguise Themselves as Narragansetts

Last week, this website ran an article providing strong contemporaneous evidence that many of the men who broke open the tea chests and destroyed the tea inside them on board …
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Narragansetts (Not Mohawks) Blamed for Boston Tea Party
12 months ago

Narragansetts (Not Mohawks) Blamed for Boston Tea Party

In the evening of December 16, 1773, a band of Boston Whigs (commonly known today as Patriots) charged onto three merchant ships at a wharf in Boston Harbor and dumped …
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Samuel Casey, Talented Colonial Silversmith and Notorious Counterfeiter, Escapes the Hangman
12 months ago

Samuel Casey, Talented Colonial Silversmith and Notorious Counterfeiter, Escapes the Hangman

Samuel Casey of Little Rest (now Kingston) was one of the most skilled silversmiths in colonial times in all of the colonies.  His craftsmanship of silver tankards and teapots made …
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The First Female Scientist at  Naval Underwater Ordnance Station, Newport
1 year ago

The First Female Scientist at Naval Underwater Ordnance Station, Newport

In 2018 and 2019, in celebration of the 1869 founding of the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, and its newer designation as Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, several …
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Roger Williams in Rhode Island
1 year ago

Roger Williams in Rhode Island

[Editor’s Note: The following is from a pamphlet I recently obtained while visiting the Roger Williams National Memorial, which is owned and operated by the National Park Service of the …
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A Book Review:  Rhode Island Election Tickets: A Survey of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paper Ballots (Rhode Island Publications Society, 2023). Compiled by Russell J. DeSimone.  Introduction by Patrick T. Conley.
1 year ago

A Book Review: Rhode Island Election Tickets: A Survey of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paper Ballots (Rhode Island Publications Society, 2023). Compiled by Russell J. DeSimone. Introduction by Patrick T. Conley.

Rhode Island has a unique history, to say the least.  And here comes another history book showcasing said unique history.  Russell J. DeSimone has been for decades one of …
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The Sloop Providence: Its Role in the Revolutionary War and its Rebuilding
1 year ago

The Sloop Providence: Its Role in the Revolutionary War and its Rebuilding

The Idea for Rebuilding

In 1966, a young Harvard graduate in Rhode Island with a passion for naval history noted that the American Bicentennial was approaching. No one else seemed …
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The Last Dozen: The Final Survivors of the Seventh Rhode Island Volunteers
1 year ago

The Last Dozen: The Final Survivors of the Seventh Rhode Island Volunteers

There is something special in being last, especially when it comes to being the last survivor of a particular event. From Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the Titanic to …
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Lonnon Philips’s Sharecropping Agreement in 18th Century North Kingstown
1 year ago

Lonnon Philips’s Sharecropping Agreement in 18th Century North Kingstown

I am sure that the word sharecropping brings to most folk’s minds, images of the antebellum deep South, poor Black men and women toiling away for little reward, and merciless …
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