About Christian McBurney

If you have not heard of Thomas Dorr and appreciate Rhode Island history, you should buy this book.  Even if you know all about him, you should purchase the …
Read More

Hostilities between the New England colonies and Great Britain did not break out until April 19, 1775, at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. But Rhode Island’s government took a …
Read More

I love history firsts. The American Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775, at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. This was the sharp beginning of America on its road …
Read More

I recently came across the recollections of Simeon Thayer, who served from 1777 to 1781 as a major in Rhode Island Continental Army regiments. He was one of the outstanding …
Read More

This is a most welcome book. Books on Roger Williams can be hard for the average reader to read. In part, this is because sixteenth century English language is so …
Read More

I was going through the colonial records of South Kingstown at the South Kingstown Town Hall last year when I stumbled across a census document with decent detail that wound …
Read More

[The following is the main text from my article “The South Kingstown Planters: Country Gentry in Colonial Rhode Island,” Rhode Island History, Volume 45, Number 3 (August 1986), pages 81-93. …
Read More

In the past fifteen years or so, there has been, happily, an explosion of books published on battles and other military aspects of the American Revolutionary War. In the same …
Read More

[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 …
Read More

[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 …
Read More