Colonial

Contrary to the popular image of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow character as an amiable buffoon, pirates in their day were usually cruel thugs, petty criminals, and international terrorists. Pirates had …
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Napoleon Bonaparte said that history is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on. William Jackson was murdered in South Kingstown in 1751, and Thomas Carter …
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In colonial times, death was a common occurrence reaching into all families, regardless of wealth, social station and race. In seaport towns such as Newport, Rhode Island, influenza, scarlet …
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[From the Editor:  In the late 17th and early 18h centuries, Rhode Island was a haven for pirates.  That changed in 1723 when Charles Harris and twenty-five other pirates …
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Born in Yorkshire, England in 1716 (some sources say 14 June, others say 27 July), Peter Harrison was placed at age twelve in an apprenticeship to architect/builder William Etty. He …
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Newport, Rhode Island, is graced with some of the finest works of America architecture, from the colonial period to the spectacular Gilded Age. Among the jewels of eighteenth-century architecture in …
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The name of North Kingstown’s own Captain Daniel Fones might be spoken in the same breath with as Thomas Tew, William Kidd, and Blackbeard. Fones’s skills as a sailor, his …
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One of the founding breeds of the Standardbred, the Narragansett Pacer has been extinct since the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Yet the Pacer was ubiquitous in colonial North …
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Death notices began to appear in America with the first newspapers. A community-wide extension of the early notices on tavern and meeting house doors, these first notices were sparse, containing …
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In one of his oft-repeated observations, Benjamin Franklin remarked “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”[1] But Franklin would have exempted colonial Rhode …
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