Colonial

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 …
Read More

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 …
Read More

In 1881 and 1905, two respected Rhode Island history authors made the claim that in colonial times, Godfrey Malbone, a wealthy Newport merchant, had constructed a tunnel from the coastline …
Read More