Rhode Island – General

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 …
Read More

I wonder if the strollers and shoppers at Garden City Center are aware that beneath those trendy shops and eateries there was once an active coal mine. Granted, the coal …
Read More

Whaling “is a wretched life [of] privations and hardship deprived of friends and society,” John Scott Deblois (1816-1885) wrote in an 1844 letter to his family in Newport. [1] Voyages …
Read More

No doubt about it, at this time of year, South County’s most famous brother and sister have to be Mercy and Edwin Brown. One hundred and twenty-three years after their …
Read More

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

How did plans for a century old Providence water filtration plant end up in the collections of the Lawrence Public Library in Massachusetts? We may never know, but thanks to …
Read More

Nineteenth century photo studios did more than take images of their clients. Many also took pictures of their communities.

The image in the banner for this article is but one …
Read More

American history enthusiasts are generally aware of the story of Samuel Slater, and the developments that ensued following his arrival in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in January of 1790.

For readers …
Read More

One chilly day in November 1917 the air over Rhode Island’s Greenwich Bay resounded with the then unusual roar of an aircraft engine. A graceful seaplane rose from the water …
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