Page 6: The View from Greater Rhode Island
Rhode Island through the 17th Century, including its Great Race War of 1675-1676
Rhode Island in the 18th Century
Rhode Island in the 19th Century
Rhode Island in the 20th/21st Centuries
Rhode
Island has a marvelously detailed history. Race war, pirates,
privateering, slavery, the international slave trade, hangings,
witches...
The Baptists of Rhode Island such as the Reverend John Comer
The Baptists of Rhode Island (for better or worse).
The Touro Synagogue
Have you ever visited Touro Synagogue in Newport? Has anybody ever told you that it was a station on the Underground Railroad?
Do you know what a crock that is?
Aaron Lopez, America's Merchant Prince
Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island was so empowered by America's freedoms that he could buy you and sell you.
The Great Meetinghouse of the Friends in Newport, Rhode Island
Information about the Quaker silent "Great Meetinghouse" and jiving black dancehall at Newport, Rhode Island.
The town of Tiverton RI (Pocasset)
OK, it's just a little Rhode Island town (not to be confused with Pocasset, Massachusetts). Nevertheless, it has a past.
The town of Warren RI
OK, it's just a little Rhode Island town. Nevertheless, it has a past.
The town of Scituate RI
OK, it's just a little Rhode Island town. Nevertheless, it has a past.
Saylesville/Smithfield
The Slater Mill in Pawtucket
Some information about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution here in America. Why child labor was so important.
Why workers jumped into the river.
The history of Brown University
The
early history of Brown University, before it was moved to Providence,
while it was a Baptist institution known as Rhode Island College,
while its edifice atop College Hill was being used for other purposes during the Revolution, and later.
New Bedford, in "Greater Rhode Island"
Yes,
I do know that technically, New Bedford is in Massachusetts.
Nevertheless, much of its history is closely tied in with Rhode Island.
Providence, Rhode Island
A strictly chronological history of the municipality of Providence in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
The Reverend James Manning, first President of what would become Brown University
It used to be called the College of Rhode Island, back when it was a Baptist institution. Now it is called Brown University.
Here is the guy who did the deed -- and it seems clear that he was a regular decent fellow.
William J. Brown, shoe repairman of beautiful downtown Providence, Rhode Island
Providence,
Rhode Island is the sort of home town were, after you've spent your
life repairing shoes in a little shop, and gone blind -- you're
permitted to write
your own autobiography and support yourself in
your old age by selling copies of it. Read all about William J. Brown,
intrepid grandson of a manumitted slave.
He has some things to tell us about race riots, nearly
dying in a storm at sea, and how to get educated without any help
from anybody at all. He can tell us what it is like to live in amongst
a bunch of white people who need for you as a person of color to be
free -- but who, also, don't much care whether as a person of color you
are alive or dead.
Paulina Wright Davis
Two famous feminists, actually: Thomas Davis and Paulina Wright Davis of Providence, Rhode Island.
Charley Parkhurst
Was
he a man's man one-eyed California stagecoach driver, or was she the
first female voter? --Let's have a closer peek at those genetalia,
please.
George William Curtis
George
William Curtis, from Providence, Rhode Island by way of Brook Farm,
helped Henry David Thoreau raise the rafters of his cabin on Walden
Pond.
Later he became the first publisher of Thoreaus' materials on Cape Cod, and did a poor job of it.
Burrill Curtis
George William Curtis's elder brother James Burrill Curtis also assisted at the raising of Thoreau's beams,
and was also almost mentioned, or mentioned by implication, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods.
Commodore Matthew Calbreath Perry
Captain Oliver Hazard Perry
Nautical hero types for whom Rhode Island wasn't big enough.
Thomas Allen Jenckes
US
Representative Thomas Jenckes of Rhode Island took on the nation's
inconsistent local bankruptcy laws as a challenge, and rendered them
national and rational.
(Along the way, we learn something about the freeing of the enslaved -- and about the deeper nature of American racism.)
Transcendentalism in Rhode Island
Transcendentalism didn't just happen in Massachusetts. It also happened in Rhode Island --
consider, for instance, the lives of Christopher A. Greene and Sarah Chace Greene.
The Butler Hospital on Blackstone Avenue in Providence
It
used to be called Butler Hospital for the Insane. It was founded in
part with proceeds from the international slave trade (shhhh).
Once
upon a time the distressed people of Rhode Island could stay there for
a mere two dollars a day --which sounds like a bargain until
you realize that in those times
a laboring man might work from
daybreak before sunup until dusk after sunset for just one of those two
dollars, and with that feed and house his entire family.
The Dexter Asylum on Hope Street in Providence
Right now, even as
you read this, an attempt is being make by the administrators of the
Moses Brown School (right across Lloyd Avenue from the ball fields
of
what used to be, for the longest time, the Dexter Asylum, before the
bequest of Ebenezer Knight Dexter at last was broken) to break the deed
of trust
of Friend Moses Brown that originally set up their
school. It might be useful for us to examine how the bequest of Mr.
Dexter has been broken in the 1950s,
so that we can understand how it is that one goes about breaking the terms of such a donation.
Understanding
how this is done may help us predict the tactics of these Moses Brown
administrators, who are presently struggling to eliminate
whatever
is left of the influence that the New England Yearly Meeting of the
Religious Society of Friends once had over this once Quaker school.
Cudgoe
Gosh, what an honor to almost be present for the signing of the Declaration of Independence!
Cato Pearce
A Rhode Islander who was threatened with the whip, and jailed, for preaching.
The Reverend Clement Clarke Moore
Is it better to be caught in one's lie before, or after, one dies?
People connected with (Greater) Rhode Island:
Thomas and Alice Angell of Providence
Why is Angell Street?
Bishop George Berkeley
The good Bishop was with us for awhile, preaching in Newport, Rhode Island
Gabriel Bernon, refugee Huguenot businessman
James Franklin, printer
Samuell Gorton
Blackbeard the pirate
Thomas Tew, the pirate
Captain Thomas Paine of Newport, the pirate
Captain Adriaen Block
I thought the Island of Rhodes was in the Mediterranean?
John Brown of Providence RI
Like a Chesterfield cigarette, he was so round, so full, so densely packed.
Friend Moses Brown and his School
He had a wart on the end of his nose the size and color of a small cherry, and it didn't slow him down one little bit.
Nicholas Brown, Jr. of Providence RI
Junior's name got
attached to Brown University as a result of their naming fund drive not
because he gave so much --it wasn't nearly as much as they
wanted--
but because he was the only one to give any significant amount.
Friend Arnold "the Hatter" Buffum
The Quaker Arnold
Buffum was called "the hatter." You see, mercury was used in the
processing of felt for hats, and so hatters tended to dementia
on
account of prolonged contact with poisonous fumes. Likewise, a person
like Friend Arnold, who was concerned for the wellbeing of black
Americans to the
extent that he was actually helping them steal
themselves away from their obligated service, must be the victim of
some sort of dementia
caused by incautious exposure to UnAmerican ideas.
The Reverend William Blackstone or Blaxton
Sachem Canonicus of the Narragansett
The history of the Narragansett people
The Unitarian Reverend William Ellery Channing
Elder John Clarke
Governor Walter Clarke of Rhode Island
Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island
Samuel B. Comstock
Michele Felice Corne of Newport
Friend Paul Cuffe of Westport
Governor Thomas Wilson Dorr
George Thomas Downing
George Thomas Downing of Newport, Rhode Island was the friend and benefactor of Frederick Douglass, and
in all likelihood this is why his hotel was destroyed after the raid of
Captain John Brown at the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry.
Friend Mary Dyer of Newport
William Dyer of Newport
Friend Stephen Gould of Newport, Rhode Island
The mild-mannered watch repairsman of Newport.
Major General Nathanael Greene
A Quaker who quit.
Governor Stephen Hopkins
Commodore Esek Hopkins
Friend John R. Kellam of Providence
Captain Kidd the pirate
Sam Patch of Pawtucket
The Reverend John Sassamon, "Indian John"
As the First World War came about because of the murder of an archduke in Serbia, so King Philip's War came about
because of the murder of a minister between Plymouth and Bristol.
They called him "Indian John." He was a Harvard man.
Samuel Slater and water power
Some information about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution here in America. Why child labor was so important.
The Pawtucket or Blackstone River
The venue of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution here in America. Why workers jumped into the river.
The pirate Thomas Tew
The Dighton Rock
The Reverend Ezra Stiles
Robert Voorhis the hermit
The
hermit of Pawtucket -- this was before the law, in its magnificient
impartiality, forbade both the rich and the poor from sleeping under
bridges.
President Francis Wayland of Brown University
Benjamin West, philomath
Publik Universal Friend Jemimah Wilkinson
Captain Palsgrave Williams, the Pirate
Reverend Roger Williams
A Baptist -- not.
Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge
I bet you never associated Transcendentalism with Rhode Island!
Providence’s favorite draft dodger
What was "Transcendentalism"?