Biography

Last week, I gave you my list of the top twenty greatest Rhode Islanders of all time, numbers twenty through sixteen (as well as my honorable mentions and five current …
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This is the first article of four counting down my list of the top twenty greatest Rhode Islanders of all time. In this article, I present the greatest Rhode Islanders, …
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In Rhode Island, slavery was placed on the road to extinction on March 1, 1784, when the General Assembly passed a gradual manumission act making any black born to …
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John M. Hay is perhaps Brown University’s most illustrious undergraduate. He started his career as assistant secretary to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. His photographs alongside Lincoln have …
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It is odd but true that the little state of Rhode Island produced two heroes in the giant state of Texas during Texas’s formative years. One hero was Albert Martin …
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More than any other Rhode Islander of his generation, Sidney S. Rider was in the business of history. Rider was the premier bookseller in Rhode Island in the later part …
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Rhode Island can claim as its own Jemima Wilkinson, an important religious prophet and utopian leader in early America. Recently, she has been highlighted in college U.S. history text books …
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In 1824, several months after he graduated from Harvard College, Thomas Wilson Dorr (1805-1854), the son of a prominent Providence, Rhode Island merchant, entered into a philosophical debate with his …
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While writing of the diversity of religious leanings in the colony of Rhode Island for my recent book on colonial New England (see the advertisement next to this article), I …
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Zachariah Allen was born to Zachariah and Anne (Crawford) Allen in Providence on September 15, 1795. While little is known of his early years, it is evident by eighteenth century …
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