Hidden History of Rhode Island and the Civil War PDF Download

Author: Frank L Grzyb
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625847076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The smallest state to defend the Union and one far from the battlefront, Rhode Island's stories of the Civil War are often overlooked. From Brown University's John M. Hay, later to become Lincoln's assistant secretary, to the city of Newport's role as the temporary headquarters for the U.S. Naval Academy, the Civil War history of the Ocean State is a fascinating if little-known tale. Few know that John Wilkes Booth visited Newport to meet his supposed fiancee just nine days before he assassinated President Lincoln. The state also contributed several high-ranking officers to the Union effort and, more surprisingly, two prominent officers to the Confederacy. Remarkably, Kady Southwell Brownell also openly served as a soldier in a Rhode Island infantry regiment. Join author Frank L. Grzyb as he investigates Rhode Island's rich Civil War history and unearths century-old stories that have since faded into obscurity.

Author: Glenn V. Laxton
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625843038
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Hidden History of Rhode Island delivers the best Ocean State stories you've never heard before. Surprising tales and unexpected anecdotes color Rhode Island's legacy, from the accounts of its three brave Titanic survivors to the whirlwind Revolutionary War romance between a Smithfield girl and a French viscount. Rhode Island historian Glenn Laxton uncovers the exceptional citizens whom history has forgotten, like Robert the Hermit, a man who endured three escapes from slavery before finding liberty and peace in Rumford; the illustrious Lippitt family, who spearheaded advancements in deaf education; and Christiana Bannister, a Narragansett tribe member, nineteenth-century entrepreneur and wife to the most successful African American artist of the time. With moments of tragedy, as in the Lexington steamboat disaster, as well as triumph, as in the case of small-town boy turned baseball hero Joe Connolly, Laxton reveals Rhode Island beneath the surface.

Author: Christy Clark-Pujara
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479855634
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Tells the story of one state in particular whose role in the slave trade was outsized: Rhode Island Historians have written expansively about the slave economy and its vital role in early American economic life. Like their northern neighbors, Rhode Islanders bought and sold slaves and supplies that sustained plantations throughout the Americas; however, nowhere else was this business so important. During the colonial period trade with West Indian planters provided Rhode Islanders with molasses, the key ingredient for their number one export: rum. More than 60 percent of all the slave ships that left North America left from Rhode Island. During the antebellum period Rhode Islanders were the leading producers of “negro cloth,” a coarse wool-cotton material made especially for enslaved blacks in the American South. Clark-Pujara draws on the documents of the state, the business, organizational, and personal records of their enslavers, and the few first-hand accounts left by enslaved and free black Rhode Islanders to reconstruct their lived experiences. The business of slavery encouraged slaveholding, slowed emancipation and led to circumscribed black freedom. Enslaved and free black people pushed back against their bondage and the restrictions placed on their freedom. It is convenient, especially for northerners, to think of slavery as southern institution. The erasure or marginalization of the northern black experience and the centrality of the business of slavery to the northern economy allows for a dangerous fiction—that North has no history of racism to overcome. But we cannot afford such a delusion if we are to truly reconcile with our past.

Author: Margaret Middleton Rivers Eastman
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614236178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Forgotten tales of Charleston's Civil War history have been collected into this new compendium for today's history lovers. In a city as old as Charleston, it's only natural for some stories to become less well-known over time, but the Palmetto State's history should never be forgotten entirely. Author Margaret Middleton Rivers Eastman recounts some of Charleston's amazing Civil War stories that have faded from memory, including the shady story of how an association of Charleston elites conspired to push South Carolina toward secession in 1860, and the Stone Fleet of old whaling ships that were sunk in Charleston Harbor in an attempt to choke out Confederate blockade runners, as well as a cast of real-life characters such as Amarinthia Yates Snowden, William Richard Catheart, and Tom Lockwood, just to name a few.

Author: Thomas Dresser
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 143966028X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Celebrated local historian Thomas Dresser unearths the little-known stories that laid the foundations for the community of Martha's Vineyard. Behind the mansions and presidential vacations of Martha's Vineyard hide the lost stories and forgotten events of small-town America. What was the island's role in the Underground Railroad? Why do chickens festoon Nancy Luce's grave? And how did the people of the Vineyard react in 1923 when the rum running ship John Dwight sank with the island's supply of liquor aboard? Delve deep below the surface of history to discover the origin and meaning of local place names and the significance of beloved landmarks.

Author: Frank Morral & Barbara Ann White
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1626197059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Discover the story behind the Nantucket Civil War Monument, King Alcohol and more in Hidden History of Nantucket. The celebrated history of Nantucket's great whaling days often overshadows the fascinating changes that took place in the years following. Learn about some named on the Civil War Monument, some left off and some who may not belong. Meet the Cold Water Army of seven hundred schoolchildren who paraded against King Alcohol in hopes that the island would become a temperance oasis. Little remains of the bathing pavilion and water slide of the long-lost town of Coatue that once had big plans for expansion. With surprising facts and captivating tales, authors Frank Morral and Barbara Ann White explore these and other lost accounts of the faraway island.

Author: Harry Gratwick
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614231346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Discover 400 years of New England history you won’t find in guidebooks in this collection of true stories and colorful characters from The Pine Tree State. Maine wouldn’t be the magical place it is today without the contributions of little-known individuals whose inspiring and adventuresome lives make up the story of Maine's "hidden history." Journalist and Maine historian Harry Gratwick presents vividly detailed portraits of these Mainers, from the controversial missionary Sebastien Rale to Woolwich native William Phips, whose seafaring attacks against French Canada earned him the first governorship of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gratwick also profiles inventors such as Robert Benjamin Lewis, an African American from Gardiner who patented a hair growth product in the 1830s, and Margaret Knight, a York native who defied nineteenth-century sexism to earn the nickname "the female Edison." From soprano Lillian Nordica, who left Farmington to become the most glamorous American opera singer of her day, to slugger George "Piano Legs" Gore, the only Mainer to ever win a Major League Baseball batting championship, Hidden History of Maine reveals the men and women who made history without making it into history books.

Author: Alexia Jones Helsley
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625842457
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
Historically, Greenville County owes much to its natural advantages of scenery, location and abundant water, but it has also benefited from its colorful characters, such as Richard Pearis, Vardry McBee, Richard Furman and the Earle family. Hidden History of Greenville County details the personalities, places and events that have given Greenville its progressive, diverse environment. Join archivist and history professor Alexia Helsley as she explores some of these individuals and their contributions, as well as little-known events in the area and the ever-fascinating "Dark Corner." From mansions to murders, learn things about Greenville County history that you've never encountered before.

Author: Eric Foner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian once again reconfigures the national saga of American slavery and freedom. A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. Slaves could be found in the streets of New York well after abolition, traveling with owners doing business with the city's major banks, merchants, and manufacturers. New York was also home to the North’s largest free black community, making it a magnet for fugitive slaves seeking refuge. Slave catchers and gangs of kidnappers roamed the city, seizing free blacks, often children, and sending them south to slavery. To protect fugitives and fight kidnappings, the city's free blacks worked with white abolitionists to organize the New York Vigilance Committee in 1835. In the 1840s vigilance committees proliferated throughout the North and began collaborating to dispatch fugitive slaves from the upper South, Washington, and Baltimore, through Philadelphia and New York, to Albany, Syracuse, and Canada. These networks of antislavery resistance, centered on New York City, became known as the underground railroad. Forced to operate in secrecy by hostile laws, courts, and politicians, the city’s underground-railroad agents helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Until now, their stories have remained largely unknown, their significance little understood. Building on fresh evidence—including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York—Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. The story is inspiring—full of memorable characters making their first appearance on the historical stage—and significant—the controversy over fugitive slaves inflamed the sectional crisis of the 1850s. It eventually took a civil war to destroy American slavery, but here at last is the story of the courageous effort to fight slavery by "practical abolition," person by person, family by family.

Author: Gail B. MacDonald
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439669384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Mystic and Stonington are quintessential seacoast villages with colorful and diverse histories that extend well beyond the wharves and former sea captains' homes. Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants and women also wove the unique story of this New England coastline. Now known for bucolic landscapes and tourist attractions, Mystic was once a workaday village that hosted thousands during annual Peace Meetings and provided groundbreaking education to deaf children. Stonington village teemed with railroad and steamship workers and passengers and was home to a women's college. Gail Braccidiferro MacDonald peels back the layers of these southeastern Connecticut coastal communities, revealing a rich history that is sometimes surprising and always intriguing.