Native Americans lived around
Narragansett Bay for thousands of years before English settlers began arriving in the early 17th century. Rhode Island was unique among the
Thirteen British Colonies in having been founded by a refugee,
Roger Williams, who fled
religious persecution in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony to establish a haven for religious liberty. He founded Providence in 1636 on land purchased from local tribes, creating the first settlement in North America with an explicitly secular government. The
Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations subsequently became a destination for religious and political dissenters and social outcasts, earning it the moniker "Rogue's Island".
Rhode Island was the first colony to call for a
Continental Congress, in 1774, and the first to renounce its allegiance to the British
Crown, on May 4, 1776. After the
American Revolution, during which it was heavily occupied and contested, Rhode Island became the fourth state to ratify the
Articles of Confederation, on February 9, 1778. Because its citizens favored a weaker central government, it boycotted the
1787 convention that had drafted the
United States Constitution, which it initially refused to ratify; it finally ratified it on May 29, 1790, the last of the original 13 states to do so.
The state was officially named the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations since the colonial era but came to be commonly known as "Rhode Island". In November 2020, the state's voters
approved an amendment to the
state constitution formally dropping "and Providence Plantations" from its full name. Its official nickname is the "Ocean State", a reference to its 400 mi (640 km) of coastline and the large bays and inlets that make up about 14% of its area. (Full article...)
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Liberty Arming the Patriot, sometimes called Freedom Arming the Patriot, is a bronze sculpture at Park Place in
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, commemorating the participation of the city's citizens in the
American Civil War. It was designed by
William Granville Hastings and cast by the
Gorham Manufacturing Company in 1897. Unlike many Civil War memorials, Liberty Arming the Patriot is a dynamic composition, depicting a young farmer setting his plow aside, and reaching to take a sword from a classical female figure clad in breastplate and wielding a pike. The statue is 11 feet (3.4 m) in height, and is mounted on a granite base 10 feet (3.0 m) high and 22 feet (6.7 m) wide. The sculpture was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 2001. (Full article...)
One hundred years after the declaration that all men are created equal, there began to gather in Newport a colony of the rich, determined to show that some Americans were conspicuously more equal than others.
Image 35In 1936, on the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Rhode Island in 1636, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp, depicting Roger Williams (from Rhode Island)
Image 49In 1936, on the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Rhode Island in 1636, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp, depicting Roger Williams (from Rhode Island)
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