Ocean State Libraries

This source was first published by the state of Rhode Island between 1856 and 1865. It contains basic records for colonial Rhode Island and includes journals of legislative proceedings, digests of public laws, volumes of land evidences, the acts and orders by the governor and council and Indian deeds.

"In Episode 2 of our journey into Glocester's past, we will begin by going back to the 1700s when gold was discovered in the Durfee Hill woods and then to early 1800s when Betty the Learned Elephant came to Chepachet. It tells the story of the 1867 freshet that washed away the Chepachet Bridge and the 1907 fire that almost burned down the entire village. During the Civil War many Glocester men volunteered and served their country on some of the bloodiest...

Traces the history of Rhode Island from the arrival of the first European settlers in the early seventeenth century through 1790 when it became the thirteenth state to join the Union.

"In 1840s Rhode Island, the state's seventeenth-century colonial charter remained in force and restricted suffrage to property owners, effectively disenfranchising 60 percent of potential voters. Thomas Wilson Dorr's failed attempt to rectify that situation through constitutional reform ultimately led to an armed insurrection that was quickly quashed--and to a stiff sentence for Dorr himself. Nevertheless, as Erik Chaput shows, the Dorr Rebellion...

The remarkable story of the bloody conflict that erupted in 1841 Rhode Island over allowing non-property owners to vote.
 
The portly Rhode Island aristocrat was hardly the image of the people’s champion—but in 1841, Thomas Dorr became just that. At a time when only white male landowners could vote, the idealistic Dorr envisioned a more democratic state.
 
In October of that year, the People’s...

"Rhode Island, 1846. Estranged from his family, writer Merritt Fernsby is surprised when he inherits a remote estate in the Narragansett Bay. Though the property has been uninhabited for more than a century, Merritt is ready to call it home--until he realizes he has no choice. With its doors slamming shut and locking behind him, Whimbrel House is not about to let Merritt leave"--