By: G. Wayne Miller, Ocean State Stories A belated congratulations, Rebecca, on becoming executive director of the Newport Historical Society [in 2022]! Can you give us a summary of the society’s mission and holdings? Thank you! It has been over a year since I stepped into the role, and it’s been an incredible experience so far. I love the work we do here, and better still, the people I work with. The Newport Historical Society is a driving force in collecting, documenting, and preserving Newport history—its buildings, its records, and the stories of its people. Whether y ..read more

  By: Dan McGowan, Boston Globe & The Globe Rhode Island   It’s Black History Month, and the Newport Historical Society just launched a fascinating research project that centers the Black and Indigenous experiences embedded in the City by the Sea’s historical record. You can check out “Voices from the NHS Archives” for yourself by clicking here, but I asked Rebecca Bertrand, executive director of Newport Historical Society, to tell us more about the project. Q: This was a project that took more than four years to complete, and you say you reviewed 4,000 c ..read more

NEWPORT, R.I. – The Newport Historical Society (NHS) is proud to announce the launch of Voices from the NHS Archives, an expansive research project that centers the Black and Indigenous experiences embedded in Newport’s historical record. This digital tool is the culmination of four years of work, feedback from dozens of experts and advisors, and the review of 4,000 church records, business papers, ship logs, and more from the NHS archives. Work on this project will be ongoing indefinitely, with more documents regularly digitized, catalogued, and posted for public access. This is the first dig ..read more

  By: Leah Crowley, WPRI 12 NEWPORT, R.I. (WPRI) — The Newport Historical Society launched a new online resource on Thursday called “Voices of the NHS Archives.” The project is bringing the society’s archives into the digital age. The papers being preserved at the Touro Street facility date back hundreds of years. Staff had the idea to digitize their documents during the pandemic. “Unfortunately, we had to close the doors to our archives, but as a staff, we still wanted to make them as accessible as possible,” explained Kaela Bleho, the collections and digital access manager at NHS ..read more

  By: Ryan Belmore, What’s Up Newport The Newport Historical Society (NHS) is launching a new digital database that will make it easier for people to find and learn about the history of Black and Indigenous people in Newport. The project, called Voices from the NHS Archives, has been in the works for years and includes reviewing 4,000 church records, business papers, ship logs, and other documents from the NHS archives. This is the first digital tool of its kind to be launched in Rhode Island, and it is modeled after the successful Enslaved.org website, which documents the lives ..read more

For Immediate Release: February 8, 2024 Contact: Press@NewportHistory.org Newport Historical Society Resource Makes Newport’s Black and Indigenous History More Accessible Database Includes 4,000+ Records and Will Continue to Grow NEWPORT, R.I.—The Newport Historical Society (NHS) today launches Voices from the NHS Archives, an expansive research project that centers the Black and Indigenous experiences embedded in Newport’s historical record. This digital tool is the culmination of four years of work, feedback from dozens of experts and advisors, and the review of 4,000 church records, bu ..read more

The post Press Release: NHS Grand Re-opening of the Newly Remodeled Museum & Shop appeared first on Newport Historical Society ..read more

The photos are part of the Historical Society’s 500,000-photo collection, which dates back to the 1950s and includes photos donated by the Newport Daily News January 11, 2024 The Boston Globe By: Brittany Bowker, Globe Staff A collection of more than 8,000 treasured historic photographs and negatives from the Newport Historical Society were damaged Wednesday when severe storms lead to widespread flooding across the Ocean State. On Thursday, the photographs hung out to dry on clotheslines at the Historical Society’s Richard I. Burnham Resource Center, where many of them had been stored wh ..read more

January 16, 2024 By: Savana Dunning, Newport Daily News Hanging from a clothing line stretched across two sets of ladders, dozens, if not hundreds, of film negatives from The Newport Daily News archives dry out in the lobby of the Newport Historical Society’s headquarters on Touro Street, just a portion of the photo archive that was impacted when the organization’s basement unexpectedly flooded on Tuesday. “It’s really Newport’s stories,” Executive Director Rebecca Bertrand said. “It’s the stories of locals – and it’s the stories of your newspaper that’s being preserved and the wonde ..read more

This is a guest blog post by Sam Dinnie (they/them), a PhD student in early American history at The George Washington University. Sam is a 2023 Buchanan Burnham Fellow. Portrait of Ezra Stiles painted by American artist Nathaniel Smibert, 1756. Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery. Ezra Stiles was born in North Haven, Connecticut, in 1727 to Reverend Isaac Stiles and Kezia Taylor Stiles. Stiles graduated from Yale in 1746 and was ordained as a minister three years later. His ensuing life achievements make it easy to celebrate him as the “most learned man in New England.” Stiles helped ..read more