The Makers of Modern Rhode Island

Patrick T. Conley

Picking up where Rhode Island’s Founders left off, Dr. Patrick T. Conley, Rhode Island’s preeminent historian and president of the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, takes us through the Ocean State’s history from 1790 to 1860. Learn how Samuel Slater, the so-called Father of the Factory System, pioneered the making of modern Rhode Island, how Elizabeth Buffum Chace founded the Rhode Island Women’s Suffrage Association and what political circumstances led Governor Thomas Wilson Dorr to the Dorr War in 1842. This volume includes colorful biographical sketches of fifty-six influential Rhode Islanders who helped shape the state’s urban and industrial development into the modern Rhode Island of today.