Interviewees:
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C. Morgan Grefe
- Executive Director, Rhode Island Historical Society
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Richard Ring
- Senior Director for Library & Museum Collections, Rhode Island Historical Society
Newport was the center of Rhode Island's Loyalist community. It was home to a tight-knit group including Martin Howard Jr., an Anglican lawyer; Thomas Moffatt, a Scottish physician; and George Rome, agent for several British firms. This faction published Tory essays in the Newport Mercury and in 1764 petitioned the King to revoke Rhode Island's charter, characterizing the colony's democratic self-governance as tantamount to anarchy. Outside Newport, Loyalists were scattered. Stephen Arnold of East Greenwich saw his likeness burned in effigy, and Jonathan Simpson, a Boston refugee running a hardware shop in Providence, awoke one morning to find his storefront tarred and feathered in the modern way. A rare window into Loyalist sentiment comes from the diary of Mary Gould Almy, a Loyalist married to a Patriot officer, who wrote from Newport in 1778: “I am for English government and an English fleet.”
