2025 event list
🚗😃April School Vacation Week!🚗😃
Our new "Revolutionary Rhode Island" History Hunt series happens at 4 locations. All events start at 10:30am, and are free of charge, but registration is required:
🇺🇸Mon. 4/14- North Kingstown - Smith's Castle walking tour
🇺🇸Tues. 4/15 Portsmouth Library - Battle of RI Driving Tour
🇺🇸Wed. 4/16 East Greenwich - Varnum House walking tour
🇺🇸Thurs. 4/17 Bristol - walking/driving tour
A fun new way to tour each location. FreshMaps and the Battle of RI Association have created a “Revolutionary RI History Hunt” series - a smartphone/mobile app digital scavenger hunt map which brings you to various locations around RI to learn about local American Revolution history, right where it happened!
Historian videos appear on your phone, then you solve a puzzle or trivia question to earn points! Best suited for 4th - 8th grade, but open to any age who wants to learn and have some fun exploring.
Bring your Android or iPhone to download a mobile app. Single events are free. Join us for any one day, or do them all!
Register online at: https://freshmaps.us/2025-history-hunts/
Opening Day
Saturday May 3rd 2025 11am-4pm
This years theme will follow the publication of Professor Charlotte Carrington-Farmer’s long anticipated Roger Williams and His World. Her book will be featured at a talk and a book signing during our opening weekend event.
Also: 17th century reenactors, maypole dancing, mead making demonstrations (at 1:30 and 2:45), South County Spinners, vendors, children’s games and crafts, yard sale featuring reproduction colonial cookware, earthenware, and drinking vessels, tours of the castle, and more!
**An all day seminar is in the works for September which will also feature Charlotte’s new book and other speakers. The day will be based on Roger Williams and the early New England colonies. The seminar will include talks and cultural performances by indigenous scholors, and artists. Keep your eye out for more information about the seminar!
Roger Williams, a 17th-century English immigrant to New England, was famously banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 for his “new and dangerous opinions” on religious freedom, the separation of church and state, and Indigenous land rights. Following his banishment, Williams settled the town of Providence with the permission of the Narragansett Sachems, creating a colony that was arguably the freest in the western world. This collection draws together a wide range of primary sources by and about Williams in order to make this history accessible to a broad audience.
Reviews
“Roger Williams and His World is a book we have needed for a long time. With clarity and humanity, Charlotte Carrington-Farmer brings us back into that world, explaining how many peoples inhabited it and how ground-breaking their ideas could be. At the same time, as she explains, they often fell short of their highest standards. For Roger Williams, his family, and his many neighbors, life was full of contention as well as hope—still the motto of Rhode Island. Thanks to this book, we have a far richer sense of that struggle, and its legacy for all of us.” — Ted Widmer, City University of New York, author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington
“In Roger Williams and His World, Carrington-Farmer exposes the complexities of Roger Williams—both the man himself and the cataclysmic world and time in which he lived.” — Lorén Spears, enrolled Narragansett, Executive Director of the Tomaquag Museum
tea and history
May 10th Mother’s Day Tea, 4:30-6:00. (Saturday) Tea plus Mary Mangan of the New England Lace Group will talk about Ipswich Lacemaking in the Late 18th Century.
*See Tea Page Here for more details
Breakfast Talk
Saturday May 24th 9:30am
Join retired National Park Ranger John McNiff, who, as Roger Williams, will discuss his years at Cocumscossoc and his neighborly friendship with the Narragansett, as well as Richard Smith.
Doors open for coffee and refreshments at 930am and the presentation begins at 10am. $5 suggested donation.
conversations at the castle
Thursday June 5th 6pm
Seth Rockman
The Brown University professor of History discusses his book
Plantation Goods, revealing how Rhode Island mills and manufacturers were tied to Southern slavery.
Tastings of Madeira with light colonial fare
June 6th at 6:00pm
Similar to our popular adults only Raise a Glass event we had last year, we are brining back an event that will have a nice combo of history and drinks.
*check back for more details
Tea and history
Sunday June 8th
4:30-6:00pm Tea plus Historian Mark Burnham speaking about “Visual Art in the RI Colony in the Mid to Late 1700s.”
*See Tea Page Here for more details
conversations at the castle
Tuesday June 10th 6:00 p.m.
Conversations at the Castle
Gregory Duhamel
The public historian discusses his book The Sloop Ranger concerning the capture and nefarious crew of the pirate ship “Ranger”, a fast sloop that for a time, threatened both merchant and fishing vessels on the Atlantic coast.
Board of Trustees Meeting June 12th 6pm
Local Event with South County Table
June 21st Juneteenth Celebration, RISHM
Newport, R.I.
Our friends from the Rhode Island Slave History Medallion Assoc. celebrate the liberation of the enslaved at the close of America’s Civil War.
Conversations at the castle
Tuesday June 24th 6pm
Michael Simpson
Professor and Cocumsscusoc Association trustee will give a presentation. More details to follow.
Local Event with SC Table
June 28th 9:00-3:30 p.m.
“Forgotten Founders: The Underwritten of the American Revolution”
Gen. James Mitchell Varnum House Museum/St. Luke’s Church
Trustees Bob Geake and Jason Roomes are part of the presentations in this event. Geake’s presentation will be Witness to a Fragile Freedom: Resurrecting the Life of Silas Royal.
Tea and History
July 13th – 4:30-6:00pm Tea plus Marilyn Harris – “Mary Katherine Goddard and Declaration of Independence” Mary Katherine’s mother was Sarah Updike Goddard.
*See Tea and History Page Here for more details
Tea and History
Sunday August 10th—4:30-6:00pm Tea plus John Dower. Details to follow.
*See Tea and History page Here for more details.
Breakfast talk
Saturday September 13th 9:30am
Akeia de Baros Gomes
The newly appointed Director of the Wanton- Lyman-Hazard Historic House Museum in Newport, the first such museum in the State to be dedicated to black history, will discuss the mission of the house as part of the Newport Historical Society, and its role in educating visitors and native Rhode Islanders.
Tea and history
Sunday September 14th 4:30-6:00. SC Tea plus Ann Casey & the Rhode Island Master Gardeners. Talk about the Smith’s Castle Gardens and Garden Tour.
*See Tea and History Page Here for more details.
Special event: Multi-media show Reception
Smith’s Castle as Seen and Imagined
Opening and Reception
Saturday September 20th 9:30am-11:00am
(on display through October)
**more details on this event to come!!
Special Event: Seminar
Roger Williams and His World
Saturday September 27th 9:30am-3:00pm
Roger Wiliams and His World. This all-day seminar will feature both indigenous and other voices in a discussion of the history of early New England’s colonies and Roger Williams role as the founder of Rhode Island’s “lively experiment.” Guest Speakers: Charlotte Carrington-Farmer PhD. Professor of History, Roger Williams University, Adrian Weimer PhD. Professor of History, Providence College, and others TBA.
Breakfast Talk
Saturday October 11th 9:30am
Docent Marilyn Harris, “Family Ties: The Arnolds & The Updikes.” She will speak about the connection between these influential Rhode Island families and the evolution of the Greenwich Hotel.
Conversations at the castle
Thursday October 16th 6pm
Dr. Thomas F. Army Jr. PhD.
The historian and professor of History from Quinebaug Valley Community College will give a presentation entitled Rhode Island Quakers and Slavery: It’s More Complicated than you Think.
Breakfast talk
Saturday October 25th 9:30am
Mark Burnham
Our own legal historian and trustee will give a presentation on the 14th Amendment of the United State’s Constitution and what the Founders intended by granting birthright citizenship.
breakfast talk
Saturday November 8th 9:30am
Robert A. Geake
Public historian and Trustee offers a presentation entitled “Citizens for the First Time: How New England Communities Contributed to the Cause of Liberty.” This talk is based upon information from his new book New England in the American Revolution: Stories of Starvation, Disease, and Determination.
Christmas at the castle
December 6th and 7th (Saturday and Sunday)
*Details TBA
Christmas Tea
Sunday December 14th
The Ladies of the Greene will be doing their colonial fashion show.