The BoRIA Post
The official newsletter of the Battle of Rhode Island Association featuring news, events and Rhode Island history. Learn more at www.battleofrhodeisland.org.
August 2024 Edition
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Sunset Salute at Butts Hill Fort
On Thursday, August 29th, the Butts Hill Fort Restoration Committee (BHFRC) held a sunset musket salute to commemorate the 246th anniversary of the Battle of Rhode Island. BoRIA Director and Chairman of the BHFRC Col. Paul Murphy (USAF Ret.) welcomed over 40 visitors to Butts Hill Fort in Portsmouth, RI, headquarters to Major General John Sullivan during the Rhode Island Campaign of 1778.
Portsmouth Town Historian Jim Garman spoke about the history of the fort and ongoing efforts to revitalize it. He touched on the individuals and events of that day. Immediately after his remarks Paul Murphy laid a wreath at the marker at the entrance to the fort. Just like the troops 246 years ago, a diverse squad of reenactors from the 1st and 2nd RI Regiments, Varnum Continentals, the Henry Knox Color Guard from the Boston Chapter of the Massachusetts Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) and the New Hampshire SAR Color Guard all paid tribute during the musket salute. We thank them for their participation in this event. Click here to watch the video.
On Sunday, August 25th, the Newport Chapter of the NAACP hosted their 58th annual “Black Regiment Monument Commemoration Ceremony” at Patriots Park in Portsmouth, RI. Patriots Park, designated as a National Historic Site in 1974, was an effort begun in 1967 to honor the valor of the soldiers of the First Rhode Island Regiment (called the Black Regiment). The Black Regiment was early recognized in their role at the Battle of Rhode Island where they turned back three attacks by Hessian soldiers. This month is the 246th anniversary of that battle.
The 1st Rhode Island Regiment (also known as Varnum’s Regiment, the 9th Continental Regiment, the Black Regiment, the Rhode Island Regiment, and Olney’s Battalion) was a regiment in the Continental Army raised in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War. It was one of the few units in the Continental Army to serve through the entire war, from the siege of Boston to the disbanding of the Continental Army in 1783. It became known as the “Black Regiment” because it was composed mostly of free or formerly enslaved Black enlistees. However, there were also some Native Americans.
Mrs. Fern Lima recounted the long struggle to erect this monument. In 1967 the NAACP began an annual celebration of the valor of the Black Regiment and a boulder on the property was dedicated to the Black Regiment. In 1976, a Black Patriot’s Monument was dedicated here.
In 1996 the head of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) selected the Patriot’s Park Landscape Project as the state’s first Federally funded enhancement project. By 1999, a plan was submitted for a platform with a wall that has two doorways and the names of the First Regiment soldiers engraved on the wall. Since no muster rolls were available for those just involved in the Battle of Rhode Island, it was agreed to engrave the names of all known members of the regiment.
Federally funded projects require an Environmental Impact Assessment in which groups with direct interest are given the opportunity to comment. RIDOT invited 12 groups – Black organizations, Native tribes, and local institutions like Rhode Island Historic Preservation and Heritage to comment on the plans. By 2000, two narratives had been written explaining the creation of the regiment. The battle narrative was agreed upon with corrections. It took 4 years to reach agreement on the following text: “And to the soldiers of the Narragansett Indian Nation who fought alongside them.” In 2006, the Memorial was dedicated.
Jason Roomes, a descendant of Caeser Roome (Rome) who is one of the more than 700 names inscribed on the monument, was the guest speaker. The Roomes family were slaves to loyalist George Rome in North Kingston. RI. Caeser Rome, sometimes spelled Rove or Rose in the muster rolls, enlisted in Captain John Dexter’s company of the Rhode Island Regiment (RIR) in 1778 and served into the time of the consolidation, being listed as a private in the 6th company of the RIR. Caeser would have seen all the major battles in which the RIR took part, including Yorktown. He was one of many who died some months after the battle, having contracted smallpox in transit to Philadelphia, and died on December 9, 1781 in Wilmington, Delaware.
In research by historian Bob Geake (In Their Masters Stead: Enslaved Men As Substitutes in Rhode Island’s Militia and Continental Battalion, 1775-1782), we learned that other members of the family served in the War. Cato Rome was put on the USS Queen of France as a seaman as John Brown of Providence brokered the deal for the Queen of France to serve in the Continental Navy. After the war, Cato returned to reside in North Kingstown and had become a respected elder of Allentown by the time of his tragic death; murdered at the hands of a mentally ill black man of the same community where Cato had lived and worked for many years.
Pero Rome was in the local militia ( Wickford Rangers also known as the New town Rangers).
The enslaved individuals who had been on Rome’s farm would eventually form the nucleus of a black community in Wickford.
Joe Studlick
BoRIA Receives Third Grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP)
NTHP has awarded BoRIA a grant of $5,000 to support ongoing archeologic work at Butts Hill Fort (BHF) by Dr. Alexandra Uhl. Dr. Uhl and 14 graduate and undergraduate students spent 5 weeks this summer on non-invasive surveys at BHF funded by the Van Beuren Charitable Foundation. The NTHP provided grants of $10,000 and $5,000 in 2022 and 2023.
BoRIA Receives Grant from the Whalley Foundation
The Whalley Foundation of Houston has granted $10,000 to the BoRIA. It is specified for continued research by Dr. Robert Selig on General Rochambeau’s engineers that designed and built Butts Hill Fort, the 2025 “Brits attack Bristol” events, and the BoRIA website. This is the fourth grant from the Whalley Foundation.
BoRIA Researcher and Author Cited in Rhode Island History Magazine
Robert A. Geake, an expert on the Black Regiment (1st RI Regiment), was cited in Rhode Island History Magazine’s spring 2024 issue for his “Timeline of the Formation and Service of the First Rhode Island Regiment” . Robert Geake “…has created an invaluable resource for researchers interested in the experiences of African and Indigenous soldiers in the early years of the American Revolution.”
BoRIA Adds Our 50th Website Partner
The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut (SoC) join us in spreading the word about our events and Revolutionary War stories. The SoC is a fraternal, hereditary society founded in 1783 to commemorate the American Revolutionary War. Membership is largely restricted to descendants of commissioned officers who served in the Continental Army or Navy, or of officers of the French royal forces who served in America during the Revolutionary War. Each member is admitted to one of the fourteen constituent societies (representing the original thirteen states and France). SoC has more than 4,400 members residing in the United States, France, and more than twenty-five other countries. The youngest hereditary members are in their twenties. The oldest are over one hundred. A few members—great-great grandsons of their propositi—are only four generations removed from the officers of the Revolutionary War. Some of the youngest members—great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandsons of their propositi—are nine generations removed. Some are direct descendants in an unbroken male line of members reaching back to the founding of the Society.
Connecticut militia soldiers fought at the Battle of RI and later possibly occupied Butts Hill Fort before the march to Yorktown. Col. Henry Sherburn’s Additional Regiment and Lt. Col. William Livingston’s Additional Regiment of the Conn. Continentals and militias of Col. Samuel Chapman 22nd Conn. Regiment and Col. William Worthington’s 7th Conn. Regiment were at the Battle of Rhode Island (McBurney, 2011).
The Connecticut SoC with a membership approaching three hundred is one of the largest of the state societies. They join their sister societies from Rhode Island and Massachusetts who are BoRIA partners.
BoRIA Members Train With Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archaeologist
Recently BoRIA Director of Public Relations Jim Stearns and BoRIA Advisor on Archaeology Dr. Alexandra Uhl joined the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc.’s Senior Archaeologist and Instructor Jay Waller and completed a course Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archaeologist (AMDA), a not-for-profit volunteer group. The AMDA hosts training sessions throughout the country. One of the instructors of the course was Dr. Douglass Scott who specializes in nineteenth century military sites archaeology and forensic archaeology. He has done extensive work at Little Big Horn for the National Park Service. He is particularly noted for his expertise in battlefield archaeology and firearms identification. The methodologies and practices learned in an all day classroom were put into use at an undisclosed location. The full results are a long way from being published, but we will share those as they become available. The lessons from the class will be put into use as members of the BoRIA and associates continue to communicate with landowners around the Portsmouth battlefield for permission to survey and investigate their respective properties. That information will help build a better understanding of the events that took place on August 29th, 1778. Jay Waller spoke on conflict archaeology and the results of earlier metal detecting sessions at a lecture at the Portsmouth Historical Society. Click here to watch.
Update: Revolutionary RI History Hunt Project(RI Dept. of Commerce Tourism Grant)
This month, video production began, produced by the FreshMaps team, with film students from the University of Rhode Island Harrington School of Media – Christopher Celico and Emma Kociu – who captured video of seven storytellers in colonial regalia. They were reading the scripts written by Gloria Schmidt, BoRIA’s Historical Advisor. The volunteers recounted stories from the battle at key areas around Portsmouth, the Black Regiment, the effects of British occupation on island inhabitants, monuments and memorials, and restoration work being done today.
Thank you to the Portsmouth Historical Society, for providing their headquarters for the video shoot. Thanks to Seth Chiaro, Ed Rizy, Jason Roomes, Becky Sattel, Richard and Gloria Schmidt, and Jim Stearns for their enthusiasm, time and talent!
We have also started discussions with Dr. Catherine Zipf, Executive Director of the Bristol Historic and Preservation Society, to develop a walking tour, showcasing the British bombardment and burning of Bristol during the Revolution. These tour experiences are targeted for release in the fall.
Michelle Girasole
Thanks to our TreasurerSearching for Swanson 2.0
Dick Swanson, our Treasurer since 2022, has tendered his resignation effective early 2025. Dick’s 3-year term ends in 2025 and he plans to devote more time to his passion of photography. It has been a pleasure working with Dick as he provided first rate financials as only a retired CPA could do. Dick was recruited by our late Founding Director, Colonel Burt Quist, per a chance meeting at an auto repair shop.
If you know of anyone that has a financial background and possibly some knowledge of QuickBooks, please contact Jim Stearns publicrelations@
The BoRIA Lecture Series sponsored by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and our partners at the Portsmouth Historical Society (PHS) continues on Thursday, September 5th at 6:30 PM at the PHS Museum, 870 East Main Rd, in Portsmouth, RI. Our speaker is Don Hagist and his presentation is British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution. Very few British soldiers who served in America left their own writings. The lecture, based on his book of the same title, presents nine of these rare accounts, along with extensive research to put each man’s experience into context.
This talk is free and open to the public although donations are gladly accepted. This lecture will be filmed for our website and Youtube channel.
Don N. Hagist, managing editor of Journal of the American Revolution, is an independent researcher specializing in the demographics and material culture of the British Army in the American Revolution. He maintains a blog about British common soldiers (http:/
Partner Events
Original Articles
The British Army and Navy occupied Newport, Rhode Island, for almost three years, from December 1776 through October 1779. The key event occurring during the occupation was the Rhode Island Campaign, which culminated in the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. Both the campaign and the battle have not attracted the attention that they are due. Yet the campaign was important as it was the first time that the French cooperated with the Americans in the Revolutionary War. While the allies did not succeed in the campaign, it remains one of the most fascinating in the entire war.
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Did You Know?
Credit: The Preservation Society of Newport County
July 17th was the birthday of this gentleman who gazes upon the Drawing Room of the Elms in Newport, his perch in front of a large mirror. Pierre André de Suffren Saint-Tropez was a French admiral active in the Newport area during the American Revolutionary War. This plaster bust is cast from the 1787 original by the famous sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon.
In August 1778, Suffren led an attack on British ships in Narragansett Bay off Newport and in the nearby Sakonnet River, causing the British to set several of their own ships on fire to avoid their capture.
Later, while serving in the Indian Ocean, Suffren was given the nickname “Admiral Satan” – either by the British who suffered many defeats at his hands or by his Indian crewmembers who were awed by his fierce energy.
The bust was a gift from the Musée National de la Marine, Paris, to the State of Rhode Island for the 1976 Bicentennial and was later given to the Preservation Society.
