The Battle of Rhode Island Association (BoRIA) has joined together with the Bristol Historic & Preservation Society (BH&PS), the Jamestown Historical Society, and the Rhode Island Historical Society for three lectures by John Robertson. The first is on Monday, May 1st, at 6:30 pm at the Herreshoff Community Room at the Rogers Free Library, in Bristol, Rhode Island. The lecture is based on his new book “Revolutionary War Defenses in Rhode Island.” The book was a 10-year research effort and contains almost 300 maps and plans showing defensive fortifications along most of the coast of Narragansett Bay and southern Rhode Island. Many of the maps are of fortifications on Aquidneck Island, which was occupied during the Revolutionary War at various times by the Americans, British, and French. Only the Bristol Lecture on May 1st will be available via zoom. BoRIA will be filming that lecture for inclusion on our new YouTube Channel.
This lecture will be available via zoom, and you can register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lecture-two-case-studies-of-revolutionary-war-defenses-in-ri-tickets-598617740777
John K. Robertson, Ph.D., is a Colonel (Ret.), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with 23 years of service and served on the faculty at West Point. He is co-owner/editor of the RevWar75.com website. He is a Fellow and Chair for the Endowment Fund Committee of the Company of Military Historians. His research interests include military justice, the militia in the American War for Independence, and Rhode Island in the war.
The BH&PS is located at 48 Court Street in an 1828 jail built of granite blocks reportedly used as ballast in early Bristol sailing ships. It was founded in 1936 to promote the history of the town of Bristol. The Society has also been instrumental in the formation of other museums: the Bristol Art Museum (1962), Coggeshall Farm and Museum (1968), Friends of Linden Place (1990), and the Bristol Statehouse Museum (1996).
