Creative History

Still called the Old Stone Mill by many locals to this day, the Newport Tower--a famed landmark in Newport, Rhode Island--sits just off the coast of Narragansett Bay in Touro Park.  It rises to a height of twenty-eight feet and is roughly circular in nature, though contrary to popular belief, it is not a true circle.  Located on a hilltop, it was once clearly visible to passing ships far out in Narragansett Bay, though construction in Newport during the twentieth century has since obscured most views of the Tower from out at sea.  It is built on land that was once owned by the family of the first Governor of Rhode Island and his eponymously named great grandson, the famous Revolutionary War traitor, Benedict Arnold. Traditionally, it has been believed that construction of the Tower occurred sometime during the 1660’s and that it was used as some sort of windmill, examples of which are common in England to this day--hence the name that many locals still use of the Old St...

  When the Continental Congress convened to declare independence from Great Britain during the summer of 1776 things were not looking all that good for the newly minted United States of America. To most observers, both at home and abroad, it seemed as if the upstart Continental Army was about to crumble any day now.  New York City would soon fall to the British army in August and George Washington’s dwindling forces would, that very summer, be sent into headlong retreat across the embattled colony of New Jersey.  It could be said that when the delegates met in Philadelphia to declare independence that a sense of fatalism gripped them all.  It was the venerable and erstwhile Benjamin Franklin who legend has it joked about all of the American leaders ending their days swaying from the end of a British noose. Several hundred miles north of Philadelphia during that July of 1776 in upstate New York near the Canadian border, American General Benedict Arnold then consid...