RIAMCO

Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online

For Participating Institutions

Guide to the Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., collection of manuscripts (RLC.Ms.040)

Redwood Library and Athenaeum

50 Bellevue Avenue
Newport, RI 02840
Tel: (401) 847-0292
Fax: (401) 841-5680
email: redwood@redwoodlibrary.org

Scope & content

This collection consists mainly of letters, receipts, and accounts from 1711-1920 that were collected by Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr. The majority of these documents regard various people, places, and events in Newport, Rhode Island, from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. Items of particular note include a scrapbook with newspaper clipping detailing the 1723 trial of 36 persons for piracy in Newport, eighteenth-century recipes for soap and preserving beef for the winter, a 1776 letter from Ezra Stiles to William Ellery, and a 1778 certificate for three slaves from George W. Babcock.