Year Inducted: 2010
Caroline Hazard - Caroline Hazard, educator, philanthropist, artist, and author was born in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, on June 10, 1856. She was the second of five children of industrialist Rowland Hazard II and Margaret A. (Rood) Hazard of Peace Dale. Caroline grew up with all the privileges her prominent family could afford – private tutors, European vacations,…
Catharine Littlefield Greene - Catharine Littlefield Greene (1755-1814) was the vivacious, free-spirited, and uninhibited wife of General Nathanael Greene, but by the standards of her time, she was so much more. Born on Block Island, the daughter of John Littlefield, a colonial legislator, and Phebe Ray, she moved to Warwick at age ten after her mother's death. Here, she…
Daniel Berkeley Updike - Daniel B. Updike, book designer, and printer, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on Feb. 24, 1860. He was the son of Caesar Updike, a lawyer and state representative, and Elizabeth Bigelow Adams. He was an only child born into an old, well-connected New England family. He was a descendant of Richard Smith, one of…
Dr. Joseph E. Cannon - Joseph Cannon was born in Providence in 1911, the son of General Francis Cannon and Mary (Milligan) Cannon. He attended Technical High School and graduated from Brown University in 1932. He chose a career in medicine, and in 1936 he earned his degree cum laude from Tufts Medical School. Dr. Cannon then joined the Army…
Dr. Manuel da Silva - Dr. Manuel da Silva was born on September 5, 1926 in the village of Caviâo, Vale de Cambra in continental Portugal. After completing high school in Portugal, he emigrated to Brooklyn, New York with his mother and brother in January, 1946 to join his father, who was an American citizen. Young Manuel studied the English…
Dr. Robert D. Ballard - Best known for his 1985 discovery of the Titanic, Dr. Robert Ballard has succeeded in tracking down numerous other significant shipwrecks, including the Lusitania, the German battleship Bismarck, the lost fleet of Guadalcanal, the U.S. aircraft carrier Yorktown (sunk in the World War II Battle of Midway), and John F. Kennedy's boat, PT-109. While those…
Dr. William Augustus Mowry - Mowry, William A. (William Augustus), 1829-1917 Dr. William Augustus Mowry ranks among Rhode Island's foremost educators. Besides writing a score of books (especially texts on history and civics), Mowry founded a highly-regarded private high school in Providence, pioneered in the establishment of teachers' institutes, and served as superintendent of schools in Cranston and in Salem,…
Edward Payson Weston - Edward Payson, 1839"1929, one of Rhode Island's most colorful native sons, was born in Providence on March 15, 1839. His father, Silas Weston, was at one time a school teacher and at another a publisher and the editor of a semi-monthly paper entitled The Pupil's Mentor. Edward's mother, Maria Gaines, was a talented writer who…
General Francis Vinton Greene - Greene, F. V. (Francis Vinton), 1850-1921 Francis Vinton Greene, son of General George Sears Greene and Martha Dana, was born in Providence on June 27, 1850. He entered the U.S. Military Academy in 1866, and graduated first in his class in 1870. He married Belle Eugenie Chevallie in 1879 and they had six children. He…
George A. Wiley - Warwick's George Wiley (1931-1973) compiled a record of service to his country which equals the sacrifices and service of his fellow hometowners, Nathanael and Christopher Greene. Like those men of the Revolutionary War generation, George, too, became a champion of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Whereas the Greenes took direct military action against…
Governor James H. Higgins - Higgins, James H. (James Henry), 1876-1927 James H. Higgins was the first Irish-Catholic governor of Rhode Island, serving from 1907 to 1909. Although orphaned at a young age, Higgins pursued a high school degree in Pawtucket and was accepted at Brown University in 1894 at a time when few Irish-Catholics matriculated at the Ivy League…
J. Malcolm Grear - Malcolm Grear is a renaissance man in the most complete sense of the word: he understands the human values involved with the arts, and has educated himself to appreciate and deliver beauty in our daily lives. He also has taken upon himself to educate others about good design as well. Although Malcolm's main discipline is…
Judge Benjamin Bourne - Benjamin Bourne (1755- 1808), a leading advocate of Rhode Island’s ratification of the federal Constitution, was born in Bristol, the son of Shearjashub and Ruth (Bosworth) Church Bourne, the product of two old-line Bristol families. His father served as chief justice of Rhode Island’s highest court from 1778 to 1781. Bourne received a bachelor’s degree…
Kathleen S. Connell - Kathleen Sullivan Connell was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the only daughter of Lawrence and Margaret Sullivan. She attended St. Mary's School and St. Catherine Academy, graduated magna cum laude from Salve Regina University with a BS in Nursing, and then earned a master's degree in International Relations from Salve. Kathleen has been connected with…
Owen Wister - There is some irony in the character creation of the quintessential cowboy hero in the fictional literature of the American West. The John Wayne image of the strong, silent, chivalrous Western hero was created by a Harvard graduate who once wrote operas and poetry. Novelist, playwright, screenwriter, composer, and poet Owen Wister was born in…
Rev. Dr. Elisha Benjamin Andrews - Although E. Benjamin Andrews had only one eye – the result of a Civil War wound during the siege of Peterburg in August 1864 – some say he was the most visionary president of Brown University. During his nine-year tenure as the eighth chief executive of Brown, he moved it from its status of a…
Reverend John Callender - The Reverend John Callender (1706-1748) became the first historian of Rhode Island in 1738 when he wrote a work to commemorate the colony’s centennial. Not surprisingly, he viewed his topic through a religious prism; surprisingly, he thought the arrival of William Coddington, Anne Hutchinson, Dr. John Clarke, and other Aquidneck settlers in 1638 truly launched…
Solomon Southwick - Except for those Revolutionary War patriots who actually faced the bayonet charges or the merciless cannon fire of the British and their mercenaries, there probably were few other Rhode Islanders who put themselves and their families at more risk than “Patriot Printer” Solomon Southwick of Newport. Editor of the weekly newspaper Newport Mercury, Southwick was…
Susan L. Farmer - Susan L. Farmer joins her forebears, Bishop Alexander Griswold and Anne Hutchinson as an inductee into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. Like Hutchinson, a pioneer in many areas, including the advancement of women, Susan was a “first” as well. When elected Secretary of State in 1982, she became the first woman elected in…
Thomas Williams Bicknell - Bicknell, Thomas Williams, 1834-1925 Thomas W. Bicknell (1834-1925) of Barrington was one of the two outstanding historians of Rhode Island during the first half of the 20th century (Dr. Charles Carroll was the other). In 1920 he published a three-volume narrative history of the state, supplemented by three biographical volumes. This work is still of…
U.S. Rep. George F. O’Shaunessy - O'Shaunessy, George Francis, 1868- George Francis O'Shaunessy was born in Galway, Ireland on May 1, 1868. His parents came to America when he was a child and settled in New Jersey. George was educated in New York City parochial schools and received a law degree from Columbia University in 1889. Thereafter he acquired a reputation…
William Henry Luther - Luther, William H. (William Henry),1844-1914 William Henry Luther was born in Dover, New Hampshire on April 24, 1844. The Luther family moved to Providence four years later where young Henry attended public school with some additional instruction at a local private school. Luther and his brother became interested in the lapidary trade, and after learning…
Yat K. Tow - The distinction and honor of being the first Chinese-American to be inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame is a recognition that Yat K. Tow (1912-1990) would accept with humility and pride. It is a tribute that has inclusive symbolic value--a shared honor that must also recognize the Tow family that preceded him…
