Rhode Island's State House - Providence

 Rhode Island initially  had 5 state houses, each one located in a county. The people decided that was not a very good way to run their government and other states started to question them on how they could really present a united front. This state house was constructed between 1895 and 1904.

We visited the Rhode Island capital in Providence on Tuesday August 8th. It was another beautiful capital with a spectacular senate and representative chamber and an equally impressive outer governor's office. We took all the pictures of those rooms with us in them, but for this blog we wanted to focus on the artifacts of Rhode Island's history for a change.

 The door handles in the above pictures are actually on the outside of the building,
              leading into the capital from a side door. All the interior doors also have these same door handles but they were not nearly as nice looking as these. They were dull and looked oxidized.

This is a cannon the the Rhode Island Infantry men used during the

Civil War at Gettysburg. It was damaged in several places, if you look carefully near the right tire, you can see where the Confederate  Army fired and dented the frame with one of their cannon balls and also took out a spoke of the right wheel in the back. As you can see, what caused the most damage was when a Confederate cannon ball hit the RI's cannon barrel and dented it, just as the RI infantry men were firing a cannon ball at them. The RI's cannon ball stuck in the barrel, because the barrel was soft from the repeated firing and the metal was hot and easily moved. In looking close we could see where the men tried to pry the cannon ball out-but to no avail-the barrel had started to cool down and the cannon ball was stuck. The story goes that the RI soldiers just moved to a different cannon, they were being fired upon and could waste no more time on this cannon.

We have seen several states that have their infantry men's flag hung in honor of their specialty and the regiment they were in. This is the only state that has identified each state with a small placard on the flag's stand and underneath the sign that will identify the specifics more clearly. 

These are the original stairs in the library-made of iron, but painted to look like wood.

When we left the state capital we went to Newport, Rhode Island

to hob knob with the rich (very rich) and  famous.