Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

Excerpt from Celebration of the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of Bristol: Rhode Island, September 24th, A. D. 1880 The compiler of this book was content to let it pass to the reader, without comment A preface was not contemplated. But as the last pages are passing through the press, suddenly, almost without warning, the hand of death has fallen upon Prof. J. Lewis Diman. As to him - his acceptance of the post of "Historian of the Day," and his matchless address - so large a share of credit is due for the great success of our late Bi-Centennial celebration, the writer feels impelled to make note of the sad event. Few who saw and listened to Prof. Diman as he delivered the address on the 24th of September last, will forget that radiant face. His whole soul was engrossed in his theme and the occasion, and the writer knows that the day was to him a most enjoyable one. It is hard to realize that he is dead inexpressibly sad to think that his useful life, so full of promise for good to the world, has ended. His death will be felt as a personal bereavement by thousands not of his "kith and kin." The following notice of his death - a portrayal of his pure life and transcendent merits - was published in the Providence Journal of Friday, February 4th. Bristol, R. I., February 7th, 1881. "Prof. J. Lewis Diman. "It is not often that such a thrill of surprise and sorrow is experienced In our community as was felt last evening, when the sad tidings passed from mouth to mouth that Prof. Diman was no longer numbered among the living. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of Bristol, Rhode Island is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1881. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.

Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. InFirsting and Lasting, Jean M. O’Brien argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, O’Brien explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness. In order to convince themselves that the Indians had vanished despite their continued presence, O’Brien finds that local historians and their readers embraced notions of racial purity rooted in the century’s scientific racism and saw living Indians as “mixed” and therefore no longer truly Indian. Adaptation to modern life on the part of Indian peoples was used as further evidence of their demise. Indians did not—and have not—accepted this effacement, and O’Brien details how Indians have resisted their erasure through narratives of their own. These debates and the rich and surprising history uncovered in O’Brien’s work continue to have a profound influence on discourses about race and indigenous rights.