RIRhode Island Famous People

The face on the dollar bill was painted by a Rhode Islander

Gilbert Stuart was born in 1755 above a snuff mill at Saunderstown on the west shore of Narragansett Bay, in a building that still stands and takes visitors. He painted George Washington from life and then left the head deliberately unfinished, keeping that canvas, the Athenaeum portrait, as a master copy he reproduced for the rest of his career. Engraved and re-engraved, it is the image on the one dollar bill, which means the most reproduced painting in American life came from a man born in a village of a few hundred people. Stuart went on to paint the first six presidents.

Banished founders and two brothers who chose opposite sides

Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts Bay in the winter of 1635 for arguing that magistrates had no authority over conscience and that the colony's patent did not extinguish Narragansett title to the land. He walked to the head of the bay and named the settlement Providence. Anne Hutchinson, thrown out of Boston after her own trial in 1638, settled Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island with William Coddington. The royal charter of 1663 wrote liberty of conscience into the colony's law well before that was normal anywhere in the English world. A century later Providence produced two brothers pointing in opposite directions: John Brown, who financed slaving voyages and helped organize the burning of the British schooner Gaspee in 1772, and Moses Brown, who freed the people he had enslaved, turned Quaker abolitionist, and put up the capital for Samuel Slater's spinning mill at Pawtucket in 1793.

The Perry brothers, Nathanael Greene, and a man who named his whiskers

Oliver Hazard Perry was born at South Kingstown in 1785 and at twenty-seven commanded the American squadron at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813, rowing his flag across to the Niagara after his own ship was shot apart and capturing the entire British force. His younger brother Matthew Calbraith Perry, born nine years later in Rhode Island, commanded the squadron that entered Tokyo Bay in 1853 and pushed Japan into trade with the United States. Nathanael Greene, son of a Quaker foundry owner at Potowomut, went from militia private to the general Washington trusted most and ran the southern campaign that ground Cornwallis down; Greensboro in North Carolina carries his name. Ambrose Burnside was born in Indiana but belongs to Rhode Island by career, leading the state's first regiment, serving three terms as governor and then in the Senate, and leaving the language the word sideburns.

H. P. Lovecraft never really left College Hill

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890 at 194 Angell Street in Providence and spent almost all of his forty-six years within walking distance of it, turning the steep streets of College Hill, the Federal Hill skyline and the old burying grounds into permanent scenery for his fiction. He died in 1937 barely published and became one of the most imitated writers in English. His racism, undisguised in his letters, led the World Fantasy Award to retire its Lovecraft bust trophy in 2015. Providence also produced George M. Cohan, born on July 3, 1878, who spent his career insisting he had arrived on the Fourth and wrote Yankee Doodle Dandy, Give My Regards to Broadway and Over There.

Central Falls, Cumberland, and the Rhode Island screen

Viola Davis was born on her grandmother's farm in St. Matthews, South Carolina, and brought to Central Falls, barely more than a square mile of city, at two months old. She went to Rhode Island College and then Juilliard, and holds an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. James Woods grew up in Warwick and studied at MIT before turning to acting. Debra Messing was raised in East Greenwich and Ruth Buzzi was born in Westerly. Peter and Bobby Farrelly grew up in Cumberland and set There's Something About Mary and Me, Myself and Irene partly in their home state. Talking Heads came together when David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth met at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Seth MacFarlane, another RISD graduate, invented the Rhode Island town of Quahog for Family Guy.

Woonsocket's Hall of Famers and the state's political record

Napoleon Lajoie was born in Woonsocket in 1874 and hit better than .420 in 1901, the highest single season average of the modern era, entering the Hall of Fame in 1937. Gabby Hartnett was born in the same mill city in 1900, caught nineteen seasons for the Cubs, and was elected in 1955. Dave Gavitt, athletic director at Providence College, drew up the Big East Conference in 1979 and talked seven eastern schools into it. In national politics the state has never sent anyone to the White House. Nelson Aldrich of Providence ran the Senate Finance Committee at the turn of the twentieth century and was the grandfather of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Claiborne Pell, long associated with Newport, served six Senate terms and gave his name to the Pell Grant. Vincent Cianci was elected mayor of Providence six times, resigned in 1984 after a criminal plea, returned in 1990, and went to federal prison in 2002.

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