Newport This Week

 July 4 Festivities in Washington Square


For more than 100 years The Rhode Island Society Sons of The Revolution has hosted Newport’s Independence Day Celebration. Each 4th of July the Declaration is read along with a recreated celebration with music and cannons. 

Events are free and include:

  • 10 to 11 a.m., the Newport Historical Society will open for visitors the Old Colony House, the fourth oldest State House in America
  • 10:30 to 11a m., the Bristol County Fifes and Drums will march to Eisenhower Park to perform a concert of historic and modern fife and drum tunes.
  • 11 a.m., the reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel Roy Lauth of the Rhode Island Society Sons of the Revolution. He will read from the steps of the Colony House, where 19-year-old Newport native, John Handy, first read the Continental Congress’s Declaration of Independence to the Colony on July 22, 1776.
  • Following the reading, the Artillery Company of Newport will fire a 21 Gun Salute to the Nation, using the four cannons purchased from Paul Revere in 1798 by the new state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

The Colony House was the seat of the colonial government in Rhode Island. Here on May 6, 1776, Rhode Island declared it no longer owed allegiance to the British crown.  

The Sons of the Revolution was founded in 1876 by members of the Society of the Cincinnati on the occasion of the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence.  The Rhode Island Society was formed in Newport in 1896 in order to promote knowledge and appreciation of the achievement of American independence and to foster fellowship among its members. For more information or to become a member contact: www.RISR1776.org or RhodeIslandSons@gmail.com

 

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