Newport’s Town Records: Lost and Found

In her article, “Newport’s Town Records: Lost and Found,” Cherry Fletcher Bamberg separates fact from legend surrounding a well-known event. Some months after the British army occupied Newport in December 1776, Gen. Pigot ordered all the town records to be turned over to British authorities. When the British army departed in October 1779, the records, documenting more than a century of Newport town transactions, were put on a ship for New York. Just before it made landfall in New York, the vessel foundered and sank. Bamberg takes us on an intricately researched journey to discover the ins and outs of the records’ fate in the over two centuries since they were removed from the town by the British. In the process she has delved into British and American archives, published sources, newspapers, genealogical and other pertinent material to present the most accurate account to date of the saga of the “lost” Newport town records. Cherry Fletcher Bamberg served as editor of Rhode Island Roots, the quarterly journal of the Rhode Island Genealogical Society, from 2002 through 2023 and remains editor of that society’s annual bonus issue, Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records. She was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists in 2007.