Rhode Island Historical Society

The Rhode Island Historical Society was founded and funded by many of Providence's early Yankee philanthropists, including Moses Brown and Henry J.

[2] As of October 2022, the organization’s executive director is C. Morgan Grefe, Ph.D., and the board chair is Robert H. Sloan, Jr.[3] The Society has the largest and most important historical Rhode Island collection within its main library and two museums.

The Society's collections include some 25,000 objects, 5,000 manuscripts, 100,000 books and printed items, 400,000 photographs and maps, and 9 million feet of motion-picture film.

In recent years the Society has been very active in teacher-training programs seeking to improve the quality of history teaching in Rhode Island.

[4] The Society’s most noteworthy recent advances include its first on-line collection access catalog[5] and the first major restoration of the historic John Brown House, a $2.5 million project that should be complete in 2010.