Vernon, Thomas; Rider, Sidney S. The Diary of Thomas Vernon, A Loyalist Banished from Newport by the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1776 (Rhode Island Historical Tracts. Second Series, No. 13); With Notes by Sidney S. Rider. To which is added, The Vernon Family and Arms, and Genealogy of Richard Greene. Providence: Sidney S. Rider, 1881. First Edition.
Recently bound in blue cloth, gilt titles to spine, 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches. Original blue wrapper front retained; viii, 150 pp. "S. 2, #13" on the ffep. Good. Hardcover.
Limited to 250 copies.
Thomas Vernon (1718-1784), b. &d. at Newport, Rhode Island. Thomas was for thirty years the Royal Postmaster in Newport, for twenty years a register of the Court of Admiralty, and senior warden of Trinity Church. He fled Newport at the outset of the American Revolution. His brother William took the patriot side, and was a leading figure in outfitting the Continental Navy. Thomas and several other citizens were examined by the Rhode Island General Assembly at which time they refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Colonies and were therefore banished from Newport.
The Diary begins June 20, 1776, the day of his banishment, and ends October 8, 1776, after his banishment was lifted by the Assembly, and records his return to Newport. It contains events of the day, meals, weather, thoughts, and accounts of life.
"The Diary gives us a picture of life in one of the inland towns of the State during the Revolutionary period; the families, the men, and the opinions are more or less referred to, and thus a unique, curious, and hitherto unwritten chapter of Rhode Island history is presented." - Historical Introduction.
Sidney Smith Rider (1833-1917), b. Brainards' Bridge, New York; d. Providence, Rhode Island. As a lad of 12 years of age he moved with his family to Rhode Island, where he was apprenticed to Charles Burnett, a Providence bookseller. He took an avid interest in Rhode Island history, and was eventually able to acquire Burnett's bookshop. Rider assembled the largest private collection of materials related to the history of Rhode Island, which was purchased for the Brown University Library in 1903. He published several serials on book collecting and Rhode Island History, including The Bibliomaniac, Book Notes, The Literary News, and Rhode Island Historical Tracts.
