Scope and Content
American Folklife Center field project which documented ethnic, regional, and occupational traditions of Rhode Island, especially ethnic arts (African American, French-Canadian, Greek, Irish, Jamaican, Polish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Italian, Lithuanian, Narragansett, and others), maritime activities, material culture, and local history. Documentation was created by fieldworkers Peter Bartis, Michael E. Bell, Thomas A. Burns, Carl Fleischhauer, Henry Horenstein, Geraldine Niva Johnson, and Kenneth S. Goldstein, project director, from July 15 to December 31, 1979. Sound recordings include interviews and documentation of a play, church services, music and dance, and other events. Subjects of photographs include Rhode Island houses, barns, beaches, yards, gardens, orchards, churches, cemeteries, street scenes, landscapes, sea scapes; religious processions; recreation, including baseball, horseshoes, sailing; restaurants and foodways; picnics; textile mills, sawmills; businesses; markets; Jamaican migrant workers; woodworking; boatbuilding; fishing, clamming; gunsmithing; taxidermy; arts and crafts; sand sculptures; musicians and dancing; and other subjects.
See PDF inventory.