Since 1999, MacFarlane has capitalized on Rhode Island’s quirks in his adult, animated sitcom Family Guy. Always irreverent, and often raunchy, the show is not for everyone.With more than 225 episodes and three primetime Emmys under its belt. Family Guy airs on the Fox Network to approximately seven million weekly viewers—six million of whom might have to watch when mom’s not in the room.  Filled with inside jokes, Family Guy is set in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island. The show follows the weird escapades of the Griffin family including Peter, the classic dimwitted TV father; Lois, the long-suffering mother; two moody teenagers, Meg and Chris; Stewie, an evil-genius baby; and Brian, a walking, talking, car-driving dog who is the sanest, classiest one in the family.  Part lampoon, part celebration, McFarlane captures all that Rhode Islanders hold dear, and he showcases hometown favorites on the small screen. The Big Blue Bug, Del’s Lemonade, Wes’ Rib House, Brown University’s Van Wickle Gates, the Breakers mansion in Newport, and the Pawtucket Red Sox’s McCoy Stadium are all real Rhode Island highlights appearing in Family Guy.  Many recurring locations in the series have their real-life equivalent in Rhode Island like the series’ favorite bar, “The Drunken Clam” in Johnston; “Happy Go Lucky Toys,” an unmistakable nod to Hasbro; and Buddy Cianci Junior High School, a tribute to a long-time Providence mayor who spent some time behind bars.

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He looks surprised to see her but who can blame him? Goddesses do not often descend from the heavens and communicate with humans. The goddess Liberty hands a spear to a young farmer, still holding his plow. Leave your work in the fields! Take up arms and fight for freedom! History, the future, demands it!

William Granville Hastings (1868 – 1902), an extraordinary young sculptor, designed this classical Civil War memorial, Liberty Arming the Patriot. Gorham Company of Providence cast the memorial in bronze, and it was installed in Park Place in 1897.

Below Liberty and the farmer there is a Union artillery battery, men in the heat of battle, led by Rhode Island’s General Ambrose Burnside at Antietam Bridge. And on either side, two female figures: the Scribe of History, writing on a tablet; and Eternity, identifiable by her fern.

Rhode Island would see over 25,000 men go to battle during the course of the Civil War. Moved by the troops’ service, the Rhode Island Ladies’ Soldiers’ Memorial Association worked for eleven years to raise money to build the memorial, “conducting donations, public subscriptions, and entertainments.”

Many Ladies’ Soldiers’ Memorial Associations developed during and after the Civil War to support the troops, sending clothing, nursing the wounded, raising money for “the cause”, locating the bodies of the dead, and commemorating the fallen troops. Col. Elliott F. Shepard once claimed, “They were the ladies who, if they had been men, would have been soldiers.”

William Granville Hastings was born in Surrey, England, three years after the American Civil War ended. He won awards in art school for his renaissance-style vases, and he moved to Paris, France, to apprentice with artist Jules Dalou, who was known for producing realistic figures. At the age of twenty-three, Hastings immigrated to the United States to work as a designer and sculptor for the Gorham Manufacturing Company in New York. He received the commission for Liberty Arming the Patriot five years later, in 1896.

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Sam Patch swung his hat and leapt off the cliff, cutting through the mist towards the seething whirlpool below. A roar rose up from the massive crowd of over 8,000 people. The outcome of this feat – at High Falls in upstate New York – would send reverberations across the nation.

Sam Patch's jumping career began several decades earlier at Slater Mill in Pawtucket. From the age of seven, Patch worked in the mill, scuttling between looms, clearing bobbins of cotton, and replacing them with empty ones. Eventually, he was promoted to a coveted weaving position. He toiled for fourteen hours a day, six days a week, starting at five in the morning. In the summer the mill was hot and humid, and during lunch breaks Patch would join other boys in jumping off the mill dam or nearby bridges into the cool tidal pool at the foot of the Pawtucket Falls. Soon this leisurely activity turned into a competition, with each boy jumping from higher and higher-still factory windows.

In 1824, mill owners demanded that workers accept steep wage cuts and a shortened lunch break. Patch, along with his fellow workers, protested against these unfair practices. Continuing conflict with mill management may have been one factor that precipitated Patch's subsequent move to Paterson, New Jersey, where he found work at another mill. Upon hearing that a bridge was to be built over the Passaic Falls, Patch declared that – once built – he would jump from it. On September 30, 1827, he jumped as promised from Clinton Bridge, drawing a large, incredulous crowd.  The press went wild, dubbing him the “New Jersey Jumper” and launching his career as a daredevil stuntman.

Patch's career hit a high point in October of 1829, when, as part of his east coast “Jumping Tour” he became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls. Waving to crowds assembled on both the American and Canadian sides of the Niagara River, he kissed the American flag before hurling himself one hundred and thirty feet down into the churning river.

One month later, Patch found himself poised above High Falls in upstate New York. However, this leap went terribly wrong.

Patch's body dropped like an arrow, when suddenly his legs separated and set his body spinning. As he struck the water, a terrible thwack echoed through the air. Audience members held their breath – one minute – two minutes – three minutes – but there was no sign of the daredevil. Rumors rippled through the crowd: could he be hiding in a cave at the base of the falls, poised for a triumphant reappearance? It took four months to find his corpse, frozen in a block of ice six miles downstream.

Sam Patch lived on in the American imagination as hero to a budding proletariat culture: democratic, hard-drinking, sports-obsessed, and loving of melodrama. Amidst a rapidly changing social structure, Patch's trademark phrase – "Some things can be done as well as others” – hinted at what we now call the American dream: a belief that human ingenuity can generate endless, perhaps even extravagant, possibilities.

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Despite the rain, a troupe of bicyclists and mustached men costumed as knights, clowns, pages, and a prince paraded through the streets of Pawtucket. Thousands of people from Rhode Island and the adjoining states thronged the streets. For a week, all of Pawtucket celebrated one hundred years of cotton production with lavish decorations, elaborate parades, and both horseback and bicycle races. One might wonder why bicycles featured so prominently at a festival of cotton, but in Pawtucket, the two have had a long and interconnected history.

Slater Mill, which gained early fame as the first cotton spinning mill in the United States, changed hands many times over the course of the nineteenth century. By 1865, it was owned by the Spencer family of Pawtucket.

Around this time, velocipedes, commonly called “boneshakers” for their rough effect on riders’ bodies, were gaining popularity. These early bicycles, made entirely of wood, were eventually enhanced by the introduction of lightweight metal frames and air-filled tires. These improvements in safety and comfort brought about the American bicycling craze of the 1890s.

Anticipating this fad, Henry L. Spencer opened a bicycle shop on his father’s property in downtown Pawtucket – in a structure adjoining the old Slater Mill building. Spencer did a booming trade, becoming the second proprietor of bicycles within the state. As profits expanded and interest in bicycling increased, he transformed the third floor of Slater Mill into a riding rink and bicycling school where customers could practice the art of riding bicycles in a supervised setting.

Residents of Pawtucket were proud of their unique and varied industrial heritage. Henry L. Spencer, alongside cotton magnates and textile industrialists, was numbered one of Pawtucket’s prominent citizens worthy of mention in an illustrated history of the city published in the 1890s. The varieties of industry undertaken at the old Slater Mill building in less than a century – from cotton spinning to bicycling – were described as the “epitome of the progress of the century.”

When Pawtucket hosted its weeklong celebration to mark its “Cotton Centenary” in 1890, it was no surprise that bicycles featured prominently in the festivities. The centenary featured many contests, including horseracing and a regatta, but the bicycle races, held on the final day of the celebration, were the most popular. Three races took place: an intensive three-mile race that drew participants from around New England, a one-mile race limited to local riders, and a half-mile boys’ race. It is likely that William F. Almy, the triumphant winner of the boys’ race that day, as well as many of the other local contestants, had learned to ride at H.L. Spencer’s Bicycle Rink, a prominent sponsor of the day’s festivities.

Outside of Pawtucket, the bicycling craze had far-reaching effects. By 1896, noted suffragist Susan B. Anthony believed that “the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world” and a group of cyclists called the League of American Wheelmen quite literally paved the road for the automobile by lobbying for safer streets.

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Step through the doors of the Modern Diner, slide into a window booth or snag a stool at the counter, and order two eggs, toast, and a side of hash browns. Order up!

In 1940, the Modern Diner opened on Dexter Street in downtown Pawtucket. Patrons could choose a booth along the diner’s windows or perch on one of the stainless steel stools that lined the narrow countertop separating the diners from the small galley kitchen. The Modern Diner quickly became a bustling breakfast hub serving up large plates of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and daily specials including the Rhode Island favorite, the “Cabinet,” a coffee flavored drink akin to frappes or milkshakes.

Small prefabricated eateries began to appear in American cities in the early twentieth century, replacing traditional food wagons as a source of casual cuisine. By the 1920s, the term “diner” had entered popular lexicon. Diners reflected popular styles, and by the 1930s, many diners featured aerodynamic shapes, curving silhouettes, and bright chrome accents – all hallmarks of the “Streamline Moderne” style of the Art Deco movement. Inspired by the sleek trains that crisscrossed the country, particularly the elegant new “Zephyr” trains of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, designer Roland Stickney created the “Sterling Streamliner Diner.”

From 1939 until 1942, Sterling Streamliner diners were fabricated by the J.B. Judkins Coach Company, of Merrimac, Massachusetts, a company primarily known for its custom car bodies. Sales of diners offered an alternative market for companies affected by the decline of automobile sales during the Great Depression. Selling at around $15,000, Judkins’ Sterling Streamliners were the ultimate diner, with porcelain-clad exteriors and interiors accented with mahogany trim. They were built in four-foot modules that could be easily shipped and assembled at their final destination. Advertisements even marketed this feature with the claim that additional sections could be added as patronage increased. Unfortunately, only seventeen Sterling Streamliners diners were produced before the United States’ entry into World War II curtailed most civilian industries.

Today, the Modern Diner is one of only two Sterling Streamliners still in operation. It gained widespread recognition in 1978, becoming the first diner added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Modern Diner also gained notoriety after attracting the attention of Disney. In the early 1990s, Walt Disney Company sold thousands of shirts featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse standing before the Modern Diner and its iconic neon sign. While attempting to tap into the origins of Americana, the company overlooked copyright laws and soon after, the owners of the Modern Diner filed suit against Walt Disney Company and won.

At first glance, the Modern Diner retains its historic 1940s appearance. After it was moved to East Avenue in the 1980s, however, an additional structure – containing modern amenities like an expanded kitchen and restrooms – was attached to the rear of the diner. Although the diner’s menu has expanded over the years to meet the tastes of new clientele, the traditional diner fare of breakfast is still their specialty.

Ready for breakfast?

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All across America people ridiculed and smashed Henry D. Cogswell’s fountains, but this one survives in downtown Pawtucket.

Cogswell – a dentist, millionaire, and crusader in the temperance movement against alcohol – had not always been a wealthy man. Born in Connecticut in 1820, young Cogswell sunk into poverty after his parents died. As a teenager he walked fifty miles to Pawtucket to start work in the mills. He managed to become a dentist, and in 1847 he set up a local practice. Lured to California by the Gold Rush, he made a fortune in real estate.

The newly-minted millionaire assumed an ancestral coat of arms and began to call himself a “capitalist,” but he never forgot his penniless past. He determined to uplift the working class through charitable deeds.

As Cogswell saw it, drunkenness led to pauperism. If poor people had an alternative to alcohol – like clean, cold water to drink – they might renounce liquor. And so, starting in 1878, Cogswell arranged to send free drinking fountains to towns throughout the United States.

Cogswell’s actions might have been well-intentioned, but he made some regrettable design choices. His fountains often came topped with a statue that resembled Cogswell himself. This figure, which he referred to as the “Guardian of the Fountain,” held a scroll in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Engravings at the base commanded passersby to work hard and avoid dissipation.

The fountains proved irresistible targets for vandals. Drunken revelers, rowdy art lovers, and citizens who deemed the statues to be in poor taste all moved to destroy them. Wherever he appeared, the “Guardian” suffered attacks, including topplings with a lasso, lake immersions, and a kidnapping.

When Mark Twain spotted a Cogswell fountain in Rochester, New York, he remarked, “It has a putrid, decomposed sort of a look that is offensive for a delicate organism.” Others agreed. In 1885 an unidentified party dispatched the Rochester statue by bashing it to bits with crowbars.

The Pawtucket fountain escaped the mobs, perhaps because it came decorated with a heron rather than Cogswell himself. Residents welcomed it with speeches and song when it arrived in 1880. The fountain provided water, “God’s Free Gift to Man and Beast,” from high spouts for humans and lower spouts for horses, dogs, and any other animals in need of refreshment. On the foreheads of the cat-like gargoyles, one can still see marks made by rings where drinking cups once hung.

When the fountain became inconvenient downtown, the city transferred it to Oak Grove Cemetery. But mourners deemed it too cheerful for that spot, even after they had the word “Welcome” removed from the bottom of the base. The fountain moved to Slater Park in 1904 before the city finally restored it to its original location in 1990. At that time, a time capsule found embedded at the top of the column yielded soggy papers and an Indian Head penny.

Today Pawtucket’s Cogswell fountain is one of few still in existence. It stands defunct, a monument to a man who excelled at making money but botched giving it away.

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On January 3, 1791, Ann Arnold walked into the newly founded Slater Mill and onto the pages of history as one of the first nine employees hired by the mill. She was probably about ten years old.

As the industrial revolution swept across the western world, many factories, including Slater Mill, capitalized on child labor. Pliable young children could be easily taught the skills needed to operate the mill’s spinning frames, could be paid less than adults, and were less likely to incite trouble than adult workers. Some factories hired children as young as four years old. At Slater Mill, Ann Arnold joined a workforce made up of boys and girls between the ages of seven and twelve who worked six days a week – twelve hours a day in the winter, sixteen hours a day in the summer. They spent more than twice the amount of time that today’s kids spend in school working at the mill each day.

Ann Arnold and her fellow workers picked cotton clean and worked the mill’s carding and spinning machines. The roar of the Blackstone River and hum of the water-powered machinery filled the air. Fine cotton lint coated the floor, clung to the workers' clothes, and clogged their throats. If the mill supervisor thought the children were not working hard enough, the children were fined, further reducing the small paycheck that they took home each week. The children were expected to spend Sundays, their one day of rest, at a mill-sponsored Sunday school where Brown University students provided basic schooling.

For her hard work, Ann Arnold brought home a regular salary: a luxury compared to farm life. The rest of her family toiled all day on the family farm, working just as hard as Ann did in the factory, but without the assurance of a regular paycheck.

As Slater Mill expanded, more workers were needed to run the carding and spinning equipment. Mill operators adopted the “Rhode Island System” of labor where entire families were hired to work together in the factories. Nonetheless, children remained a key source of labor. In 1830, fifty-five percent of all millworkers in Rhode Island were still children.

Long after Slater Mill closed its doors in 1895, child labor continued to be a contested issue. In the early 1900s, organizations such as the Consumer's League of Rhode Island fought to limit child labor. Early legislation restricted the number of hours that children could work and set age requirements for factory work – unscrupulous mill owners seldom enforced these rules. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act made it illegal to employ any child under the age of twelve in the United States. However, children like Ann still work in factories throughout the world today, enduring harsh conditions to support them­selves and their family.

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