Richard V. Simpson, Neighbor

A graphic designer by trade, he worked in advertising, printing, display and textile design studios. He designed and built parade floats for Kaiser Aluminum’s Bristol plant and the navy in Newport, Rhode Island. After retiring in 1996 from a twenty-nine-year federal civil service career with the U.S. Navy Supply Center and Naval Undersea Warfare Center, he began a second career as an author of books on subjects of historical interest in Rhode Island’s East Bay with his principal focus on Bristol.

Richard and his wife Irene are antique dealers doing business as <i>Bristol Art Exchange</i>; they received their Rhode Island retail sales license in 1970.

Beginning in 1985, he acted as a contributing editor for the national monthly <i>Antiques &amp; Collecting Magazine</i> in which eighty-five of his articles have appeared.

    Bristol’s famous Independence Day celebration and parade was Richard’s first venture in writing a major history narrative. His 1989 <i>Independence Day: How the Day Is Celebrated in Bristol, Rhode Island</i> is the singular authoritative book on the subject; his many anecdotal Fourth of July articles have appeared in the local <i>Bristol Phoenix</i> and the <i>Providence Journal</i>. His history of Bristol’s Independence Day celebration is the source of a story in the July 1989 <i>Yankee Magazine</i> and July 4, 2010 issue of <i>Parade Magazine</i>.

<strong>Richard V. Simpson’s Published Titles</strong>

<i>A History of the Italian-Roman Catholic Church in Bristol, RI </i>(1967)

<i>Independence Day: How the Day Is Celebrated in Bristol, RI </i>(1989)

<i>Old St. Mary’s: Mother Church in Bristol, RI </i>(1994)

<i>Bristol</i><i>, Rhode Island</i><i>: In the Mount Hope Lands of King Philip </i>(1996)

<i>Portsmouth</i><i>, Rhode Island</i><i>, Pocasset: Ancestral Lands of the Narragansett </i>(1997)

<i>Tiverton and Little Compton, Rhode Island: Pocasset and Sakonnet </i>(1997)

<i>Tiverton and Little Compton, Rhode Island: Volume II </i>(1998)

<i>Bristol</i><i>, Rhode Island: The Bristol Renaissance </i>(1998)

<i>America</i><i>’s Cup Yachts: The Rhode Island Connection </i>(1999)

<i>Building the Mosquito Fleet: U.S. Navy’s First Torpedo Boats </i>(2001)

<i>Bristol</i><i>: Montaup to Poppasquash </i>(2002)

<i>Bristol</i><i>, Rhode Island</i><i>: A Postcard History </i>(2005)

<i>Narragansett Bay</i><i>: A Postcard History </i>(2005)

<i>Herreshoff Yachts: Seven Generations of Industrialists, Inventors and Ingenuity             in Bristol </i>(2007)

<i>Historic Bristol: Tales from an Old Rhode Island Seaport </i>(2008)

<i>The America’s Cup: Trials and Triumphs </i>(2010)

<br><i>The Quest for the America’s cup: Sailing to Victory (2012)</i>