Book excerpt: "Newport, Rhode Island has been a city of innovation since its beginning nearly four centuries ago. Some of the claims on a national level are true, while some have been greatly distorted over the years. The freethinking citizens include the first to defeat a British squadron and the author of the first written constitution guaranteeing the right to religious freedom in world history. The first law banning the importation of Negroes in the colonies was enacted in the city, and the first Methodist church in the world with a steeple and bell is located here. But was the first female lighthouse keeper in America from here? Was Newport the first place where a medical lecture was given? Author and research historian Brian M. Stinson offers a chronological collection of vignettes detailing the city's many firsts." --