J. L. BELL is a Massachusetts writer who specializes in (among other things) the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. He is particularly interested in the experiences of children in 1765-75. He has published scholarly papers and popular articles for both children and adults. He was consultant for an episode of History Detectives, and contributed to a display at Minute Man National Historic Park.

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Saturday, February 08, 2025

Telling the Truth about Teaching History

Earlier this week, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians released a joint statement joined by dozens of other historical and educational organizations.

Here’s an extract:

The presidential executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” signed on January 29, 2025, grossly mischaracterizes history education across the United States, alleging educational malpractice—teachers supposedly “[i]mprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children.” The order uses this caricature to justify sweeping and unprecedented federal interventions in public education.

This inflammatory rhetoric is not new. For the past four years, the same largely fabricated accusations have provided justification for efforts by some state legislatures to prohibit “divisive concepts” in history and social studies education, along with other extreme restrictions that the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and American Historical Association (AHA) have separately and jointly opposed.

Taken together, this state legislation and executive order not only disregard the training, ethics, and lifelong work of history teachers; they also demean American students by assuming that patriotism can be ignited only by triumphal stories and that our students are incapable of forming complex opinions about their nation’s past. . . .

The executive order’s narrow conception of patriotism and patriotic education does more than deny the actual history of American democracy; it also undermines its own goals of a rigorous education and merit-based society.

This is neither history nor patriotism. An uncomplicated celebration of American greatness flattens the past into a parade of platitudes devoid of the context, conflict, contingency, and change over time that are central to historical thinking. We instead support our nation’s educators as they help students learn how past generations fought to make the United States a “more perfect union,” in the words of our Constitution. As they teach the history of how people in the past chose to devote, risk, and in some cases even lose their lives challenging our nation’s most glaring imperfections, they teach our youth resilience, courage, and pride. They also teach them history.

We reject the premise that it is “anti-American” or “subversive” to learn the full history of the United States with its rich and dramatic contradictions, challenges, and conflicts alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities. History education that is rooted in professional expertise and integrity can inspire patriotism in American students through deep and honest engagement with our nation’s past and prepare them for informed civic engagement. Teachers want students to grapple with complex history.

This history includes the rich legacy of freedom and democracy built into the nation’s foundation. It also includes legacies of contradictions to those principles present at the nation’s founding and beyond. It includes the struggles of Americans across nearly 250 years to enlarge that legacy—to end slavery, to end prejudice against immigrants from across the world, to end poverty, to build a nation where everyone has the freedom to pursue their dreams.
You can read the entire statement here.

Friday, February 07, 2025

“Secrets on the Road to Concord” via Fort Ti, 9 Feb.

On Sunday, 9 February, at 2:00 P.M., I’ll deliver an online talk about “Secrets on the Road to Concord” in Fort Ticonderoga’s Author Series.

The event description says:
The British march to Concord in April 1775 set off the Revolutionary War, but what exactly were the redcoats looking for? Looking at General Thomas Gage’s papers reveals that his main goal was to destroy four brass cannon that Patriots had spirited out of Boston months before. In the early months of 1775, while the provincials worked to build an artillery force, General Gage used military spies and paid agents to locate those weapons. Those maneuvers led to a fatal clash on the road to Concord.
This event is free for Fort Ti members, $10 for others. The webpage asks people to register by 5:00 P.M. on Friday, 7 February, in order to receive the link.

Fort Ticonderoga has a long history, but many people know it as the source of artillery pieces that Col. Henry Knox brought back to the siege of Boston in 1776. (He also collected cannon from Crown Point and other sites along Lake Champlain.)

Years later, as secretary of war, Knox returned two of Boston’s four brass cannon to Massachusetts. But first he had them engraved with the names “HANCOCK” and “ADAMS,” and this story:
Sacred to Liberty.
This is one of four cannon,
which constituted the whole train
of Field Artillery,
possessed by the British colonies of
North America,
at the commencement of the war.
on the 19th of april 1775.

This cannon
and its fellow
belonging to a number of citizens of
Boston,
were used in many engagements
during the war.

The other two, the property of the
Government of Massachusetts
were taken by the enemy.
By order of the United States
in Congress assembled
May 19th, 1788.
Those engravings made those two cannon unique and easily traceable, which helped my research immensely. At the same time, the words promulgated a false picture of the provincials’ artillery force.

The Massachusetts committee of safety had far more than “four cannon” under its control in April 1775—more than three dozen, in fact. It had only four small brass (bronze) cannon, but it had a bunch of iron guns suitable as “Field Artillery.” Six of those cannon went onto Bunker Hill, and five were lost.

In addition, if we’re talking about “the British colonies of North America,” Rhode Island sent brass field-pieces to the siege under Capt. John Crane—who became one of Knox’s top artillery officers. New Hampshire had artillery from the raid on Fort William and Mary. And I’m not even bothering to count what other colonies had for their militia companies and shore fortifications.

I’m not sure why Knox told the history that way, especially since his audience included veterans and insiders like himself who knew the whole story. That telling does enhance the importance of his own mission to New York.

I also don’t get the distinction Knox made between one pair owned by “a number of citizens of Boston” and the other by “the Government of Massachusetts” since they were all considered Massachusetts militia guns and he was returning the “citizens” guns to the state.

Thursday, February 06, 2025

Reading the Map of Rhode Island with Andrew Middleton

In December, Andrew Middleton went viral on Bluesky. This was unknown territory for him—ironic, since he’s an expert on maps.

Middleton had written: “Hi. I’m Andrew. I own New England’s oldest map store because last year I moved across the country after an old guy retired and gave it to me Willy Wonka-style. Visit my store in Rhode Island. www.mapcenter.com.”

The Map Center not only sells maps, atlases, and related products, but offers research, classes, and connections to cartographers around the country.

I’m going to link to Middleton’s online presentation “Eight Interesting Aspects: Narragansett Bay and the Invention of Rhode Island” at Pixeum.

Built around Charles Blaskowitz’s 1777 chart “Topographical Chart of the Bay of Narraganset,” this online offering is somewhere between a video and a slide show.

Pointing out details on the chart, Middleton shows how to read it as Royal Navy officers did:
These numbers (or soundings) measure the depth of the channels in fathoms (a fathom is about six feet). The water needed to be deep enough for British warships.

While Blaskowitz fills in the topography around the islands and coasts, he leaves places farther inland blank.

The Navy only cared about the places from which those pesky American rebels could fire on their ships: high ground close to the water.
Perhaps because he’s come from California, Middleton can tease Rhode Islanders for their fondness for this map. It was, he points out, created to facilitate an invasion by the British military! He recommends a French rip-off instead.

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

History Camp Discussion about the Outbreak of War, 6 Feb.

This Thursday, 6 February, at 8:00 P.M. Samuel A. Forman and I will appear live on the History Camp Author Discussion feed, talking about the Battle of Lexington and Concord with Lee Wright and Mary Adams and taking audience questions.

Sam is the author of Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. He shared a great deal of his research for that book on his Joseph Warren website.

Sam and I are both members of the board of The Pursuit of History, Inc., the non-profit organization that organizes History Camp, these online author discussions, and the Pursuit of History Weekends, including the upcoming look at “The Outbreak of War” on 3–6 April. So we’ll talk about those things, too. 

One of the overlaps between my book and Sam’s is Dr. Joseph Warren’s 10 Feb 1775 letter to Samuel Adams, kept at the New York Public Library. It gives a vivid picture of the tension inside redcoat-occupied Boston 250 years ago:
We were this Morning alarmed with A Report that A Party of Soldiers was sent to Cambridge with Design to disperse the [Massachusetts Provincial] Congress many here believed it was in Consequence of what was Yesterday published by their Order, I confess I paid so much Regard to it as to be sorry I was not with my Friends and Altho, my Affairs would not allow of it I went down to the Ferry in a Chaise with Dr. [Benjamin] Church both determined to share with our Brethren in any Dangers that they might be engaged in but we there heard that the Party had quietly passed the Bridge on their Way to Roxbury up[on]. which we returned Home.

I have spent an Hour this Morning with Deacon [William] Phillips and am concerned that our Existence as a free People absolutely depends in acting with Spirit & Vigor, the Ministry declare our Resolution to preserve our Liberty and the common People there are made to believe we are a Nation of noisy Cowards, the Ministry are supported in their Plan of answering us by Assurances that we have not Courage enough to fight for our Freedom, even they who wish us well dare not openly declare for us lest we should meanly desert ourselves and leave them alone to content with Administrations, who they know will be politically speaking, omnipotent if America should submit to them,

Deacon Phillips Dr. Church and myself are all fully of Opinion that it would be a very proper Step should the Congress order A Schooner to [?] be sent Home with an accurate State of Facts, or it is certain that Letters to and from our Friends in England are intercepted, and every Method taken to prevent the People of Gt. Britain from gaining a Knowledge of the true State of this Country— I intended to have consulted with you had I been at Cambridge to Day on the Propriety of A Motion for that Purpose—but must defer it untill to Morrow—

One thing however I have upon my Mind which I think ought to be immediately attended to—the Resolution of the Congress published Yesterday greatly affects one [Obadiah] Whiston who has hitherto been thought firm in our Cause but is now making Carriages for the Army—He assisted in getting the four Field Pieces to Colo. [Lemuel] Robinson’s at Dorchester, where they are now, He says the Discovery of this will make him,—and He threatens to make the Discovery, perhaps Resentment and the Hope of gain may together prevail with him to act the Traitor—

Dr. Church and I are clear that it ought not to be one Minute in his Power to point out [to] the General [Thomas Gage] the Place in which they are kept but that they ought to be removed without pray do not omit to obtain proper Orders concern’g them
Whiston the blacksmith was cut out of the Patriot organization; eventually he left Boston as a Loyalist in March 1776. The committee of safety convinced Robinson to turn over those “four Field Pieces” so they could be moved further from Boston—out to Concord, in fact. However, since Dr. Church was or would soon be in Gage’s pay, the general tracked them out to that town. 

After war did break out, one of Dr. Warren’s first actions as head of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was to assemble an account of the first battle from the Patriot perspective and send it by specially hired ship to London, just as this letter proposed.

This letter is one of many documents that show the Massachusetts Patriots making plans to respond to a British army action. Of course, every bit of military preparation convinced Gov. Gage that those men were planning an armed rebellion.

Back when Sam and I were writing our books, we had to go to New York to see that letter. Now it’s been digitized for anybody to read (though searching for it is still a challenge).

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

A Copley Portrait and the Story Behind It

Last month the Pook & Pook art auction house in Pennsylvania sold two paintings of a little girl named Priscilla Greenleaf (and her dog).

One, attributed to Joseph Badger and dated about 1750, went for $20,000, or double the top range of its estimate. 

The other, an early work by John Singleton Copley, sold for $500,000, or more than six times the initial estimate. That’s what appears in this thumbnail.

The Copley portrait, which Pook & Pook dated to about 1757, was posthumous. That’s because Priscilla had probably died in 1750, soon after Badger painted her.

John Greenleaf, the children’s father, was an apothecary. As D. Brenton Simons wrote in Witches, Rakes, and Rogues, when his eleven-month-old son died in January of that year, soon after the deaths of his daughters, he suspected poison.

Greenleaf accused a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl he enslaved, Phillis Hammond, of giving the baby arsenic. Arrested and under pressure, she confessed to killing John, Jr., and Elizabeth. The family believed she killed Priscilla as well. The newspapers published little about the case, not even the Greenleaf name.

Phillis Hammond pled guilty to murdering baby John that spring. She was sentenced to death. The Boston Evening Post reported, “Her Mother died with Excess of Grief.” Phillis was hanged on 16 May 1751. The Rev. Dr. Mather Byles preached at the execution. Some printer issued a broadside with a crude woodcut and verse titled “The bitter Effects of Sin,” the source for Phillis’s surname.

The Greenleafs had Badger’s portraits of Priscilla and Elizabeth to remember their daughters. (The latter is now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg.) But evidently they wanted an image of their murdered son, and for the pictures to match.

John Singleton Copley was still a teenager himself when the Greenleafs commissioned him to paint all three of their lost children. The pictures of Elizabeth and John are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The museum website says of the boy’s outfit: “Copley’s source for John’s exotic cap and pose was a print after Sir Godfrey Kneller’s portrait of Lord Bury as a child.” Likewise, though his picture of Priscilla followed Badger in posing the little girl with a dog, he may have used a European print as a better model.

Monday, February 03, 2025

Peeking in on the Hive, 8–9 Feb.

On Saturday and Sunday, 8–9 February, the Friends of Minute Man Park will once again host “The Hive,” a living history symposium designed to prepare people for the Battle Road reenactment in April.

As of this writing, the event is sold out, and the Eventbrite page is putting people on a waitlist.

Nonetheless, I think it’s worth listing the formal presentations. On Saturday:

12:00 noon: 1775: The Year the War Began, Bob Allison
The War for American Independence began in 1775. Why? Why did armed conflict not begin sooner? Could war have been avoided? Neither side wanted a war, but each would accept one in order to establish its aims. What were the aims of each side, what obstacles were in the way of achieving them, and how was the situation different at the end of the year?

1:10 P.M.: Infantry in Battle in the Eighteenth Century, Alexander Burns
This presentation will explore the world of combat for eighteenth-century infantrymen in North America and Europe, in order to contextualize the fighting on April 19th, 1775. Across the Atlantic World, infantrymen often fought in flexible and adaptable ways, firing without orders, firing at longer ranges than their officers preferred, and by taking cover on the battlefield. In this process, these enlisted men played an important role by asserting tactical reforms from below.

2:20 P.M.: Farming and Land Use along the Battle Road in 1775, Brian Donahue
This talk will describe the development of colonial farming in Concord and Lincoln. It will focus on the pattern of settlement and land use along the Battle Road by 1775. It is drawn from Brian's book The Great Meadow, which can be consulted for greater detail on any neighborhood, particularly from the Meriam House to the Hartwell Tavern.

3:30 P.M.: April 19th Overview and Panel Discussion about British and Colonial Tactics, Alexander Cain, Jim Hollister, Sean Considine, and Jarrad Fuoss
The Battle of Lexington and Concord is often associated with the image of British soldiers marching in tight formations and in the open, incapable of defending themselves against the unorthodox tactics of the minute men. How much of this is real vs historical fiction? How did the fighting along the bloody Battle Road compare to more regular military practices?

On Sunday:

11:00 A.M.: Sober, Industrious Women: Portraying the Roles of Soldiers’ Wives, Don Hagist
Wives of soldiers had to work to earn their keep, but many of their jobs were associated with parts of the military infrastructure that isn't portrayed at reenactments. This talk will present ways to effectively present the roles of nurses, sutlers, seamstresses, gardeners and others within the limitations of modern reenactment encampment settings.

12:10 P.M.: Massachusetts Men’s Civilian Clothing 1750–1775, Paul Dickfoss
Using depictions in period art and portraiture, historian Paul Dickfoss will provide a detailed glimpse into how men from Massachusetts dressed in the late colonial period.

1:20 P.M.: Battle Road Fashion Runway, Ruth Hodges and friends
Looking for some inspiration to update your Battle Road impression? The Minute Man Living History Authenticity Standards offers a wider variety of impressions than first meets the eye. Differences are sometimes subtle, and the devil is in the details! See some excellent examples of women and children of 1775 Middlesex County Massachusetts in this very first Battle Road Fashion Runway!

There are also workshops, drills, inspections, and mutual advice for a couple of hours each morning and breakout sessions on specific elements of an eighteenth-century impression on Sunday afternoon. High standards and mutual support like this is what makes the Battle Road reenactment so terrific.

The Hive’s other sponsors are the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, Revolution 250, and the Massachusetts Army National Guard. It will take place at the Massachusetts National Guard Museum and Archives in Concord for folks who can secure a spot.

Sunday, February 02, 2025

“The seller is nothing less than a collector of the tax”

Here are some paragraphs from the seventh Letter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, John Dickinson’s 1767–68 essays arguing against the Townshend duties:
There are two ways of laying taxes. One is, by imposing a certain sum on particular kinds of property, to be paid by the user or consumer, or by rating the person at a certain sum. The other is, by imposing a certain sum on particular kinds of property, to be paid by the seller.

When a man pays the first sort of tax, he knows with certainty that he pays so much money for a tax. The consideration for which he pays it, is remote, and, it may be, does not occur to him. He is sensible too, that he is commanded and obliged to pay it as a tax; and therefore people are apt to be displeased with this sort of tax.

The other sort of tax is submitted to in a very different manner. The purchaser of any article, very seldom reflects that the seller raises his price, so as to indemnify himself for the tax he has paid. He knows that the prices of things are continually fluctuating, and if he thinks about the tax, he thinks at the same time, in all probability, that he might have paid as much, if the article he buys had not been taxed. . . .

The merchant or importer, who pays the duty at first, will not consent to be so much money out of pocket. He therefore proportionably raises the price of his goods. It may then be said to be a contest between him and the person offering to buy, who shall lose the duty.

This must be decided by the nature of the commodities, and the purchaser’s demand for them. If they are mere luxuries, he is at liberty to do as he pleases, and if he buys, he does it voluntarily: But if they are absolute necessaries or conveniences, which use and custom have made requisite for the comfort of life, and which he is not permitted, by the power imposing the duty, to get elsewhere, there the seller has a plain advantage, and the buyer must pay the duty.

In fact, the seller is nothing less than a collector of the tax for the power that imposed it. If these duties then are extended to the necessaries and conveniences of life in general, and enormously encreased, the people must at length become indeed “most exquisitely sensible of their slavish situation.”
That quoted phrase came from Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.

This letter concluded:
These duties, which will inevitably be levied upon us---which are now levying upon us---are expresly laid FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF TAKING MONEY. This is the true definition of “taxes.” They are therefore taxes. This money is to be taken from us. We are therefore taxed.

Those who are taxed without their own consent, expressed by themselves or their representatives, are slaves. We are taxed without our own consent, expressed by ourselves of our representatives. We are therefore---SLAVES.
Dickinson thus put himself among the American Whigs who equated a lack of full political rights for white men of property with a state of slavery while keeping actual chattel slaves. Unlike most of his countrymen, however, Dickinson did something about that. In 1786 he finished manumitting everyone he had claimed as property.

Saturday, February 01, 2025

Join Us for “The Outbreak of War,” 3–6 Apr.

Last spring I worked with the Pursuit of History, the nonprofit founded by Lee Wright to organize History Camp, to produce a weekend of talks and tours about the New England rebellion of 1774.

This spring we’re offering a new program. On 3–6 April, we’ll gather in Concord and visit nearby towns to explore “The Outbreak of War.”

Once again, there are a limited number of seats available for this event, and I understand most have already been reserved. People are coming from as far away as California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The event will start with dinner on Thursday, 3 April, at the eighteenth-century Wayside Inn in Sudbury. Over dessert I’ll review what led up to April 1775 and look ahead to the next three days.

On Friday, 4 April, we’ll meet inside the Wright Tavern in the center of Concord. Massachusetts Provincial Congress delegates met in committee in this building in the spring of 1775, and on April 19 the British commanders used it as their headquarters. We’ll hear presentations from these experts:
  • Jayne Triber, Ph.D., author of A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere.
  • Don N. Hagist, author of Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution and editor of The Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Alexander Cain, author of We Stood Our Ground: Lexington in the First Year of the American Revolution.
  • Joel Bohy, expert in historic arms who appears regularly on Antiques Roadshow, sharing findings from recent battlefield archeology.
On that day we’ll also visit Concord’s Old Hill Burying Ground and North Bridge.

That evening, we’ll have dinner at the Colonial Inn, which dates to 1716. I’ll speak afterwards about how the royal government and the Massachusetts Patriots competed to control information before and after the battle.

On Saturday, 5 April, we’ll visit Lexington Common, viewing the historic buildings and monuments nearby and watching the rehearsal for the 250th-anniversary reenactment of the first shots of the Revolutionary War. (We have a contingency plan if bad weather postpones that rehearsal.) We’ll also stop at the Hartwell Tavern site, the Parker’s Revenge site, and the Jason Russell House in Arlington.

On Sunday, 6 April, attendees can sign up for an optional tour of colonial Marblehead architecture with Judy Anderson for an additional cost.

Some meals are included, and some will be up to the attendees. Lodging isn’t included in the cost, but there are rooms available for reserving at the Colonial Inn and other hotel possibilities nearby.

The Pursuit of History has a webpage with lots more details about the event. That page also includes a couple of videos of me out in Concord on a winter day, looking ahead to spring.

Friday, January 31, 2025

Looking Back on the Winter of 1774–75

On Sunday, 1 February, I’ll join Rob Orrison from the Emerging Revolutionary War team in a live online conversation about the winter of 1774–75.

In recent weeks I’ve been looking up what happened on each date 250 years ago. One big lesson I took away from that task is how big an impact the seasonal climate had on people’s lives.

In winter, people just didn’t go out as much, especially in New England. There were fewer town meetings. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress and Continental Congress were adjourned. Not as many ships were crossing the Atlantic with news from London. And of course the courts in Massachusetts were closed.

John and Abigail Adams were at home together, which I’m sure they enjoyed, but that means no letters between them for us to enjoy. Without the courts, John wasn’t noting travel or interesting law cases in his diary. That gave him more time to compose his “Novanglus” essays, but I prefer a good anecdote.

In London, Benjamin Franklin had interesting conversations with politicians like the Earl of Chatham and the Howes, but it must have been clear those Whigs had very little sway in the king’s government. Josiah Quincy, Jr., was there, too, but he’d had his audiences with top ministers, left them unimpressed, and had nothing else to do.

Of course, behind closed doors and after dark people were doing a lot in the winter of 1774–75, and events started to speed up at the end of February. Gov. John Wentworth had lost control of New Hampshire. The Boston Patriots were smuggling cannon out of town to colleagues in the countryside. Timothy Bigelow was gathering cannon in Worcester, and David Mason was doing the same in Salem.

In February, Gov. Thomas Gage managed to get Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., to start supplying sensitive information on those weapons. That led to Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere’s spying mission to Worcester and Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie’s expedition to Salem, both on the same weekend.

By that time, copies of the Earl of Dartmouth’s 27 January instructions to Gen. Gage were being carried across the Atlantic. That dispatch was couched in caveats and conditionals since the colonial secretary knew circumstances might have changed greatly between Gage’s last reports and when he saw this letter. Nonetheless, Dartmouth left no doubt that the government and the monarch thought it was time to make some arrests.

That push from London led to the events of April 18–19, discussed in the Emerging Revolutionary War book A Single Blow, written by Phil Greenwalt and Rob Orrison with a foreword by me. But that wouldn’t happen until the spring, when people in New England could spend extended time outside again.

The Emerging Revolutionary War conversation is scheduled to start on Sunday at 7:00 P.M. Boston time. The best place to listen in live will be on the Emerging RevWar Facebook page. Later it can be viewed on YouTube.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Lincoln’s Sestercentennial Series

The town of Lincoln is observing the Sestercentennial with a series of exhibits at the library and a series of events.

The January exhibit was about Lincoln’s vote to send delegates to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress 250 years ago this month. The February exhibit will be on the theme “Enslaved in the American Revolution.”

Here are the presentations and other events announced so far.

Thursday, 30 January, 7:00 P.M., online
Causes of the American Revolution
Dane Morrison

Increasing taxation created dissent in Massachusetts. In 1774, Great Britain issued more punitive measures to suppress dissent and restore order, such as the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter of 1691. Former Salem State Professor Dane Morrison will discuss Lincoln at the beginning of the Revolution, exploring why an inland agricultural village would feel threatened by the new royal and Parliamentary initiatives. Register here.

Sunday, 2 February, 12:30–4:00 P.M., in and around Bemis Hall
The Lincoln of 1775
Co-hosted by the Bemis Free Lecture Series, the Lincoln Historical Society, the Lincoln Minute Men, the Middlesex County 4-H Fife & Drum, and Lincoln250

What was life like for families 250 years ago in Lincoln? Talk with reenactors about the attire, the food, and the amusements of family life of the day. The event will include musket demonstrations and music. At 2:00 P.M., a dance party will begin with instruction for all who wish to join. Refreshments will be served.

Thursday, 27 February, 7:00 P.M., online
Entangled Lives, Black and White in Lincoln, Mass.
Don Hafner

In the 18th century, the town of Lincoln had dozens of Black residents, enslaved and free, who helped the town thrive. They plowed the fields, hoed the gardens, and harvested the food. They did the cooking, they did the laundry, they cared for the children, they tended the sick and the elderly. They worked the blacksmith shops and the sawmills, made the nails and cut the boards for Lincoln’s first meeting house and houses that still stand. More than a hundred white residents of Lincoln lived in a household with an enslaved person. Come hear what we know about their entangled lives with historian Don Hafner. Register here.

Saturday, 8 March, 2:00 P.M., at the library
Meet Abigail Adams
Sheryl Faye

Lincoln250 celebrates Women's History Month! All ages are invited to Sheryl Faye’s engaging portrayal of Abigail Adams, wife of second President John Adams and sister of Lincoln Minute Men captain William Smith. Ms. Faye will portray Abigail as an adult and a child as she navigates life in colonial New England and stands up for the rights of women during the turbulence of War for Independence. All ages welcome. No registration necessary.

Thursday, 13 March, 7:00 P.M., at the library
Women in the American Revolution
Audrey Stuck-Girard

While the experiences of individual women during the American War of Independence have been largely left out of the historical record, they were nonetheless active participants of the cultural shift known as the American Revolution. Rural Massachusetts women in 1775 managed household budgets and property while being legally barred from owning any of that property. As the primary influence and educators of young children, they instilled moral and cultural values and ethics to the first generation of independent Americans. And when many of the men in their lives were away serving or killed in the war, women endeavored (with varying levels of success) to fulfill both male and female roles in their absence. Register here.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Talks on Bullet Strikes and Women Printers

Sestercentennial talks are starting to come fast. I’ll have some of mine to announce soon, and here are two happening tonight and tomorrow.

Wednesday, 29 January, 7:00 P.M., at the Acton Town Hall and livestreamed
“‘Dreadful Were the Vestiges of War’: Bullet Strikes from the First Day of the American Revolution”
Joel Bohy

Bohy, historic arms & militaria specialist at Blackstone Valley Auctions and Estates, will discuss the arms and ammunition used by both British and provincial forces on April 19, 1775, as well as the battle damage that remains. Modern shooting-incident reconstruction, archaeology, live fire studies, and new research sheds new light on the heavy fighting along the route of the British retreat back to Boston.

This free event is an Acton 250 program, and a recording will be available through Acton TV.

Thursday, 30 January, 7:00 P.M., at the Westford Museum
“In the Margins: Women Printers in the 18th Century”
Michele Gabrielson

In the 18th century, newspapers and pamphlets were crucial in spreading information and stoking the fires of conflict during the revolutionary period. Although printing was primarily seen as a masculine profession, women—such as widows, wives, and daughters—stepped up to embrace the responsibilities of a free press. These women not only set the type but, in some cases, also owned and managed their own printing businesses. This lecture will lay out the essential contributions of women in the printing industry leading up to the American Revolution.

Gabrielson is an award-winning educator, a historical interpreter, and secretary for the recently formed Mercy Otis Warren Society.

The suggested donation for this event is $10 per person.

(The picture above shows the broadside “A Bloody Butchery, by the British Troops,” issued after the 19th of April by Ezekiel Russell, whose wife Sarah helped run the print shop.)

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

“Lost Bunker Hill Cyclorama,” 29 Jan.

On Wednesday, 29 January, the National Parks of Boston and Boston Public Library will present a free online presentation about “Boston’s Lost Bunker Hill Cyclorama.”

The event description says:
The Battle of Bunker Hill is one of the most mythologized moments in American history, and the events of June 17, 1775, have inspired artists for more than two centuries.

The most monumental work of art dedicated to the battle was “The Battle of Bunker Hill Cyclorama.” In an era before IMAX blockbusters, audiences in the 1800s visited cycloramas; 360-degree paintings displayed within enormous circular structures. When “The Battle of Bunker Hill Cyclorama” was unveiled in Boston 1888, it was considered the most accurate depiction of the battle yet seen, yet a few short years later was discarded.

This program explores the history and legacy of the greatest work of art ever lost in Boston.
This event is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. To attend, people must register through Zoom.

Folks can also explore the National Parks of Boston’s webpage on the cyclorama, which offered a “Diorama of the Boston Tea Party” as an appetizer. Only a few two-dimensional traces of the installation survive.

In addition, Jake Sconyers’s HUB History podcast explored the earlier cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg in this episode.

Monday, January 27, 2025

“In the afternoon there was a sham fight”

Back in 2011, guest blogger Roger Fuller quoted Albert W. Bryant’s recollection of watching a reenactment of the 1775 fighting on Lexington common that took place “on the 19th of April, 1822.”

Since Bryant shared that recollection at an 1890 meeting of the Lexington Historical Society, well over half a century after the event, I thought it was worth looking for evidence he got the date right.

And indeed, the 23 Apr 1822 Salem Gazette carried this item:
The 19th of April was noticed at Lexington by a military parade. In the afternoon there was a sham fight between the inhabitants of Lexington and its vicinity and the military corps, in imitation of the important event, which took place on the same day, in 1775.

An address on the occasion was delivered by the Rev Dr Stearns, of Lincoln.
That matches exactly with Bryant’s memory except he mistakenly recalled the minister coming from Bedford.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Stearns was sixty-eight years old when he delivered this address. According to a family history, he “preached his last sermon the first Sunday in July, 1826,” which was the 2nd. Living through the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, he died on the 26th.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) recalled being told as a boy that the “bulky” Stearns had published a poem in 1797 called “The Ladies’ Philosophy of Love.” Holmes wrote: “How I stared at him! He was the first living person ever pointed out to me as a poet!” Holmes wrote his own first poem at age thirteen, the same year as the commemoration in Lexington.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

The Latest Stamp Act

The United States Postal Service just announced some of its plans for new stamps in 2025.

Among the subjects are “Battlefields of the American Revolution,” as shown above:
Marking the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, this pane of 15 stamps invites us to witness and remember five turning points in the fight for American independence. Watercolor paintings depicting scenes of five battles appear alongside photographs of sites involved in each battle. Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps with art by Greg Harlin and photographs by Jon Bilous, Richard Lewis, Tom Morris, Gregory J. Parker and Kevin Stewart.
I like the juxtaposing of history painting and travel photography. And it’s interesting to see how Harlin tackled the challenge of his artwork needing to work by halves.

But which battles are commemorated?
  • Lexington and Concord (1775).
  • Bunker Hill (1775).
  • Trenton (1776).
  • Saratoga (1777).
  • Yorktown (1781).
That’s an even more limited presentation of the Revolutionary War than usual. Of course, featuring only American victories and moral victories cuts down the list of possible battles considerably. But this series suggests that only one fight mattered during the last five years of the war and in any state south-southeast of New Jersey.