Katie Turner Getty on the “Displaced” of Boston

At the start of this month I had the pleasure of speaking at three events about the Boston Massacre alongside Katie Turner Getty and Christian Di Spigna.

Katie (shown here with me) also spoke this month online via the American Revolution Institute in Washington, D.C., about the Bostonians displaced by the outbreak of war in 1775.

Families with enough resources to leave the besieged but not enough to sustain themselves outside were subsidized by the Massachusetts government. In the rural towns where they found shelter and some work, they became known as the “donation people.”

Katie Turner Getty’s “Donation People” talk is now available for viewing on the institute’s YouTube channel.

There’s only a little overlap between this talk and the refugee stories I’ll discuss on Sunday because the “Donation People” were sent farther from the fighting than Cambridge. They both show families and local governments dealing with the disruption of war.

As I said yesterday, these talks were planned before that topic became so visible in the present day.