Boston 1775

When the British army returned to central Boston in 1774, Benjamin Davis, Sr. , rented his store on the south side of the Town Dock as a b...

On 4 Apr 1756, Trinity Church in Boston recorded the baptism of “Benjamin Davis, Son of Benj. & [blank].” Benjamin, Jr.’s mother was ...

As I wrote back here , the lore in Benjamin Davis ’s family was that his third wife, Alice , left him soon after their marriage in 1768 beca...

A comment about yesterday’s quotation from Abigail Adams has prompted me to veer off into some linguistic digging. Referring to Benjamin...

Massachusetts ships captured the Peggy on its voyage from Halifax to New York on 22 July 1776, as described yesterday . The civilians a...

Yesterday I wrote about Benjamin and Edward Davis , two brothers who were mercantile partners in Boston until religion and Revolutionary ...

Hopestill Capen wasn’t the only Sandemanian clapped into the Boston jail in the summer of 1776, as discussed yesterday . Another merchan...

On 6 Aug 1776, 250 years ago today , authorities in Boston locked merchant Hopestill Capen (1731–1807) in jail for “aiding and abetting th...

The American Scholar just published Robert A. Gross’s essay “Gratitude Isn’t Everything,” considering the start of the American Revolution...

In April, I went to Philadelphia to help lead the Pursuit of History Weekend on “The Road to Independence,” nearly three full days of explo...

Delving into the newly published John Dickinson letters also led me back into the notes of the Continental Congress during 1775. The off...

In 1775, John Adams and John Dickinson held the same basic position about the best course for the British Empire and its large North Amer...

The discovery of John Dickinson ’s 28 Oct 1775 letter to David Barclay , quoted yesterday , lets us assess his thoughts on John Adams ’s pri...

On 28 Oct 1775, John Dickinson finished writing a long letter to a Quaker banker in Britain, David Barclay —one of the documents just pub...