Boston 1775

With all these stories about Founders’ children and dolls, I thought I should show an actual doll from the period. The Hammond-Harwood Ho...

The little stories I’ve told over the last two days about Benjamin Franklin ’s and George Washington ’s grandchildren raise the question: ...

Little Betsy Bache wasn’t alone in waiting a long time for a toy to arrive from France , as related yesterday . On 15 Apr 1785 , Adrienne...

On 16 Sept 1779, Sarah Bache wrote from Philadelphia to her father, Benjamin Franklin , in France with news of his grandchildren : Willy a...

This month the Smithsonian Magazine website published V. M. Braganza’s article “The Revolutionary Influence of the First English Children’...

This month the Boston Globe published Brian MacQuarrie’s article , many months in the making, about Peter Faneuil, the Atlantic slave econo...

The staff at Minute Man National Historical Park is already planning for the Sestercentennial of the Battle and Lexington and Concord in 202...

On Thursday, 21 September, Old North Illuminated will host a virtual talk by G. Patrick O’Brien on “‘This Perilous Hour of Trial, Horror &am...

Earlier this month Independence National Historical Park shared the photo above on Facebook. That posting stated: This scrap of newspaper ...

Today is Constitution Day, declared to commemorate the date on which the delegates at the Constitutional Convention signed off on their wor...

In October 1722, almost a year after being inoculated against smallpox , Ebenezer Turell found a new use for his notebook . He wrote out ...

The Telltale essays by Harvard College students in Ebenezer Turell ’s notebook come to a stop on 1 Nov 1721. In the preceding month, 411...

As I wrote yesterday , on 9 Sept 1721 a Harvard College student—quite possibly Ebenezer Turell —using the signature “Telltale” wrote a shor...

The Boston News-Letter was launched in 1704, the first ongoing newspaper in British North America. The Boston Gazette followed in 1719. ...