Boston 1775

In his 29 Apr 1776 letter to Samuel Adams , the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper described the man who came forward with a solution for cannon with ...

Yesterday I started quoting a 29 Apr 1776 letter from the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper to Samuel Adams about Boston’s defenses soon after the B...

On 29 Apr 1776, one week after writing the letter to John Adams that I quoted yesterday , the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to Samuel Adams...

I was preparing to write about a document from the Samuel Adams Papers at the New York Public Library, digitized as “Letter from John Scolla...

Earlier this year the Sandwich Enterprise shared a story by Cearra O’Hern about the identification of an artifact at the Pilgrim Hall Muse...

On Sunday, 17 May, the Partnership of Historic Bostons is offering a walking tour titled “To Vax or Not to Vax: Smallpox in Early Boston.” ...

On Monday, 18 May, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on the timely topic “Revolutionary Narratives: From Br...

Twenty years ago today, on 14 May 2006, I posted my first item on this blog . That post was a link to an article I’d written for the magaz...

One of the questions asked after yesterday’s talk on young Benjamin Thompson ’s life in America was whether he interacted with any represen...

Yesterday I cited Jane Merrill’s Sex and the Scientist: The Indecent Life of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753–1814) , the latest and ...

In preparation for tomorrow’s talk about Benjamin Thompson ’s early years, I’ve been reviewing the evidence of his affair with Mary (Dill) T...

Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, in 1737. In 1964 the town erected a statue of him, over the objections of a councilor who act...

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence , multiple institutions in greater Boston have collaborated to lay ...

On 21 April, the Philadelphia Inquirer shared an opinion piece about the President’s House exhibit by Sharon Ann Holt, a public historian ...