Boston 1775

As recounted yesterday , on 27 Sept 1774 a reported 1,500 people surrounded the courthouse in Barnstable , refusing to let the county court...

In 1763 Barnstable County commissioned a new courthouse. The sketch here shows one man’s memory of how it looked in the early 1800s. The b...

Since I’ve been writing about the Warrens of Plymouth in 1775, it seems appropriate to mention that there’s a push to increase Mercy Warren...

On the list of political troublemakers in Boston published in the New-York Gazetteer in September 1774, the last name is William Denning. ...

Yesterday I shared a letter from 1773 describing how a Barnstable goldsmith named Elisha Gray publicly whipped fifteen-year-old James Pai...

On 23 Feb 1773, Edmund Hawes (1738–1831) wrote from Barnstable to his cousin in Taunton , Robert Treat Paine , seeking legal help . Hawes...

Back in May 1768, the Massachusetts General Court added seven Whig House members involved in the Circular Letter dispute to the Council ...

Back in 2006, this blog’s first year, I wrote a couple of essays describing James Otis, Jr. , as a slaveholder . For those postings I re...

Joshua Gray (1743-1791) was born in North Yarmouth, in what is now Maine . His mother died when he was two, so he was raised in Yarmouth ,...