Boston 1775

David Bushnell ’s pioneering submarine didn’t do much damage to the Royal Navy in 1776, but the next year he came back with another inventi...

After his brother Ezra Bushnell fell ill, the inventor David Bushnell asked Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons to send three men who might be abl...

On 2 Feb 1776, David Bushnell journeyed from his workshop in Saybrook, Connecticut , to Lebanon to meet with Gov. Jonathan Trumbull and hi...

On 31 Aug 1775, the Rev. Benjamin Boardman , serving as a chaplain to Connecticut troops at the siege of Boston , wrote in his diary: I co...

Since this is the anniversary of the 1774 “Powder Alarm” in Cambridge , I’m quoting from a letter that discusses that event and the surroun...

By 1777, both sides of the Revolutionary War held a significant number of prisoners . Some of those people were soldiers or sailors captur...

As the year 1777 began, the Loyalist Benjamin Davis remained in the Boston jail along with his son and an enslaved servant. Davis refus...

We can see the spread of news in the spring of 1775 through articles on the fire in Boston on the night of 17–18 May 1775. The first prin...

At the end of August 1771, Richard Steele finished a very busy year. Since the start of September 1770, the young man had been: convicte...

The 7 May 1771 Connecticut Courant newspaper of Hartford repeated Sheriff Ezekiel Williams ’s wanted notice for Richard Steele that I quot...

Yesterday we left young Richard Steele back in the custody of Hartford County law enforcement in February 1771. According to the 27 Augu...

Yesterday’s posting left Richard Steele in New Haven, Connecticut , in December 1770, being branded and cropped on his ear the second time...

On 17 Sept 1770, the Connecticut Courant of Hartford reported on recent cases from “the Superior Court of Assize and General Goal Delivery...

In January I broke off a series of postings about the first years of Connecticut ’s New-Gate Prison because of the press of other matters. ...

Back in April I wrote a series of postings about John Hill , his wife Elizabeth (?), and their daughter, captured on board the brig Elizabe...

This is a very busy summer for Plays in Place , which works with historic sites to create new plays built on their past, informed by their a...

In his History of the Siege of Boston , Richard Frothingham published a letter about the Battle of Bunker Hill written by Samuel Gray in Ro...

Last month I talked with Ryan Chatelain of Spectrum News about the tale of Sybil Ludington . His story , headlined “Sybil Ludington is cal...

Yesterday’s posting mentioned the Rev. Samuel Ashbow , a Baptist minister from the Mohegan community in Connecticut . A lot of informati...

On Thursday, 11 June, the National Parks of Boston and Bunker Hill Community College will host a screening and discussion of the new short f...