Boston 1775

Back in January I quoted Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on one of the impressive clergymen who came to preach in his father’s pulpit in Cambrid...

Yesterday National Parks Traveler reported that the new administration has ordered the National Park Service to rescind seasonal job offers...

Back here , in introducing a letter by Richard Lechmere , I wrote about him as leaving his country estate in Cambridge after accepting a se...

Yesterday I left Edward Rand dead on Dorchester Point. The man who had just killed him in a duel, Charles Miller, Jr. , could have been a...

As I quoted yesterday , the Constitutional Telegraphe of 17 June 1801 was the only Boston newspaper to report on the duel between Edward Ra...

While looking for more ties between Charles Miller and the Boston Patriots, I came across this story from the next generation. Boston’s C...

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia has just unveiled a webpage displaying seventeen letters written by Continental soldi...

In my write-up of the Charlestown tea burning , I mixed up the date of the town meeting when everyone agreed to stop selling tea (28 Dec ...

On 31 Dec 1773, as recounted yesterday , Charlestown burned its tea at high noon. Everyone could see that happen, but of course bonfires a...

Speaking of the city of Boston’s Archaeology Program , its staff took the lead in developing the “Slavery in Boston” exhibit in Faneuil Hall...

After Boston’s first anti-Stamp Act protest in 1765, Lemuel Robinson changed the sign outside the tavern he owned in Dorchester (shown above...

On the night of 4 Mar 1776, the Continental Army moved onto the Dorchester peninsula and started to fortify a position on the heights. ...

Jonathan Hale was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut , on 1 Feb 1721, the eldest surviving child of Jonathan and Sarah (Talcott) Hale. As Jona...

As I continue to recount merchant John Rowe ’s experience of the end of the siege of Boston , I’ll skip his diary notes on the weather, soci...

For decades authors have quoted Gen. William Howe seeing the Continental fortifications on Dorchester heights and remarking: “These fello...

On 5 Mar 1776, the British military and their supporters inside Boston got their first look at the brand-new Continental fortification on ...

Yesterday I quoted the proceedings of the Dorchester town meeting as printed in the Massachusetts Spy on 13 Jan 1774. They included: ...

On Monday, 3 Jan 1774, as I quoted yesterday , the Boston Gazette reported on men confiscating a supply of tea from a poor Dorchester man...

A natural question after hearing the stories of chests from the Boston Tea Party floating across the bay to the Dorchester shore is whe...

In addition to the various samples of tea leaves I’ve discussed, relics of the Boston Tea Party include supposed remnants of the chests th...