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...

In 2019 Ric Detwiller published an excellent article at the Journal of the American Revolution about a Frenchman recruited as a provincial...

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...

The Journal of the American Revolution has announced its 2025 Book of the Year Award . The winner is The American Revolution and the Fate...

Whenever I recount a story at length, I like to add some new sources, connections, or interpretations. I don’t want to just repeat what othe...

According to the Musée des Acadiens des Pubnicos website , Basile Boudrot was born in 1739 in Port Royal, which the British had renamed as A...

Through Craig Bruce Smith I learned that the coin to be tossed at the start of this year’s Super Bowl has a Revolutionary pedigree. It’s a...

Another document related to the Boston Massacre in the collections of the Boston Public Library is catalogued as “Examination and answers o...

Even as Col. Henry Knox was moving cannon south from Lake Champlain, Gen. Richard Montgomery was besieging Québec . The American Revolu...

Back in July , I discussed how Simeon Potter of Rhode Island had commanded a privateer in 1744 and attacked “Fort d’Oyapoc,” a small Fren...

The Benjamin Franklin House in London has issued a call for papers for a conference on “Remember the ladies”: Women and Revolution, to be h...

Yesterday I alluded to a Professor Buzzkill podcast as my spur to look for the statement “We must hang together or separately” in a letter...

Here’s another transcribed letter from the Papers of John Hancock . Thomas Cushing , having been replaced as a Massachusetts delegate to t...

The Battle of Lake George on 8 Sept 1755 probably involved fewer than 3,500 men, a little more on the British side than the French . Each c...

I’ve been quoting Capt. Nathaniel Folsom ’s account of his New Hampshire troops’ fight against a French and Indian force south of Lake G...

Yesterday we left Capt. Nathaniel Folsom of New Hampshire and Capt. William Maginnis of New York leading their provincial companies nor...

Nathaniel Folsom (1726-1790) came from an old and prominent New Hampshire family. He was a merchant and owner of a sawmill and shipyard. ...

Rhode Island actually began its military build-up back in December 1774, as detailed in a letter from former governor Samuel Ward that I q...

As soon as the siege of Boston ended, the Massachusetts government moved to fortify Noddle’s Island and other spots in Boston harbor. On...

I recently spoke in the Acton 250 series of talks on the start of the Revolutionary War. My topic was “The Spies of 1775,” reeling off s...