Boston 1775

Capt. Simeon Potter ’s appeal to Rhode Island ’s top court to overturn the verdict against him for assaulting the Rev. John Usher in 1761 ...

As soon as he heard about the shooting at Lexington , James Warren , delegate from Plymouth to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress , pass...

Just above its report on the Royal Navy store ship that caught fire in Boston harbor on 29 May 1773 ( quoted yesterday ), Richard Draper ’s...

Before returning to Dr. John Newman , I’ll share some other sources on the treatment of cancers in New England on the eve of the Revolution...

On the weekend of 9–11 June, the Fort Plain Museum will host its annual Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley . This year’s se...

Prof. Carl Robert Keyes, a historian of print culture and advertising at Assumption University, alerted me to a free database of the Maryla...

In my assessment of Benjamin Galloway ’s recollection of George Washington threatening to lead “the Virginia riflemen” against British troo...

Benjamin Galloway was indeed at Mount Vernon on 1–5 January 1773, much as he described decades later. The evidence for that is George Wash...

Yesterday I quoted a letter that appeared in the Washington Republican newspaper in September 1822, describing a conversation at Mount Ver...

Last month I addressed the idea that George Washington attended fireworks in celebration of the second anniversary of the Gaspee attack ...

As long as I’m virtually hanging out in Rhode Island , I’ll share some new links about the Gaspee affair . Two hundred and fifty years ag...

One of the arguments for the importance of the Gaspee incident in the American Revolution is that George Washington attended fireworks in...

On the evening of 9 June 1772, 250 years ago this week, a small flotilla of longboats set off from points near Providence, Rhode Island . ...

I hadn’t expected to write a week of postings about the Gaspee affair , even with its sestercentennial coming up next month. But I got int...

We can see the logic of the London government’s decision to try people suspected of attacking H.M.S. Gaspee on 10 June 1772 in Britain, n...

On 31 Dec 1772, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy , Isaiah Thomas , had a scoop. Setting type so hastily that he datelined the item “T...

Before the Revolution, messages between the British secretary of state in London and royal governors were deemed confidential. Govs. Franci...

Though the first report about the London government’s plan for a special commission to investigate the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee was optimist...