Boston 1775

One consequence of the Battle of Chelsea Creek is that by the end of May 1775 the provincial troops started to feel pretty powerful. The...

After the exchange of fire over Grape Island on 21 May 1775, both sides of the war claimed to have damaged the other and gotten the best of...

Yesterday we left the people of Weymouth and surrounding towns in a panic as three or four vessels full of British soldiers appeared off t...

In May 1775, the people of Hingham and other towns along the South Shore from Boston weren’t really worrying about protecting livestock on...

Elisha Leavitt (1713–1790) was a blacksmith in Hingham , and a lot more. He also traded in goods, “engaged in navigation ,” and owned part ...

In June 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress commissioned its president, Dr. Joseph Warren , as a major general in the provincial ar...

Yesterday I wrote about Ens. Henry DeBerniere , the young mapmaking army officer. He turned up at Henry and Christian Barnes ’s house in...

Back in 2008, Heritage Auctions sold a letter from Richard Lechmere (1727–1814) commenting on the first month of the Revolutionary War. ...

Mary Beth Norton was one of the first modern historians of the Loyalists , then a pioneer in exploring how the American Revolution affected...

History Camp Boston 2024 is happening this weekend. Hundreds of people have signed up for the full day of presentations by fellow history f...

The Hingham Historical Society is hosting a series of seven lectures from September through April 2025 on the theme of “Revisiting the Amer...

For a presentation this week that didn’t come off, I picked out three extracts from the letters of young teenager Anna Green Winslow to her...

Last weekend I wrote about samples of tea supposedly from the Boston Tea Party preserved in New England museums . On Tuesday I joined P...

Starting this weekend, the Hingham Historical Society will host a series of lectures on the theme of “Native Homelands/Settler Colonialis...

On 4 Dec 1752, Thomas Bourne and Susannah Beal married in Hingham ’s second parish meetinghouse. In 1765 that community was designated as a ...

On 16 July 1775, Abigail Adams had an urgent message to pass on to her husband John , then at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia: O...

On 27 Nov 1770, 250 years ago today , the second trial for the Boston Massacre got under way. It was supposed to start a week earlier, b...

When Bela Lincoln was growing up in Hingham in the 1740s, his father—a wealthy farmer, town official , and militia colonel—insisted on se...

This afternoon the Hingham Historical Society launches its new season of lectures with the theme “Benjamin Lincoln’s World: Stories from...

After my series of postings about Revolutionary conflict in Marlborough , Paula Bagger of the Hingham Historical Society filled me in on s...