Boston 1775

Yesterday I finally noted that Capt. William Browne , who was in the thick of the action in early 1775 as a spy and an army officer , had ...

As I described yesterday , in late 1768 Boston officials became concerned about the army regiments in town playing music on Sundays. Tha...

Back in late March 1770, the Boston town meeting had commissioned Capt. Andrew Gardner to carry its official report on the Boston Massa...

Yesterday I started to describe how the town of Marlborough started to pressure Henry Barnes (shown here, in a portrait by his former s...

Election Day was a holiday in colonial Massachusetts. Not the day that people voted for their General Court representatives—that happene...

John Mein arrived in Boston from Scotland in 1764. He first set up a shop with Robert Sandeman , though he wasn’t a member of the Sandema...

Although the Boston Whigs indicted the Customs officer for the port of Gaspé ; a passing notary; and a couple of bottom-level Customs emp...

Yesterday we bravely accompanied James Murray , a justice of the peace known to be friendly to the royal government, into Faneuil Hall as t...

Back in September, before other Sestercentennial anniversaries came along, I started to explore the 5 Sept 1769 brawl in the British Cof...

As described last week , on 26 Oct 1768 Gov. Francis Bernard told his Council that the royal army had started renting buildings around ...

The longer the 14th Regiment of Foot bunked inside Faneuil Hall and the Town House , the harder Boston’s selectmen found it to get those...

Yesterday I described how Jane Crothers, an eyewitness to the Boston Massacre , married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment later in...

Since there’s no better time to quote carrier verses about the Stamp Act than now, the sestercentennial of the period when that law rem...

Tonight there will be a reenactment of the Boston Massacre , taking place on the actual site of the shooting on 5 Mar 1770. As preparation,...

For Liberty is an ironic title for Timothy Decker’s picture book about the Boston Massacre , published last year by Calkins Creek. It portr...