Boston 1775

On 29 Apr 1776, one week after writing the letter to John Adams that I quoted yesterday , the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to Samuel Adams...

Earlier this year the Sandwich Enterprise shared a story by Cearra O’Hern about the identification of an artifact at the Pilgrim Hall Muse...

On 13 Apr 1776, the Massachusetts General Court decided that “ Caleb Wheaton and others [well, other men ], who were taken aboard the brig...

As recounted earlier , Gen. George Washington had Mary Wenwood brought his headquarters to answer questions about a ciphered letter she ha...

As described yesterday , on 17 Oct 1775 the Massachusetts General Court decided to summon Dr. Benjamin Church to Watertown to explain why...

As recounted yesterday , on 4 Oct 1775 Gen. George Washington and his fellow generals realized that the Continental Congress ’s articles o...

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

I got interested this week in how printers exited Boston around the start of the war because of a question from a Boston 1775 reader about...

In the fall of 1774 and winter of 1775, Massachusetts attorney general Jonathan Sewall appears to have worked as an advisor to the royal go...

Continuing my speculation about what might have happened if Paul Revere and William Dawes hadn’t alerted Lexington about the regulars ...

In addition to Robert Treat Paine ’s recollection quoted here , the Rev. William Gordon ’s early history of the American Revolution offers a...

Among the items in the London newspapers that arrived in Marblehead in the first week of April 1775 was this: Yesterday a messenger was sen...

Now we come to the part of James Warren ’s 6 Apr 1775 letter to his wife Mercy that I like to quote in talks. James was in Concord for t...

As I quoted yesterday , in his 6 Apr 1775 letter to his wife Mercy , James Warren started by telling her that the latest news from London m...

On 6 Apr 1775, James Warren was in Concord , representing Plymouth in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress . He started writing home to...

One facet of the Boston Tea Party that I’m thinking about this season is how many observers expected quick retaliation of some sort from th...

In the immediate aftermath of the Continental Congress’s vote for independence in early July 1776, almost all the Massachusetts delegation ...

Returning to Dr. Benjamin Church ’s intelligence report dated 24 Sept 1775, he had a couple more things to say about the Continental Army ’...

As documented yesterday , there were a lot of people that Capt. John Manley of the Continental Navy didn’t get along with. One of the mo...