Boston 1775

The Continental Congress approved its edited text of the Declaration of Independence in the middle of the day on 4 July 1776. The delega...

Twenty years ago today, on 14 May 2006, I posted my first item on this blog . That post was a link to an article I’d written for the magaz...

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence , multiple institutions in greater Boston have collaborated to lay ...

Evacuation Day over, so it’s time to look ahead to another Patriots Day season.  On Saturday, 21 March, the Lexington History Museums will...

John Hancock wasn’t the only person Edmund Quincy wrote to on 22 Apr 1775, just after the start of the Revolutionary War, as quoted yester...

On 22 Apr 1775, three days after the Battle of Lexington and Concord , the Boston merchant and magistrate Edmund Quincy sat down to write ...

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

My ears perked up at this announcement from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts: The Colonial Society is publishing the Papers of John Han...

For more than a week now I’ve traced Henry Howell Williams ’s quest for compensation after the Battle of Chelsea Creek in May 1774 destroye...

On 27 Apr 1861, the Cambridge Chronicle published an article headlined “Revolutionary Incident.” and signed “C.F.O.” The first paragraph ...

On 18 Apr 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress ’s committee of safety met “at Mr. [Ethan] Wetherby’s, at the Black Horse” tavern in w...

Back in 2011 , I quoted Isaiah Thomas ’s own account from October 1775 of how he’d slipped his printing press out of Boston just a couple o...

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...

Esther Quincy married Jonathan Sewall in January 1764, after a courtship of more than four years. She was the daughter of the Boston mer...

Picking up the “what if” thread from yesterday , I turn to this question: What would have happened if neither Paul Revere nor William Dawe...

For the Journal of the American Revolution, Jim Piecuch just reviewed The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America by Kostya Ke...

The Lexington Historical Society is now the Lexington History Museums . As the Sestercentennial of the start of the Revolutionary War ap...

For the first years of the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts continued to operate on the basis of its provincial charter. The General Court...

I’ve been working through my thoughts on a page from the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle , lampooning the Boston Whigs in much the same way...

Most of the “Characters in high Life , some in low ” in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle were derogatory. Even when I’m not sure what...