Boston 1775

On Wednesday, 23 June, Zara Anishanslin will speak at the Massachusetts Historical Society on her new book, The Painter’s Fire: A Forgott...

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

When, last September , I left Dr. Samuel Curtis of Marlborough , his wife Lydia and their two babies had all died in December 1774. Lyd...

Abijah Brown was born in Watertown in 1736, and on 24 May 1758, at the age of twenty-one, he married Sarah Stearns of Waltham . Their fi...

Ten years ago, I noted the legend of Lydia Taft , a widow in Uxbridge who was said to have voted in a town meeting in 1756. That stat...

When Lydia (Woods Dexter) Curtis died at the end of 1772, her three surviving sons were all in their late teens , of age to be apprentice...

In March 1769, as I recounted yesterday , Dr. Ebenezer Dexter of Marlborough died. He left a wife, Lydia , and four young sons. By Jul...

Yesterday I introduced the figure of Dr. Ebenezer Dexter , Marlborough ’s leading doctor in the 1760s. On 3 May 1769, however, the Rev...

Ebenezer Dexter was born in 1729, son of the Rev. Samuel Dexter of Dedham . Ebenezer chose to go into medicine , and after marrying Lydia...

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

When I was posting about Henry Barnes ’s conflict with his Marlborough neighbors in the summer of 1770, I looked for the text of the anon...

When we left Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere , they were in a back room of Henry Barnes ’s house in Marlborough , listening a...

On the evening of Wednesday, 1 Mar 1775, Henry Barnes opened the door of his large house in Marlborough (shown above, even larger after ni...

On Sunday, 26 Feb 1775, Capt. William Brown , Ens. Henry DeBerniere , and their bodyservant were in Worcester . They were all soldiers in ...

All right, now that I’ve calmed down from spotting William Benson staying out of the political dispute/gang brawl in Marlborough on 17 J...

We’re looking at two accounts of what happened in Marlborough on the night of 17 July 1770. One, published in the Boston Evening-Post ...

Yesterday I quoted a letter published in the Boston Evening-Post and Boston Gazette in July 1770, alleging that supporters of the Marlb...

Now to get back to events in Marlborough in July 1770. Back here I quoted a letter published in the Boston Gazette on 30 July 1770, d...

When we left the Barnes and Speakman families in Marlborough in the fall of 1770, they appear to have arrived at some sort of truce. H...