Boston 1775

In preparation for tomorrow’s talk about Benjamin Thompson ’s early years, I’ve been reviewing the evidence of his affair with Mary (Dill) T...

In January 1764 the Massachusetts General Court passed a law allowing part of the town of Newbury to split off as the new town of Newbury...

John Andrews was another merchant who left a lively record of the discussions in Boston in spring 1774 as the business community grappled w...

Aside from having several children , what did Sylvanus Lowell do after being so badly injured at the Marblehead smallpox hospital in 17...

On Wednesday, 25 October, the city of Boston’s Archaeology Program will open its new Mary C. Beaudry Community Archaeology Center to the pu...

On 29 Aug 1775 , Gen. George Washington told Richard Henry Lee , “I have at this time one Colo., one Major, one Captn, & two Subalter...

On 31 July 1770, Faneuil Hall hosted another meeting of “The Trade and Inhabitants of the Town of Boston.” The group of people invited to...

Last month Alexander Cain laid out some new research about how Newburyport and nearby towns worked quickly at the start of the Revolutiona...

Last year Alex Cain shared a detailed profile of Jonathan Plummer, Jr., a Revolutionary War veteran celebrated as “poet laureate to Lord Ti...

I’m seeking to distinguish the two men named Robert Newman who lived in the North End and died two years apart in 1804 and 1806. Accord...

On 13 Mar 1806, the Independent Chronicle of Boston ran this death notice: Mr. Robert Newman, aged 51. His funeral will be from his lat...

An item one could buy at the Sign of the Brazen Head in 1759, but which Mary Jackson didn’t list in her advertising, was a lottery ticket....

In the Boston newspapers printed on Thursday, 15 Sept 1735, we can watch the maritime town struggle to gather and digest news of a calami...

As I described yesterday , Col. Samuel Gerrish of Newbury was the first infantry officer to receive a Massachusetts commission in May 1775...

Last month I wrote about how the Massachusetts Provincial Congress finally started commissioning infantry officers for its army (as oppo...

The Massachusetts Historical Review is the Massachusetts Historical Society’s annual journal. It usually contains about four scholarly pape...

Along with future physician Isaac Rand (profiled yesterday ), Prof. John Winthrop took a young man named Samuel Williams (1743-1817) up...

The records of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress ’s Committee of Safety for 21 June 1775 contain this intriguing resolution: That Joseph...

In his 1845 history of Newbury and Newburyport , Joshua Coffin described an event he dated to 15 Nov 1774: One Holland Shaw, having been de...

In the pre-Revolutionary decades, New Englanders (and, Prof. Brendan McConville has told me, folks in some parts of New Jersey) celebrated ...