Boston 1775

This is a very busy summer for Plays in Place , which works with historic sites to create new plays built on their past, informed by their a...

Yesterday’s posting mentioned the Rev. Samuel Ashbow , a Baptist minister from the Mohegan community in Connecticut . A lot of informati...

We left John Hill , his wife Elizabeth (?), and his daughter in the Boston jail in February 1777, suspected of “being Enemical to the Sta...

I’ve been hunting for the names of John Hill ’s wife and daughter in 1776. According to the profile of Hill at the Loyalist Directory , hi...

The story of Joseph Wheaton ’s defection from his Loyalist family to the Continental Army was passed down in both branches of the divided ...

In yesterday’s discussion of how the Massachusetts legislature dealt with Loyalists captured on the Elizabeth in April 1776, I left out ...

In 1844, John Slocum published An Authentic Narrative of the Life of Joshua Slocum: Containing a Succinct Account of His Revolutionary Servi...

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

Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. , used a variety of ways to send messages into Boston after the start of the war, including: crossing the siege lin...

Back in July , I discussed how Simeon Potter of Rhode Island had commanded a privateer in 1744 and attacked “Fort d’Oyapoc,” a small Fren...

As the Revolutionary War wore on, the Rev. Edward Bass of Newburyport sent letters to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in For...

The National Council on Public History and the American Association for State and Local History will hold a joint conference in Providence...

On Wednesday, 8 October, Old North Illuminated will present an online talk by Liz Covart, creator and host of the Ben Franklin’s World podc...

Here are a couple more wrinkles in how the Rhode Island legislature commissioned Nathanael Greene to lead its troops in 1775 which I haven...

As discussed yesterday, sometime in the first week of May 1775 the Rhode Island legislature appointed Nathanael Greene to be the brigadier...

In Massachusetts, the lower house of the General Court published annual detailed journals of what it (officially) discussed each day. Th...

Capt. Simeon Potter ’s appeal to Rhode Island ’s top court to overturn the verdict against him for assaulting the Rev. John Usher in 1761 ...

At the civil trial of the Rev. John Usher v. Capt. Simeon Potter in November 1761, eight witnesses from Bristol, Rhode Island , testifie...

When I broke off yesterday , Capt. Simeon Potter of Bristol, Rhode Island , had just hit the Rev. John Usher in the face. And then he di...

Some years back, I mentioned Simeon Potter ’s dispute with John Usher, but I was relying on a secondary source that I’ve come to see as unre...