Boston 1775

Yesterday we left Capt. Nathaniel Folsom of New Hampshire and Capt. William Maginnis of New York leading their provincial companies nor...

Yesterday I quoted a long anecdote that John Adams wrote out in 1789 about a discussion between two Massachusetts politicians seventeen ye...

On 8 Feb 1789, John Adams wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush about the creation of Pennsylvania’s wartime constitution, which was too simple and r...

On Thursday, 7 July, I’ll speak on  “The Road to Concord: How Massachusetts Moved Toward War in 1774-75” at the Winslow House in Marshfield...

I’m going to jump ahead of the sestercentennial anniversaries to finish the story of Timothy Ruggles ’s refusal to sign the results of th...

One of the Stamp Act Congress ’s first actions was to elect Timothy Ruggles as the presiding officer. People expected him to be more modera...

One of the first acts of the Stamp Act Congress when it convened in New York in October 1765 was to elect a chairman. Arguably, that w...

On 7 Oct 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened at City Hall in New York (shown here). It was a week behind schedule. As proposed by th...

Two hundred fifty years ago on this date, the Massachusetts General Court took its first step to counter the new Stamp Act . The proces...

I’ve been reviewing the Boston 1775 postings related to the caucus , starting with this one from 2008. That quoted John Adams ’s 1763 de...

At the Early American Crime blog, Anthony Vaver discussed  one of the exciting scandals of Revolutionary Massachusetts: the trial of Bathshe...

Boston selectman Timothy Newell reported two disparate events in his journal entry for 30 Oct 1775: A soldier, one of the Light-horse men w...