Boston 1775

On Friday, 8 October, the Prize Papers Project at Britain’s National Archives will host an international symposium on “The Prize Papers of t...

After his brother Ezra Bushnell fell ill, the inventor David Bushnell asked Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons to send three men who might be abl...

On 2 Feb 1776, David Bushnell journeyed from his workshop in Saybrook, Connecticut , to Lebanon to meet with Gov. Jonathan Trumbull and hi...

On 9–10 Oct 2026, Fort Tionderoga will host a Special 250th Conference on “Arnold’s Defeat or Ultimate Victory?: Perspectives on the 1776 C...

In the newspaper reports on the May 1775 fire on Boston’s Town Dock, Benjamin Davis ’s name appears only as the man who used to use (“impr...

As I wrote back here , the lore in Benjamin Davis ’s family was that his third wife, Alice , left him soon after their marriage in 1768 beca...

Yesterday I wrote about Benjamin and Edward Davis , two brothers who were mercantile partners in Boston until religion and Revolutionary ...

On 29 Apr 1776, one week after writing the letter to John Adams that I quoted yesterday , the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to Samuel Adams...

On 27 Apr 1782, Elizabeth Hill died, “greatly lamented by her Family and Neighbours,” the New-York Gazette reported two days later. In t...

Ashley Bowen was a sailrigger in Marblehead who kept a diary for many years, published in print and online by the Colonial Society of Mass...

Yesterday I shared part of a letter Joseph Wheaton wrote in 1818 about how men from Machias, Maine , captured H.M.S. Margaretta early in ...

Where were Caleb Wheaton, Sr. ’s sons when the Revolutionary War began in April 1775? Wheaton made his home on a substantial riverside plo...

It didn’t take long for New England Patriots to realize that Cdre. John Manley ’s capture of the Elizabeth on 2 April 1776 was a big deal. ...

When Cdre. John Manley captured the brigantine Elizabeth , evacuating from Boston , in April 1776, he saw that he’d hooked an important—and...

Yesterday I started to tell the story of how Jolley Allen evacuated Boston with the British fleet in March 1776—or tried to. Quoting All...

Not everyone who evacuated Boston in March 1776 actually got to Halifax . Back on 11 March, the British-born merchant Jolley Allen rente...

Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson , British military engineer, sailed out of Boston harbor on 25 Mar 1776. Robertson’s ship was an army trans...

Even after the destruction of Castle William , described yesterday, Judge Peter Oliver ’s ship Pacific remained in Boston’s outer harbor, ...

On 10 Mar 1776, the last royal chief justice of Massachusetts, Peter Oliver , boarded a ship called the Pacific , which usually sailed bet...

Lt. Nahum Ward, son of Gen. Artemas Ward , carried Gen. George Washington ’s letter (quoted yesterday) to Josiah Quincy , Esq. (shown here),...