Grand Lodge’s Boston Tea Party 250th Symposium, 16 Dec.

On Saturday, 16 December, I’ll be one of the speakers at the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts’s “Boston Tea Party 250th Symposium.”

Back on 16 Dec 1773, the St. Andrew’s Lodge was scheduled to have a regular meeting at its headquarters, the Green Dragon Tavern. Its records say: “Lodge closed on account of the few members in attendance, until to-morrow evening.”

With Dr. Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, and several other steady members were most likely busy at Old South Meeting House or Griffin’s Wharf that night.

Freemasonry in Massachusetts has evolved since then, but one of its abiding traditions is a certain possessiveness about the Tea Party. Therefore, it’s partnered with the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation to observe its Sestercentennial in multiple ways.

On Friday, 15 December, there will be a historic tavern tour in Boston, created in collaboration with Revolution 250. On Sunday, 17 December, at 10:00 A.M., Grand Chaplains will lead a non-denominational ecumenical service at the Grand Lodge in Boston. Both of those events are open to the public.

The symposium will take place on 16 December, the actual anniversary of the Tea Party. Scheduled to run from 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., with a break for lunch, this event will also be free and open to the public.

The lineup of speakers are:

• Brooke Barbier, “Radicalizing John Hancock: The Tea Act and the Boston Tea Party”
• R.W. Walter Hunt, “Freemasonry Before the Revolution”
• Boston-Lafayette Lodge of Perfection performing “Treason to the Crown”
• Jayne Triber, “Brother Revere: How Freemasonry Shaped Paul Revere’s Revolutionary Role”
• William M. Fowler, Jr., “A Fireside Chat”
• J. L. Bell, “How Bostonians Learned to Talk about the Destruction of the Tea”
• James R. Fichter, “Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776”
• Benjamin L. Carp, “Teapot in a Tempest: The Boston Tea Party of 1773”

The symposium is scheduled to allow people to go from the Grand Lodge to Old South Meeting House and/or the Harborwalk near the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum to see the reenactments that evening.

This symposium is free and open to the public. During the day people can also take guided tours of the Grand Lodge, with glimpses of some of its rare artifacts.

My First Boston Tea Party Sestercentennial Symposium

On Saturday, 15 December, I’ll be one of the speakers participating in Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours’ “Boston Tea Party Symposium.”

This isn’t a standalone event but part of a four-day tour of Revolutionary Boston timed to coincide with the Sestercentennial of the Tea Party. The tour includes visits to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the reenactments at the Old South Meeting House and Boston Tea Party Ships.

Among the historians scheduled to talk to tour participants on Saturday and Sunday are:

• Rick Beyer, host, creator of Lexington’s “First Shot!: The Day the Revolution Began” movie and author of Rivals Unto Death, about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
• Edward G. Lengel, host, Chief Historian at the National Medal of Honor Museum. While overseeing the George Washington Papers, Lengel wrote Inventing George Washington, General George Washington: A Military Life, This Glorious Struggle, and other fine books.
• Robert J. Allison, professor at Suffolk University and author of The Boston Tea Party, among other reviews of Boston history.
• Benjamin L. Carp, professor at Brooklyn College and author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America and most recently The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution.
• Christopher Sherwood Davis, speech and accent coach for historical performers, such as those on the recreated tea ships, and Tea Party researcher who spoke at History Camp Boston 2023 and started the @TeaCrisis1773 feed.
• Kristin Harris, research coordinator at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum for its Descendent and Grave Marker Program.
• J. L. Bell, proprietor of this Boston 1775 blog and author of The Road to Concord.

I’ll speak on Saturday about why Boston, Massachusetts, and New England were so troublesome for the British imperial government in the 1760s and 1770s.

Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours started by offering North Americans trips to the World War II battlefields of Europe. It then expanded a bit to other periods and conflicts. Rick Beyer has led a ten-day tour from Boston to Québec and a nine-day tour from Charleston to Yorktown, for instance.

Four days in Boston is therefore on the low end of the company’s offerings. Nonetheless, this event is designed for people coming from out of town and seeking hotel accommodations, meals, and guides. It’s not just a series of talks with a boxed lunch, and the price of $1,790 reflects that model.

The Tea Party Sestercentennial, 15–16 Dec.

This year will see the 250th anniversary, or Sestercentennial, of the Boston Tea Party.

As the most photogenic of the pre-war Revolutionary events, the destruction of the taxable tea has been a very big deal for about two centuries of those 250 years. Before that, it appears, the first rule of the Tea Party was that you didn’t talk about the Tea Party.

This December, we’ll be talking a lot about the Tea Party.

On Friday, 15 December, Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting House will host its recreated “Meeting of the Body of the People,” representing the gatherings in that same space right up until the destruction of the tea began.

Like last year, I’ll be participating as the voice of the narrator booming from the gallery. The real stars will be the people portraying Samuel Phillips Savage, Samuel Adams, Dr. Thomas Young, Francis Rotch, and such observers as Phillis Wheatley, including some of the area’s top reenactors and museum professionals.

Tickets for this event are $40 for an adult, with discounts for seniors, teens, children, and Revolutionary Spaces members. Even though Old South can squeeze in thousands, this will probably sell out. The event starts at 6:15 P.M. on Friday, and there will be no follow-up on the waterfront that night.

On Saturday, 16 December, the exact anniversary date, there will be a program at Faneuil Hall titled “Act One: Faneuil Hall & The Boston Tea Party, A Protest in Principle: A Retrospective on Revolution.” That’s scheduled to take place from 4:00 to 5:30 P.M.

To be frank, I’m not sure what this event will be, but it doesn’t matter since all seats inside Faneuil Hall have already sold out. The program will be shown on screens outside the hall for the general public.

Then that evening’s action will move to the Old South Meeting House, where we’ll do another “Meeting of the Body of the People.” This event has also sold out, which is why Revolutionary Spaces and its volunteers just added the performance on Friday the 15th.

Outside on the steps at Franklin and Washington Streets, near Old South, reenactors will portray citizens of colonial Boston discussing the politics of the day. This “Patriots and Loyalists” program will run from 6:00 to 7:00 P.M., free and open to the public.

At 7:30 P.M., the crowd from Old South and the area around it are invited to follow the fifes and drums to the waterfront. This walk is longer than back in 1773 since the land has been extended. The event description for “Huzzah for Griffin’s Wharf” says there will be a sight of British soldiers, though in 1773 all the regulars were on Castle Island.

Finally, at around 8:00 P.M. spectators can line the Harborwalk near the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum to watch from across the water as men storm aboard the Beaver and Eleanor to effect the “Destruction of the Tea,” loose leaves donated by people all over the country. There will be some bleacher seating, but the audience is expected to number in the thousands, so most folks will stand.

As in 1773, this action is expected to be disciplined and quick, so the whole event should be over before 9:00 P.M.

“William Dawes” and Other History Camp Boston Videos to Watch

History Camp Boston has now posted videos from its conference at Suffolk University Law School early last month.

That means you can see me talk about “William Dawes Before and After His Ride” (a/k/a “William Dawes’s Secret”).

One of the details I noticed while updating my notes for this talk is the timing of this item from the Boston Gazette published on Monday, 9 May 1768:

Last Tuesday was married, Mr. William Dawes, Jun. to Mrs. Mehitable May, both of this Town, and Yesterday made a handsome Appearance, dress’d wholly in the Manufactures of this Country, wherein he did Honor to himself, and merits the Respect of the Province, agreeable to their unanimous Vote passed the last session…

I hadn’t processed before that Dawes dressed up in his new suit not on his wedding day but on the first Sunday after his wedding, when he and Mehitable went to their church, Old South, for the first time as a married couple.

Weddings were usually small family affairs in colonial New England, but now I’m curious if there are other examples of the first Sunday after a wedding being the public.

History Camp Boston included many more talks about eighteenth-century and Revolutionary topics, so there are plenty of videos to sample, on topics like the Salem witch trials, James Otis, the Tea Party, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, John Hancock, and more. And of course some sessions considered other periods of history as well.

Some of these videos, including mine, were produced with a grant from the Americana Corner Foundation.

History Camp Boston Scholarships Available

History Camp Boston will take place on Saturday, 12 August, in the Suffolk University Law School building, close to the Park Street T stop.

I’ll be speaking at that event about William Dawes, Jr., and his contributions to the American Revolution beyond that truncated ride on 18-19 Apr 1775.

Many other folks have also signed up to give talks at History Camp Boston on other aspects of the American Revolution, or on other aspects of history as a whole. There are authors, professors, living historians, fiction writers, and more, united by a common interest in historical research. You can see the list of scheduled presentations here.

History Camp Boston attendees can also sign up for one of two expert tours of Salem the next day, at an extra cost.

This year, thanks to the generosity of a couple of donors, there are also a few student scholarships available. People aged 15 to 25 can apply for free registration for the Saturday event, including lunch.

That means college students interested in history can attend that Saturday without dipping into the money they’re saving over the summer. Or a high-school student and parent might attend together for the price of one registration.

The scholarship application process isn’t burdensome—just an expression of interest in History Camp Boston and history, and a commitment to attend so the opportunity isn’t kept away from another student who wants it. There are a limited number of slots, and they’ll be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. The goal is to ensure that any student of history who hopes to enjoy this unique event can.

History Camp Boston 2023, 12–13 Aug.

On Saturday, 20 May, I’ll speak at History Camp Valley Forge. There’s still time for folks in the greater Philadelphia area to sign up for that event.

Closer to home, History Camp Boston 2023 will take place on Saturday, 12 August, once again in the Suffolk University Law School Building at 120 Tremont Street.

I’ve participated in every History Camp in the Boston area since the first in 2014. It’s a fun way to learn, share knowledge, hear about new ideas, and enjoy the company of other people as passionate about history as you are.

For 2023 I’m offering this talk:

William Dawes, Before and After His Ride

William Dawes, Jr., is known today only as the other rider who carried news of the British army march to Lexington in April 1775. In fact, like his famous colleague Paul Revere, Dawes was active throughout Massachusetts’s Revolution. Before April 1775 he was a militia organizer, a political fashion icon, and even an arms smuggler whose secret mission for the Patriots’ Committee of Safety helped bring on the same march to Concord he helped to warn about. During the war he took on responsibilities administering and supplying the state’s armed forces. And afterwards he was active in reestablishing one of Boston’s oldest military institutions. Hear all about one of the hands-on figures who made the Revolution happen.

Scrolling through the list of planned presentations, I see people speaking about the Stamp Act, witch trials and their records, the 1774 uprising in western Massachusetts, John Hancock, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, tea etiquette, and designing a local program to honor Revolutionary War veterans. Not to mention topics from other periods of the American past.

And there could be more. The hallmark of History Camp is that anyone can propose presentations or workshops until the schedule fills up. The proposal deadline is 10 June, so you still have more than a month to design a talk, panel discussion, hands-on activity, or other session.

On the Sunday after History Camp Boston, 13 August, people can sign up for one of three special tours at an additional cost:

• The Maritime History of Boston and Salem, including ferry rides to Salem and back
• The Witch Trials: Salem Village and Salem Towne, including bus transportation to and from Salem and admission to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead
• Centuries of the Soldier and the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, including a bus to and from the museum and admission

Registration for History Camp Boston costs $80, with additional charges for lunch, a T-shirt, and/or a table to sell books and other wares. You can find all the information starting here.

“Henry Knox Symposium” in Springfield, 6 May

On Saturday, 6 May, Springfield Armory National Historic Site and the Friends of Springfield Armory will host a “Henry Knox Symposium” looking at the bookseller, the artillery officer, the secretary of war.

When the Revolutionary War began, Henry Knox was still in his early twenties and married to the daughter of Massachusetts’s royal secretary. Within a couple of years he was one of Gen. George Washington’s closest colleagues, helping to lead the Continental Army and then the new nation.

Perhaps most importantly, Knox had a quality that’s hard to nail down on paper: lots of people just thought he was fun to be around.

Here’s the lineup of speakers and topics, basically in chronological order:

• J. L. Bell [that’s me], “Henry Knox, Loyalist?”
• Nathan D. Wells, formerly Quincy College, “Henry Knox: A Flawed Brilliant Amateur, A Microcosm of the American Struggle for Independence”
• Matthew Keagle, Curator, Fort Ticonderoga, “Knox Alone?”
• William F. Sheehan, Historical Services Branch, Massachusetts Military Division, “Henry Knox’s Fortnight in Albany: The Knox Expedition Finds Its Footing”
• Maria G. Cole, Boston National Historical Park, “Henry Knox and the Siege of Boston”
• Richard Colton, Springfield Armory (retired), “Henry Knox and the Establishment of ‘The American Foundry’ at Springfield Arsenal, Massachusetts, 1776–1800: Assuring Independence”
• Roger Johnson, Friends of the Springfield Armory, “Henry Knox and the Constitutional Convention: The Knox/Washington Letters”

This event will take place from 9:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. Registration is free, but organizers strongly recommend attendees purchase the box lunch for $12 (that’s the “ticket” on Eventbrite) or bring their own meal. There are limited eating options nearby, and the whole point of a symposium is supposed to be spending time talking with other people over food instead of driving around, right?

The “Henry Knox Symposium” will take place on the 7th floor of Scibelli Hall, Bldg 2, at Springfield Technical Community College, One Armory Square, in Springfield.

“General Gage and the Guns” Tonight

Tonight, April 12, I’ll deliver an online talk for the Army Heritage Center Foundation in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on “General Gage and the Guns of the Boston Train.”

This is one of several talks I’ve developed from The Road to Concord. This one looks at events through Gen. Thomas Gage’s eyes, examining how he tried to stymie the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s effort to build a military force.

Here’s Gage reporting to Viscount Barrington, the longtime British secretary of war, on 25 Sept 1774:

I write to your Lordship by a private Ship fearing the Post to New York which must convey my Letters from hence for the Packet not quite safe, tho’ it has not yet been stopped; but People have been so questioned, and impeded on the Road, there is no knowing how soon the Post may be examined, for there seems no Respect for any Thing.

Affairs here are worse that even in the Time of the Stamp-Act, I don’t mean in Boston, for throughout the Country. The New England Provinces, except part of New Hampshire, are I may say in Arms, and the Question is now not whether you shall quell Disturbances in Boston, but whether those Provinces shall be conquered, and I find it is the General Resolution of all the Continent to support the Massachusett’s Bay in their Opposition to the late Acts. From Appearances no People are more determined for a Civil War, the whole Country from hence to New York armed, training and providing Military Stores.

Every Man supposed averse to their Measures so molest’d & oppressed, that if he can get out of the Country, which is not an easy Matter, he takes Shelter in Boston.

Clearly, Gen. Gage warned his superiors that in Massachusetts the Crown government was facing opposition that was widespread, armed, and militant. He didn’t even trust the royal mail. Neighboring colonies were joining the rebels. He was losing potential allies in the countryside as they sought safety in Boston.

When Gage’s messages reached London, however, Lord North and his ministers viewed them as alarmist. They didn’t accept his reports as factual. They lost faith in him.

Ironically, some later historians have judged Gage to be too cautious. He was indeed reluctant to act until the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, told him he had to—but that was in large part because he knew how strong his opponents could be. In the fall of 1774 and winter of 1775, Gage was cautious because the situation warranted it.

Exploring the Story of Samuel Dyer

This week I have two articles up on the Journal of the American Revolution:

• “The Return of Samuel Dyer: An Attempted Assassination in Revolutionary Boston”
• “The Secrets of Samuel Dyer”

These are two parts of the same research project. To borrow the summary from the second article:

in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army of holding him captive, interrogating him about the Boston Tea Party, and shipping him off to London in irons. Unable to file a lawsuit for damages, Dyer attacked two army officers on the town’s main street, cutting one and nearly shooting another—the first gunshot aimed at royal authorities in Boston in the whole Revolution. Those actions alarmed both sides of the political divide, and Dyer was soon locked up in the Boston jail. Everyone seemed to agree the man was insane.

But there was a lot more going on than Bostonians could see. And Dyer resurfaced in an unexpected way.

Originally I wrote up this story for The Road to Concord, but it has only a passing connection to that book’s focus, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s cannon. Still, the events involved many of the same players and further raised tensions in October 1774. Dyer’s attack could even have started the war in a way quite different from how we remember it.

To spread the word about this project, I’ll do a couple of audio interviews in the next few days.

On the morning of Friday, 7 April, starting at 10:00 A.M., I’ll be Jimmy Mack’s guest on the Dave Nemo show on Sirius XM, discussing the months leading up to April 1775. This will be part of the show’s “Revolution Road” segment featuring writers from the Journal of the American Revolution.

On Sunday, I’ll discuss these articles with Brady Crytzer for the Dispatches podcast. That episode will drop later this month.

“Frenchmen at the Siege of Boston,” 23 Mar.

On Thursday, 23 March, I’ll speak at the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on the topic “Frenchmen at the Siege of Boston.”

This is the site’s annual Evacuation Day lecture, presented in partnership with the Friends of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters. It honors the successful end of the siege of Boston, which Gen. George Washington oversaw from that Cambridge mansion.

Our description of this talk says:

Histories of the French government’s support for the American Revolution usually begin with Lafayette, the secret supply chain organized by Beaumarchais, and the formal alliance in 1778.

But French gentlemen were actually at the siege of Boston in 1775—observing the armies, meeting Gen. George Washington at his headquarters, and even briefly overseeing the provincial artillery force. Washington and his generals were also trying to win over the francophone subjects of Canada.

In this talk, author J. L. Bell will explore the first secret and tentative steps toward French-American friendship in Cambridge in 1775.

I’ll share some of my research about French noblemen and merchants who visited Massachusetts in 1775. I’ll also rely on Rick Detwiller’s excellent research about two more men who went beyond visiting to participate in the siege itself. As shown above, they left their mark on the landscape, or at least on Henry Pelham’s map of Boston: a fortified site labeled “French redoubt.”

I’ll speak in the Longfellow carriage house. Seating is limited, so please reserve seats through this link. This will also be our first attempt at livestreaming a talk through the site’s YouTube page.

Bob Thompson and Revolutionary Roads on History Author Talk, 14 Mar.

On Tuesday, 14 March, History Author Talks will host Bob Thompson answering questions about his new book, Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent...and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong.

That online event starts at 7:00 P.M. Register here.

Revolutionary Roads is a road trip to scores of historical sites important in America’s move toward independence to explore how they’re being remembered today as we move toward the Sestercentennial. The publisher calls it “In the ride-along tradition of Sarah Vowell, Tony Horwitz and Bill Bryson.”

In the Berkshire Eagle Bill Everhart writes:

Readers soured on history by leaden textbooks will appreciate Thompson’s breezy style and dry humor. He is wonderfully sardonic, if not caustic, about the foibles and blunders of the Great Men on both sides whose actions and — quite often — inactions determined the course of the war and of history.

But this book doesn’t stop in 1783 with the end of the war. Thompson also explores how people are keeping its stories alive today. And that’s how I come in. Literally.

On page 11 Thompson writes:

The first thing one notices about the proprietor of Boston 1775—a blog with the tagline “History, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts”—is the pair of nineteenth-century sideburns that threaten to rendezvous under his chin.

Otherwise, he looks like a well-groomed graduate student: jeans, blue-and-white checked shirt, thick dark hair, and a youthful face that made me surprised to hear he was forty-nine when I met him.

Not only is that accurate, but it’s prescient. As of December, when I had to recover from Covid-19, the sideburns I grew when I was sixteen years old have indeed met in a full beard.

This passage goes on to lay out the origin story of my avocation as a writer of Revolutionary history and Boston 1775. So if you’re interested in that, along with conversations with other Revolutionary investigators and lots of observations about the past and present, check out Revolutionary Roads by Bob Thompson.

History Camp Boston 2023—Time to Propose Your Presentation!

History Camp Boston 2023 has been scheduled for Saturday, 12 August, at Suffolk University.

Now’s the time to submit proposals for presentations. Slots get filled in as qualifying presentations arrive, so while the final submission deadline is 12 June it’s likely that all the spaces will be reserved before then.

If, therefore, you have a historical topic you want to share with fellow history buffs, public historians, reenactors, educators, students, and others in the field, visit History Camp’s call for presentations page. That explains the process in great detail and what organizers need to hear from you before they can assign a slot.

When I say spaces might fill up early, I’m thinking about the first History Camp Valley Forge, which will take place on Saturday, 20 May. The announced final deadline for presentations was 10 April. However, all the slots were filled by 15 February, or almost two months ahead of time!

Check out the current lineup on the History Camp Valley Forge webpage.

Among those scheduled sessions is mine:

“A Republic, If You Can Keep It”: Franklin’s Warning and How It’s Been Misused

According to an oft-retold anecdote, at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what the result was. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.” This talk looks at the evidence for that exchange, as recorded by another convention delegate in Philadelphia. It then traces how that anecdote has been distorted in the retelling, starting with that delegate’s own newspaper essays in the early republic and blossoming in the twentieth century. As a result, we have lost sight of the circumstances of the conversation, the accomplished woman Franklin spoke with, and the real political concern they shared.

Yes, in May I’m taking Boston 1775 on the road to Pennsylvania.

The Minutemen and Robert A. Gross Panel, 26 Feb.

On the afternoon of Sunday, 26 February, I’ll be part of the Friends of Minute Man Park’s 2023 Winter Lecture, “Minutemen Revisited: Rethinking Concord’s Role in the Revolution. A Conversation with Robert Gross and Friends.”

The event description says:

The Minutemen and Their World, first published during the Bicentennial year of 1776, offered a novel view of Concord’s path to Revolution. The book, which won the Bancroft Prize, showed that the townspeople took a moderate stance on British taxes and enforcement measures until the summer of 1774; only when the royal government threatened to seize the right of local self-government did the community rise up and mobilize for war. The reasons why were deeply rooted in the social history of the town.

Does this interpretation still hold up? In 2022, the author published a revised and expanded edition of The Minutemen and views Concord more broadly in relation to its neighboring towns, introduces new details on the tense atmosphere in the run-up to April 19, 1775, and adds fresh material about Concord’s role as a center for incarcerating Loyalist and British prisoners of war. In this talk, he will discuss the additions and changes of The Minutemen in conversation with leading American Revolution experts.

Those folks posing questions to Bob Gross will be:

• Joel Bohy, expert in militaria at Bruneau & Co., frequent appraiser on Antiques Roadshow, and contributor to the Concord Museum’s April 19 exhibits.
• Jim Hollister, lead interpreter at Minute Man National Historical Park, organizer of many reenactments and historical demonstrations, and recent recipient of the Robert Gross Award for service to Concord history.
• myself. 

But the real star of this event is of course Robert A. Gross, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. In addition to The Minutemen and Their World, he wrote a sequel The Transcendentalists and Their World (2021), which won the most recent Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize.

Bob Gross is a former assistant editor of Newsweek and has written for such periodicals as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, the Boston Globe and New York Times, The American Scholar, The New England Quarterly, Raritan, and The Yale Review. For several years he was the book review editor of the William & Mary Quarterly. After working at various universities, for the past several years he has lived in Concord.

This is an online panel discussion scheduled to start at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, 26 February, and to run about ninety minutes with questions. It’s free, but viewers must register through this link.

This program is co-sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man and Minute Man National Historical Park. It’s supported in part by a grant from the Concord Cultural Council, which in turn is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Speaking of William Molineux

The Patriot leader William Molineux died unexpectedly on 22 Oct 1774. That news came as the long political confrontation between Boston and royal officials was turning into a military confrontation between Massachusetts and the Crown.

Molineux had been one of the most visible of the Boston Whigs since the non-importation movement. He was always at the front of the crowd during outdoor protests, pushing for harder responses in meetings. In 1774 alone Molineux:

• was defying a judicial order to serve on a jury as a protest against the judges accepting salaries from the tea tariff.
• led Bostonians in booing the Customs Commissioners at a banquet in May. 
• addressed the crowd in Cambridge during the Powder Alarm in September.
• helped to collect cannon for the resistance in October. 

And then Molineux was dead. His sudden disappearance from the scene raised tensions and sparked rumors. It also caused his memory to fade since he wasn’t around for the Revolutionary War or the new federal government.

For The Road to Concord I wrote a long chapter about Molineux leading up to his death, what I thought would be the most detailed study of him yet published. And then, because the manuscript was too long, I cut that chapter and another that weren’t tightly tied to the main narrative about stolen cannon.

Last month Bob Allison and Jonathan Lane of Revolution 250 invited me to come onto the coalition’s podcast. They suggested I might have something to say about Molineux. Well, I had a lot to say about Molineux!

You can listen to that conversation through Buzzsprout and other major podcast platforms.

[I’ve provided a link to the audio podcast. If you watch the video on YouTube or Facebook, it’s not just that that camera performs poorly in dim light. Right now I really do have a beard.]

Flagging the “Object of History” Podcast

The latest episode of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s podcast, The Object of History, is titled “Who Were the Bucks of America?”

The description says:

In this episode, we closely examine one of the most noteworthy items in the MHS collection: the Bucks of America flag. The flag is one of the only remaining artifacts of the Bucks of America, an African American militia based in Boston during the Revolutionary era. There is very little known about the unit with no official military record of their service. We discuss the few pieces of evidence that we have including the flag presented by Governor John Hancock after the end of the Revolutionary War.

The guests are Ben Remillard from the University of New Hampshire and myself.

I haven’t listened yet. Last month I talked with Cassandra Cloutier for an hour, dumping all my thoughts and theories about the Bucks of America and George Middleton on her—the Dr. James Lloyd connection, the false link to the Battle of Groton Heights, the evidence that he and Lewis Glapion both had wives and children when they owned a house together. Only the best and most relevant pronouncements made this thirty-five-minute episode, I presume.

The first person with whom I shared ideas about the Bucks of America flag, several years ago, was curator Anne Bentley. So I’m taking this opportunity to note that the New England Museum Association just gave Bentley one of its 2022 Awards for Excellence. The citation says:

Her almost 50 years of service to the organization highlights her dedication and passion for Art and artifacts. She has had the privilege to work on such notable collections as the Adams and Winthrop families, her final lab project was Thomas Jefferson’s manuscript “Notes on the State of Virginia.” As curator of the art and artifact collection and acting registrar from 1998 through 2021, she enjoyed collaborating with curators and registrars in New England and beyond. . . .

“Retiring” at the end of 2021, Anne now works a three-day week, recataloging artifacts and numismatics and assisting the reading room staff in making these materials available to researchers.

Talking about Tea

Last weekend I wrote about samples of tea supposedly from the Boston Tea Party preserved in New England museums.

On Tuesday I joined Prof. Robert Allison and Jonathan Lane of the Revolution 250 podcast to talk about those relics, as well as other pieces of Tea Party history and lore.

Was John Hancock really on the docks that night? Who was the man caught trying to sneak away some of the tea (later fictionalized as Dove in Johnny Tremain)? Who came up with the name “Boston Tea Party”? We talked about those questions and many more. Find that podcast episode here.

We also talked (on microphone and off) about some Tea Party relics that hadn’t made my postings, mostly because I hadn’t heard of them yet. Here’s another local purported sample of tea.

The Hingham Historical Society’s Old Ordinary museum is the present repository of loose leaves and a legend, as this blog post explains:

An antique tea caddy, donated to the Society by Mary Henrietta Gibson Hersey, the widow of Alfred Henry Hersey, shortly before her death in 1941, came with a small quantity of loose tea and a note capturing the history of the tea — as provided to the family by an Elizabeth Hersey (unclear which, of a number of Elizabeth’s in the family, this would have been):

“Tea from one of the vessels whose cargo was thrown overboard in Boston harbor by the Patriots at the beginning of the Revolution, December 16, 1773.”

No claim about who collected that tea, so nothing to check.

Finally, here’s another reminder that Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting-House is hosting a recreation of the “Meeting of the People” mass protests in November and December 1773, which led up to the destruction of the tea. That will start Friday, 16 December, at 6:30 P.M. You can purchase tickets here.

Meeting of the Body of the People in Old South, 16 Dec.

Revolutionary Spaces is relaunching its Boston Tea Party reenactment this year, in anticipation of 2023’s Sestercentennial event. Today is the last day to buy tickets at the early discount.

Old South Meeting House was the site of the big public protest meetings that started in November 1773 and led up to the destruction of the tea.

On Friday, 16 December, that extended debate over what to do about the taxed tea will be recreated in the same space where thousands of Bostonians gathered in 1773. The museum’s announcement says:

Join Revolutionary Spaces at Old South Meeting House for the return of the reenactment of the Meeting of the Body of the People! Meet iconic Bostonians whose vigorous debate led to the destruction of tea in 1773, as well as other personalities whose contributions shaped colonial Boston. Experience this moment in time in the room where it happened!

Doors open at 5:00 PM for a pop-up tea shop at Old South’s museum store. Come early and meet the Ladies of Boston and other colonial characters you might recognize to learn about what life was like leading up to the Revolution. Ticket holders can enjoy tastes of Revolutionary Spaces’ tea and snag their own box for a special price. Exclusive tea tasting hosted by Revolutionary Spaces’ member community and The Tea Can Company!

In special appreciation of our member community, all Revolutionary Spaces members will also receive one complimentary barrel mug and SAVE 40% off regular retail prices on all tea sold in the museum store during the night of the event.

The meeting reenactment is scheduled to start at 6:30 P.M. I might have something to do with launching it; after several years of serving as narrator for the Boston Massacre reenactments, I’ve been invited to move up three years and be the unseen voice of the Tea Party meetings.

Tickets to the “Meeting of the Body of the People” include access to both of Revolutionary Spaces’ sites, the Old State House and Old South Meeting House, from Friday, 16 December, through Sunday, 18 December.

The early prices are $24 for adults, $20 for people aged 65 and older or aged 13 and younger, and $18 for members of Revolutionary Spaces. After 15 November, the prices will go up.

“History Camp America 2022” Coming in November

I spent a couple of days last week traveling along the Battle Road between Concord and Menotomy to prepare a video talk to be shared in History Camp America 2022, scheduled for 5 November.

Organized by the team behind the regional History Camps, America’s Road Trip, and last year’s inaugural History Camp America, this will be a collection of more than forty online lectures, behind-the-scenes tours, cooking demonstrations, and other presentations exploring the past.

Registration costs $149.95 for access to all those videos on the day of the event and afterward, and registrants will also receive a box of souvenirs and artifacts celebrating American history.

My talk will be:

Looking for the Shot Heard ’Round the World

Travel the Battle Road to and from Concord as J. L. Bell, proprietor of Boston 1775, explores the start of the Revolutionary War

In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson coined the phrase “the shot heard ’round the world” for what he deemed to be the most important gunfire of the Revolutionary War. Emerson was a son of Concord, and it was only natural for him to view the shooting that took place within sight of his grandfather’s house as crucial.

But was that gunfire the start of the Revolutionary War? If we define the war as beginning when organized military units confront each other with lethal force, then it had actually started four months before and more than sixty miles away. If we look for the first shot on April 19, 1775, that was definitely fired in Lexington—though British army officers reported it came before their soldiers even arrived at the town common.

This video talk visits more than half a dozen sites, famous and little-known, from Menotomy to Concord and back, to discuss when and how the Revolutionary War began, according to different perspectives. It traces how both sides tried to show restraint at dawn but, in seeing the worst of the enemy, went all-out by the end. Examining the events of April 18–19, 1775, (and earlier) illuminates what it really means to go into a war.

As the History Camp America 2022 schedule develops, I’m seeing speakers I always enjoy hearing from and places I’ve wondered about visiting, plus other topics and places that are totally new. Check out the quick video preview.

“General Gage’s Spies” via the Golden Ball Tavern, 15 Sept.

On Thursday, 15 September, I’ll deliver an online lecture for the Golden Ball Tavern Museum in Weston.

The talk will be titled “General Gage’s Spies,” and here’s our event description:

On February 23, 1775, three men arrived at Isaac Jones’s tavern in Weston, saying they were surveyors from Boston. They were actually two officers and a private from the king’s army. The royal governor, General Thomas Gage, had assigned them to find cannons and other military supplies that the rebel Massachusetts government was collecting outside of Boston. Drawn from new research, this talk discusses who those men were, the crucial role they played in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and what happened to them after the Revolutionary War.

The spies’ visit to Jones’s Golden Ball Tavern is fairly well known. In The Road to Concord I showed how their mission fit into Gen. Gage’s larger strategy to locate and neutralize the artillery that rural Patriots were hiding. Since then I’ve gathered some more information about the two army officers, which will be part of this talk.

Yet another new wrinkle is that even as those spies were staying at the Golden Ball on their way to Worcester, people elsewhere in Weston were preparing two cannon for battle. Braddyll Smith, recently chosen to be both Weston’s representative to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and colonel of the local militia regiment, knew about that effort and was probably in charge.

Smith’s predecessor in those posts was Elisha Jones, a Loyalist who had left for Boston around the turn of the year. Presumably Smith and his Patriot neighbors made sure that Elisha’s cousin Isaac, proprietor at the Golden Ball, never heard about their two cannon. After all, you didn’t know who might come through town.

My talk is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. Here’s the link to register. This event is free, thanks to support from the Weston Cultural Council, and folks can also join or donate to the Golden Ball Tavern Museum to support and learn about more such events.

Looking All the Way Back on History Camp 2022

Many of the sessions at last month’s History Camp Boston were recorded, and the videos are going up on the web now.

I started the morning with a talk on “Digging and Debunking: Using Online Tools to Investigate the Myths of American History.” I’m not sure I actually got to all the topics promised in the description:

From Founders’ quotes to inspirational legends to details that historians have repeated for so long that nobody considers where they came from, our history abounds with assertions that we should be skeptical about. This workshop discusses how to assess such historical tales and tidbits. It will share tactics for using Google Books and other free resources to pinpoint when and where stories arose, and lay out the dynamic of “grandmother’s tales,” “memory creep,” and other ways legends spread. And every so often these techniques reveal that a story almost too good to be true is supported by solid evidence.

Then again, I wrote that description in late 2019, so I’m just glad that I got to this talk at all. (The blog posting I used as a visual aid and online starting-point is here.)

At the end of the day I was part of a panel on “Using New Media to Present History” organized by Michael Troy of the American Revolution Podcast, with Jake Sconyers of HUB History and Larisa Moran of History Dame.

A panel of podcasters, bloggers, and video bloggers discusses how new forms of media are transforming the presentation of History. We will discuss how podcasting and other new media differ from traditional media, why they reach new audiences, and trends in how presenting new media is continuing to change.

As usual, those sessions conflicted directly with others I’d hoped to attend, so I’m pleased that many more talks were recorded. Here are videos of other History Camp Boston 2022 sessions on aspects of Revolutionary America:

• Matthew Wilding and Mary Adams of Revolutionary Spaces on “Gamifying History: Roleplaying the Revolution”
• Salina B. Baker on “General Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution”
• Nancy Rubin Stuart on “Poor Richard’s Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father”
• Steve Butz on “Shays’ Settlement in Vermont”
• David Dalrymple on “Captain Patrick Ferguson’s Experimental Corps of Riflemen”
• Roberta DeCenzo on “The Last Civilian Royal Governors of Colonial Massachusetts”
• Andy Volpe on “Re-Engraving Paul Revere: The Boston Massacre”
• Judy Cataldo on “The Bloody Flux of 1775, Looking at the Little Picture”
• Scott Nadler on “Inconvenient Founders: Thomas Young and the Forgotten Disrupters of the Revolution”

Plus you can see four presentations on aspects of the Salem Witch Trials! Talks on early westward expansion and Salem’s mercantile flowering and racism in early recorded pop music! Lots more! If more videos come on line after being reviewed, I’ll post more links.

History Camp Boston is a project of The Pursuit of History, a non-profit corporation that produces History Camps in other metro areas, the upcoming online History Camp America, and the weekly History Camp discussions with authors. I’m on the organization’s board. If you’re grateful for this content and want to see more such gatherings, please consider a donation to The Pursuit of History through its webpage.