Boston 1775

On her journal , Massachusetts children’s-book author Jane Yolen has provided a play-by-play narrative of how she’s developed a picture-book...

[This posting was updated to reflect newer research on Ezekiel Russell and his wife .] Last week I posted a couple of entries about Sarah ...

During my latest postings on Thomas Paine , Prof. Harvey J. Kaye alerted me to the 200th anniversary of Paine’s death, coming up on 8 June ...

The first U.S. Supreme Court consisted of six rich white men, three of them named John and two James. The sixth was Massachusetts’s own Will...

On Saturday, 30 May, from noon to 3:00, the Minute Man National Historical Park and its Friends is hosting its free Family Day activities:...

These two events are coming up at the Bunker Hill Museum, 43 Monument Square in Charlestown . Sponsored by the Charlestown Historical Societ...

[This posting has been updated to reflect newer research on Ezekiel Russell’s wife .] Yesterday I discussed how, contrary to later report...

Penelope Russell of Boston is listed in many books and websites as one of the first female printers in the U.S. of A. All these citations se...

The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester and the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston are teaming up with the Worcester public ...

While vetting a manuscript this month, I came across another questionable quotation. I think it first appeared in Thomas J. Fleming’s Now We...

Here’s another founding-era quotation that you can find all over the internet. For obvious reasons, it’s a particular favorite of librarians...

The Lexington Historical Society is offering a sneak preview of some of its new orientation video, “The Day the Revolution Began.” I under...

As I described yesterday, back in January I started poking around for the source of the statement from many authors over many decades that G...

Back on Inauguration Day , I noted how President Obama had invoked the story of “the father of our nation” ordering Thomas Paine ’s Crisis ...

Yesterday I quoted an 1876-77 description of how Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense which had everything going for it but accuracy. It appea...

The following passage appears in The Life of Thomas Paine , by Calvin Blanchard , published in 1877. It is, however, an extremely close rewr...

In today’s Boston Globe , Michael Kenney reviews War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Fr...

Last week guest blogger Ray Raphael laid out a challenge : Choose seven people to follow through the entire American Revolution whose storie...

This is a detail from a lesser-known portrait of a better-known figure from Revolutionary history. In fact, this individual is one of the mo...

Jeremy Dibbell (of PhiloBiblos ) has convinced his colleagues at the Massachusetts Historical Society to launch its own blog, the Beehive. O...