Boston 1775

The year 2017 marks the tercentenary of the author and aristocrat Horace Walpole ’s birth, as well as the 220th anniversary of his death. ...

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum has started to publicize this year’s reenactment of Boston’s last meeting about the East India C...

It’s been nearly twenty years since I started to research Revolutionary Boston intensely. At first my goal was to develop a sense of what it...

I’ve focused on Charles Paxton as the chief target of Boston’s Pope Night processions in 1767, but two other new Commissioners of His Ma...

I’ve been discussing the public image of Customs official Charles Paxton (shown here in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s portrait ...

When I say that Customs official Charles Paxton was “queer,” I’m not claiming to know whom he had sex with, or wanted to have sex with...

Charles Paxton (1708-1788, shown here in a portrait at the American Antiquarian Society ) was a major figure in Boston’s 1767 Pope Night ...

A few days back , I quoted from the town meeting on 28 Oct 1767 that set out Boston’s response to the Townshend Act . (That meeting is pa...

Since this is Hallowe’en, I’ll relay a story from the newspaper publisher and politician Benjamin Russell (1761-1845), who grew up in Bos...

Today is John Adams ’s birthday (under the Gregorian Calendar, as he observed most of his life). In his honor, here are the lyrics that ...

On Saturday, 4 November, Faneuil Hall will host a reenactment of the Boston town meeting I described yesterday , setting up a non-import...

On 28 Oct 1767, two hundred fifty years ago today, Boston held a special town meeting  in Faneuil Hall to discuss an urgent threat. As st...

Next year’s Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife will take place on 22-24 June 2018 at Historic Deerfield . The subject will be “Relig...

The American Revolution Round Table of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys is hosting a free symposium in Schenectady, New York , on Veteran’s D...

On Saturday, 4 November, the Abigail Adams Historical Society will welcome visitors for “Behind the Scenes at the Abigail Adams Birthplac...

Earlier this month, on 16 October, Google’s doodle of the day featured the eighteenth-century author Olaudah Equiano , as shown above. ...

The Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College and Historic Deerfield are teaming up to sponsor a one-day...

On 3-4 November, Mount Vernon will host the 2017 symposium of the Washington Library , which has the theme of “George Washington Slept Her...

On Wednesday, 1 November, I’ll speak at the Old North Church on “Classes and Forms: The Landscape of Colonial Boston’s Public Schools.” ...

On Monday, 23 October, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on the topic “Advise and Dissent? The Role of Pu...