Posts Tagged ‘cambridge’
Unabashed Gossip at Fieldstone Common (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
That was for an episode of Marian’s internet radio show and podcast Fieldstone Common, and you can hear the recording here. There are also a couple of photos of me on the episode’s webpage, and Marian’s introduction explains how I fell into historical research.
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The Soldier Who Died in Buckman Tavern (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Except that last night Don Hagist kindly left a comment on yesterday’s posting to report that a British army muster roll says grenadier Bateman died on 21 April—two days before that deposition.
Now I believe the most likely explanation is that the muster roll is in error, based on information ...
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The British Plan to Burn Harvard College (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
What, but the hand of Providence preserved the school of the prophets from their ravage, who would have deprived us of many advantages for moral or religious improvement.[?]Okay, most of Mansfield’s listeners would probably have had little idea of what he was talking about. “School of the prophets”? But when he published this sermon the following year after becoming minister in Exeter, New Hampshire...
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Capt. Samuel Leighton and His Regiment (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
This company was part of the regiment of Col. James Scamman (1742-1804). Documents in the Massachusetts archives indicate that some officers and men in that regiment wanted their colonel to ...
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Cuts at National Historical Park This Summer (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The terms of the sequestration require the National Park System to cut 5 percent, or $134 million, from its overall budget. Because each park receives its own budget, each park must cut 5 percent of its spending. This requirement is especially hard-hitting because the cuts are coming half-way through the year after the parks have already spent part of their yearly budget. Additionally, the cuts are coming ...
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Anthony Walton White Does Not Impress (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Anthony Walton White (1750-1803) was a grandson of Lewis Morris, governor of New Jersey. He arrived with a recommendation letter from George Clinton of New York. His grandfather wrote another letter on his behalf, and his father wrote to Washington twice.
White wanted to join the Continental Army—but not, of course, at the enlisted ...
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Two Lectures in One Week (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The question-and-answer session was thought-provoking as usual. Among the topics we discussed were:
- Did Margaret Gage disclose her husband’s military secrets to Dr. Joseph Warren? (Check out the link to her name for my thoughts in detail.)
- How did New Englanders ...
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Washington’s Birthday at Washington’s Headquarters (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
At least one part of the government still celebrates Washington on the 22nd, however. The National Park Service rangers at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge are offering free tours of that mansion each half-hour from 1:00 to 4:00 on Friday afternoon. These tours focus on how the commander-in-chief used the house as ...
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“I have myself a large share of malicious Slander” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
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When James Warren wrote to Elbridge Gerry on 20 July 1788, the two political allies were digesting the legal ratification of the new U.S. Constitution, which they had opposed.Warren and his wife Mercy had just moved out of the mansion in Milton where Gov. Thomas Hutchinson had lived before the war. Gerry was living on the Cambridge estate confiscated from Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver.
That’s the context for the Massachusetts Historical Society’s newly acquired letter, which Warren started by commiserating with Gerry about the political attacks on him. Soon, however, he was complaining about his own ...
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The Worcester Revolt and the American Revolution Round Table (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution has published Melvin H. Bernstein’s essay “Setting the Record Straight: The Worcester Revolt of September 6, 1774” on its website. A shorter version appeared last month in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.This essay discusses the organized uprising to close the Worcester County courts before their September 1774 session, effectively ending royal government in the region seven months before the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The local populace demanded that men holding royal commissions refuse to act under them as long as Parliament’s Coercive Acts remained in ...
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“He had taken a Cold and became sick” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
My first services in the Revolution were on Winter Hill in the Fall and Winter of 1775. I at the age of 13 years. In the Month of December, News came up, that my Brother was sick and unable to do Duty, he was very thinly clad, as most of the Soldiers were at the time; he had taken a Cold and became sick. My parents said that I must take the Horse and go down and bring him home. But ...
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The Desk Calendar Contest Answers! (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
1) Member of Parliament and Secretary of the Treasury in London from 1770 to 1782, he was Lord North’s principal political fixer.
This was John Robinson (1727-1802). The phrase “before you can say Jack Robinson” appeared in the late 1700s, so some authors have theorized that it referred to this man, but that seems unlikely.
2) Aide-de-camp to Gen. John Sullivan, Gen. Lafayette...
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What Upset Deborah Putnam? (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
After Gen. George Washington organized the Continental Army into brigades in late July 1775, Gen. Israel Putnam moved into the Ralph Inman mansion in east Cambridge. He had already stationed his son Daniel there with instructions to see that Elizabeth (Murray Campbell Smith) Inman wasn’t harassed.Soon, however, Inman moved to the estate she had inherited in Milton, and the army finished filling her Cambridge farm with barracks and fortifications. At some point Gen. Putnam’s wife Deborah joined him, as shown by some letters he exchanged with the Cambridge committee of safety in 1776.
After leaving Massachusetts, ...
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The Vassalls’ Pension and Tonight’s Lecture in Medford (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Massachusetts judge Lemuel Shaw recalled a case from early in his legal career that started when the state confiscated that property because Vassall was an absent Loyalist:
The estate having been confiscated by the Government because its owner was a Tory, when the commissioners were putting it up for sale, an old colored man, a ...
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Time for Reporting the Revolutionary War (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Reporting the Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News was conceived and assembled by Todd Andrlik of the Rag Linen site. It traces how America’s move to independence was reported at the time in American and English newspapers. Every section shows some actual eighteenth-century news reports alongside a historian’s analysis of the event.
I wrote two sections. The first is on the “Powder Alarm” of September 1774, which signaled the de ...
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Seeking Large House, River View, Must Be Available Immediately (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
That evening, according to the diary of Ens. Noah Chapin, he and Gen. Charles Lee reviewed troops on Prospect Hill. In 1797 the artist Elkanah Tisdale depicted Washington taking command of the army drawn up in formation at Cambridge on 3 July, and in 1826 ...
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“Looked for accommodations for my companies” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
[2 June 1775] Ordered the companies to proceed as far as Leeson’s in Waltham and make a halt for the night, then left them under the care of Lieut. Gray, and proceeded with Lieut. Dane to Cambridge, at Col. [Joseph] Lee’s house, where we expected to have tarried; found 3 companies. Went to head quarters to Gen. [Israel] Putnam...
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Living Conditions in Cambridge in the Spring of 1775 (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The second chapter of my report Gen. George Washington’s Headquarters and Home—Cambridge, Massachusetts is titled “The Arrival of the Provincial Army on the Vassall Estate.”As I described last week, the Loyalist planter John Vassall and his family left his Cambridge home in September 1774. They probably expected to return after Gen. Thomas Gage quelled the nascent rebellion in Massachusetts. Another Vassall family remained behind: Tony, Cuba, and some of their children, enslaved to John Vassall and his nearby aunt Penelope.
The first sections of that chapter lay out what I could find out about that ...
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The Vassalls of Cambridge (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
In 1759 John Vassall (1738-1797) turned twenty-one and came into his inheritance of large sugar plantations on Jamaica. He had the best upbringing that his maternal grandfather, Lt. Gov. Spencer Phips, could provide. He had a Harvard degree. And from his late father he had farmland in Cambridge with a house on the north side of the road out to Watertown...
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The George Washington’s Headquarters Download (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, has called this study “an amazing piece of work that will be an invaluable resource for years to come.”
The Park Service printed a limited number for institutional use, but anyone can obtain a digital copy in P.D.F. form by clicking here. Be warned—the file is 5.61 megabytes!
Reformatting ...
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Belknap on Blackler’s Battery (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Before I get to summarizing my study, let me share this entry from the diary of the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, visting the siege lines on 17 Oct 1775. He described how the Continental Army had equipped two rowboats with small cannon:This evening, two floating batteries, accompanied with some boats, went down Cambridge River [i.e., the Charles] in order to throw some shot into Boston, to alarm the regular army, and fatigue them with extraordinary duty, and also to endeavor to take a floating battery from them which lay near Boston Neck.
They got within three-quarters of ...
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Gen. Washington in Cambridge (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
It shows a gentleman of the 10th Massachusetts reenacting group portraying Gen. George Washington, greeting guests at the front gate of the estate.
The uniform is modeled after the one Washington ordered for his Virginia militia regiment and then wore to war, as portrayed by Charles Willson Peale and others. The tailor who made this outfit, Henry M. Cooke IV, made two like ones for Mount Vernon.
Besides visiting the general and his troops, I had another reason to go to Cambridge on Saturday. ...
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Archeology Lectures Coming Up Next Week (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
On Tuesday, 16 October, at 7:00 P.M. Boston City Archaeologist Joe Bagley will speak at the Bunker Hill Museum in Charlestown on “The Archaeology of Charlestown: Boston’s Little Pompeii.”
The presentation will focus on the sites discovered at the Bunker Hill Monument, and Bunker Hill Community College, and the Central Artery Project. Several Native American sites, a Native American village, John Winthrop’s 1629 ...
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Revolutionary Reenactors to Visit Longfellow Sites (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
On Saturday, 13 October, from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. the 10th Massachusetts Regiment will be at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, recreating the early Continental Army units that served in the siege of Boston. This event is part of the site’s celebration of forty years of being in the National Park Service.
The room in that mansion where Gen. ...
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English Playwright William Shakespeare