Posts Tagged ‘myths’
Paul Revere and the Sociologists (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
This paper has its roots in David Hackett Fischer’s fine 1994 book Paul Revere’s Ride. In an appendix Fischer and his grad students laid out seven lists of Whig activists in pre-Revolutionary Boston, such ...
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Tying Up the Twisted History of the Braddock Sash (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Buchanan’s history of the sash explains for the first time fully how it traveled from Gen. Braddock to Gen. George Washington to Gen. Edmund Gaines to Gen. Taylor. However, it doesn’t explain how Buchanan came by that knowledge. Had ...
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The Braddock Sash on Display (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
As I quoted yesterday, in 1894 Bettie Taylor Dandridge rediscovered Gen. Edward Braddock’s military sash amid her father’s old things. Her father was Zachary Taylor, President in 1849-50, and Dandridge was remembered for serving as his White House hostess. There was another part of Dandridge’s life that she didn’t celebrate, but which shows up in the public record. After Reconstruction she petitioned Congress for financial support on the grounds that her father and first husband had given the U.S. of A. valuable military service, that in the Civil War she had lost a lot of property (probably slaves...
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“The missing sash of Gen. Braddock” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Yesterday I quoted Wills De Hass’s 1851 account of how Gen. Edward Braddock’s sash passed through George Washington’s hands into the possession of Gen. Zachary Taylor in 1846. Taylor took the sash to the White House when he was elected President in the wake of the Mexican-American War. And suddenly he died in 1850. De Hass’s remarks about the Braddock sash were repeated in various nineteenth-century histories, but no one added new information. But in 1894 a report appeared in the Winchester (Virginia) News, picked up in the 31 May Baltimore Sun. After a dramatic description ...
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Crankee Doodle Rides in with Electric Ben (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
This month brings the publication of Crankee Doodle, a new picture book by Tom Angleberger (who found fame with the Origami Yoda series) and Cece Bell (Rabbit and Robot and more). They also happen to be husband and wife.In this book Crankee Doodle is reluctant to go to town, much less to wear a feather in his cap. His pony has all the bright ideas. Not since Kermit the Frog and Don Music has the old song been deconstructed so thoroughly.
There’s also a historical note on the “Yankee Doodle” song, and I’m pleased to say that ...
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Two Events Down, Two to Go (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The first was my Friday talk on Capt. Thomas Kempton’s powder horn at the Society of the Cincinnati’s Anderson House museum in Washington, D.C. While there I also took advantage of their library to do some reading on Henry Knox and William (“Lord Stirling”) Alexander.
On Saturday, I traveled to Philadelphia and caught the end of the “American Revolution Reborn” conference, which took place at the American Philosophical Society. I may have more to say about that event, but for now ...
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Kempton Called Back to Service (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Sir—
It is with pleasure that I have it in my power to informe you that you are appointed a Lieut Colo. of a Regiment of Men to be raised as temporary reenforcement of men to continue for the Space of two months or until the first day of April next (if needed so long.) Jacob ...
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Capt. Kempton Answers the Call (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Tomorrow afternoon I’ll speak at the Anderson House museum of the Society of the Cincinnati about this powder horn, inscribed with the name of Capt. Thomas Kempton. In 1775 Kempton commanded a company raised mostly in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. His part of that town became New Bedford in 1787, and his family remained there for at least two generations.
Leonard Bolles Ellis’s History of New Bedford (1892) drew on that family’s documents about their Revolutionary forebear, and on their lore:
“I well remember,” says John K. Cushing, grandson of the commander, Capt. Kempton, “hearing my mother tell the story as ...
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“Very barbarously broke his scull and let out his brains” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The Massachusetts Provincial Congress published a deposition, quoted yesterday, in which two men who buried the British soldiers at the bridge denied any of them had been scalped. Did that lay the controversy to rest, along with the dead men?
No, ...
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“King Hancock” After the Revolution (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
As careful as he was to maintain his political popularity, Hancock developed rivals and enemies. In the new republic, one easy way to attack a rich politician was to tag him as having monarchical ambitions. Samuel Breck, born in Boston in 1771, recorded a sarcastic reference to Hancock in a political verse:
Madam Hancock dreamt ...
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“King Hancock” in Verse (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
I’ve been tracking appearances of the phrase “King Hancock” in Revolutionary sources, starting in 1770. A couple of those references were complimentary; most were sneering references from supporters of the royal government.In the fall of 1778, John Hancock helped to command an expedition of Massachusetts, Continental, and French troops against the British military in Newport, Rhode Island. It failed.
That prompted the outwardly Loyalist New York newspaper printer James Rivington to publish a satire in the 3 Oct 1778 Royal Gazette that included this verse:
In dread array their tatter’d crew,
Advanc’d with colors spread Sir,
...
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“Washington’s Old Headquarters” in Richmond (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
As the latest issue of Colonial Williamsburg magazine explains in its “Then and Now” series, Gen. George Washington never actually used Richmond’s oldest standing house as his headquarters. He never seems to have been there in any capacity. And other myths surrounding the house are equally bogus. (Also check out the series entry on “Martha Washington’s ...
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The Questions of “The White Cockade” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Handley recalled:
I saw Captain [Isaac] Davis’s company, as they came from Acton. I first saw them coming through the fields north ...
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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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The Myth of Jonas Davenport (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
I lived near Lexington. My house stood on the road. I joined the minute-men when I heard of the comin’ of the British troops, and left my wife and two children home, under the care of my father, then about sixty. I told ’em to keep as quiet as possible and they would be safe.
Well, as I said, I joined the minute-men, and, when the rascals retreated from Concord, followed ...
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Knockoffs of Cincinnati Chinaware (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Shirley M. Mueller…, an independent scholar and collector of Chinese export porcelain in Indianapolis,…is looking for dinnerware painted with winged goddesses, holding aloft trumpets and bald eagles, which are symbols of the Society of the Cincinnati. Elite military officers formed the Society in 1783, and they commissioned custom porcelain from artisans in China. Those artisans applied the American insignia on standard white ceramic wares, with blue scrollwork and leaves around the undulating rims.
Chinese factories also exported plain versions ...
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“Hardcore guys—90% of them emanate from a one-square-mile neighborhood called Charlestown” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The article said:
The project was acquired for Pearl Street Films as a potential directing vehicle for Argo helmer Ben Affleck, who partners in the company with Matt Damon. Word is that Affleck (who is busy adapting the Dennis Lehane novel Live By Night to direct, star in and produce) will turn the book over to his Argo scribe Chris Terrio, making this a major project.But not ...
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The Holes in Thomas Machin’s Biography (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Yesterday I quoted the biography of Thomas Machin, military engineer for the Continental Army, as it was published in 1845. It linked the man by blood to one of England’s most prominent mathematicians, by employment to one of England’s finest engineers and a duke, and by history to a famous British military victory fought when Machin was just fifteen years old. Despite such prominence, the details of that life are impossible to confirm. Sometimes the information is just too vague. For example, “He was born March 20th, 1744, O. S., four miles from Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England.” I’ve looked at ...
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The Early Life of Thomas Machin (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Here’s how Simms described Machin’s pre-war career:
He was born March 20th, 1744, O. S., four miles from Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England. His father, John Machin, a distinguished mathematician, had two sons, John and Thomas. The former was killed at ...
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The Distortions of Richard Palmes (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
As I’ve been describing, the Boston apothecary Richard Palmes was an important witness in the legal proceedings that followed the Boston Massacre. He was up at the front of the crowd, talking to Capt. Thomas Preston, when the soldiers began to fire. He put extra effort into making sure his version of what he saw got into the record. The last decade hasn’t been kind to Palmes’s memory, however. In 2003, the Discovery Channel program Unsolved History ran a program about the Massacre, which included a reenactment. Just not an accurate one.
While describing the fight on King ...
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Washington’s Birthday Shifts (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Britain and its colonies finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. But it’s not clear when Washington himself started to consider his birthday ...
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Peirce Family Anecdotes about Henry Knox (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Joseph Peirce founded Boston’s militia grenadier company in 1772 with Henry Knox as his lieutenant. The two men kept up a correspondence after the war when both invested heavily in Maine ...
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Henry Knox and the Boston Tea Party (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
When the tea meeting called for volunteers to patrol the docks and ensure that no tea was unloaded, among the first to sign up was “Joseph Peirce, Jr.” You can see the notes of that meeting here, courtesy ...
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Gun Accidents in the Founding Era (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
I have searched and in the founding era I think I’ve only ever found two gun accidents and everybody was hauling guns back then. You took your guns to church, you were required by state law in some states to take your guns to church. We didn’t have accidents because everyone was familiar with how to use them.It’s not clear what “law in some states” about taking guns to church Barton had in mind. Clayton ...
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The Boston Tea Party