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January 1775: The Elder Statesman
On January 20, 1775, the most influential English politician of the century arrived at the House of Lords. This was William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, who had been Prime Minister of England from 1766 to 1768, and before that the guiding power behind two other Prime Ministers who had served from 1754 to…
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December, 1774: The Shot, Not
As the Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party approached, tensions were running high throughout New England. The port of Boston had been closed by numerous British ships, including a 50-gun man-of-war floating in the harbor, and another in the Charles River. The only entrance to the town was guarded by a regiment on either side…
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Fall 1774: Thanksgiving
250 years ago, Boston was an armed camp. In the wake of the Tea Party, a new Royal Governor was appointed to take control of the town and enforce the Intolerable Acts that had been imposed by Parliament. The guy who was chosen was none other than General Thomas Gage, the most noteworthy British soldier…
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October 1774: Resolution
250 years ago this week, the First Continental Congress concluded, with little decided and much hanging in the balance. Delegates from all the colonies except Georgia, including such notables as John Adams, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, and Roger Sherman, and led by President Peyton Randolph of Virginia and Secretary Charles Thomson of Pennsylvania,…
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September 1774: The Meeting Place
Here are some things you should know about Carpenters’ Hall. It was designed by a Scotsman. Robert Smith was born in Midlothian in 1722 to a family of masons. He apprenticed in the building trades. In 1748 he emigrated to Philadelphia and joined the Carpenters’ Company, which is the oldest extant craft guild in the…
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July 1774: Summer of Suspense
And so here we are, fellow Americans, nervously sweating out the dog days of summer. There’s pandemonium in politics, folks are taking sides, nobody knows what’s gonna happen next, and resolution seems a long way off. July 2024? Yes certainly. But it bears a strong resemblance to the situation 250 years ago this month, in…
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May 1774: The Empire Strikes Back
On May 13, 1774, a large vessel sailed into Boston Harbor. It wasn’t a whaler, it wasn’t a trading ship of any kind. It was the HMS Lively, a 20-gun post ship of the Royal Navy that was commissioned in 1756 and had seen action against the French throughout the 7-Years War. But on this…
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Spring 1774: Intolerable
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Francis Scott Key bridge this past week, folks in Baltimore and throughout the United States can’t help wondering – as we head into what should usually be a spring full of promise – what the future may hold with the closure of one of the largest ports…
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January 1774: Jersey Joins
250 years ago this month, some British tea was destroyed in the American colonies. But it wasn’t in Boston. The famous Tea Party had already happened, on December 16, 1773, when three trading ships were boarded by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, and their cargoes of tea dumped into the harbor. It would take…
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December 15, 1773: The Day Before
250 years ago today brought a moment of personal decision… “I am absolutely terrified. The situation here in Massachusetts has been building since before my family came here from Scotland, even before the dreadful Massacre in ’70. But the Act that Parliament passed last May is proving too much to bear, not for anyone who…
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