My first or second year at Messiah College, the student history club produced t-shirts with Ben Franklin’s famous “Join or Die” snake image (see above) on the front. It was partly an attempt to raise the club’s membership. Messiah is...
Boston 1775 blog
18th-Century British-Americans getting homesick
As someone who wrote extensively about homesickness in my first book, I thoroughly enjoyed J.L. Bell’s recent post at Boston 1775. He even mentions Philip Vickers Fithian! Here is a taste: One might assume the word was still working its...
The destruction of tea by water and fire
As J.L. Bell reminds us at Boston 1775, today is the 247th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. While the Boston patriots dumped East India Company tea into the waters of Boston Harbor, not all revolutionary-era tea protestors involved dumping....
What John Quincy Adams Thought About His Pastors and Schoolmates
This is a great post from J.L. Bell at Boston 1775. A taste: I promised more cattiness from John Quincy Adams as a college student. In his diary for the year 1787, Adams inserted several profiles of his classmates and other people he met...
The Fake Mount Holly, New Jersey Witchcraft Trial
Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell writes about some 18th-century fake news. On October 22, 1730, Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette published a report of a witchcraft trial in southern New Jersey: Saturday last at Mount-Holly, about 8 Miles from this Place, near 300...
Moving Into the Dorms, Circa 1785
My youngest daughter went to her first college class yesterday morning (Spanish I). She moved into the dorms last week and has managed to survive four full days of new student orientation. I think I will send her J.L. Bell’s...
Why Did God Allow the Great Boston Fire of 1760?
Not familiar with the Great Fire of 1760? J.L. Bell of Boston 1775 fame offers a short introduction here. One the Bostonians who tried to make sense of the fire was Rev. Jonathan Mayhew. Here is a taste of Bell’s...
New York City’s Sons of Liberty
Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell calls our attention to a new exhibit at the Fraunces Tavern Museum in lower Manhattan. It is titled “Fear & Force: New York City’s Sons of Liberty.” Here is a taste of Bell’s post:...
Slavery Databases
Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell has a nice roundup of some of the best databases about enslaved people. Here is a taste: This is just one of several online databases about enslaved people that researchers can now use. There’s...
When Nathanael Greene’s Family Played Cards
In 1774 the Continental Congress told Americans to avoid card playing: We will, in our several stations, encourage frugality, economy, and industry, and promote agriculture, arts and the manufactures of this country, especially that of wool; and will discountenance and...
The American Revolution Museum at Yorktown
This week the new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia is getting all the press, but J.L. Bell reminds us that there is another museum of the American Revolution that recently opened at Yorktown. Bell paid a visit to...
Samuel Adams: "Psalm-Singer" and "Curer of Bacon"
Boston 1775 explains: In his “Sagittarius” letters of 1774, the Scottish printer John Mein referred to: the very honest Samuel Adams, Clerk, Psalm-singer, Purlonier, and Curer of Bacon. Mein was clearly being derogatory, but what exactly did he mean? To...
Did John Quincy Adams Pass the Harvard Entrance Exam?
He took the exam in 1786. Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell tells us what happened. Here is a taste: Here’s John Quincy’s description of the test from his diary: Between 9 and 10 in the morning, I went to the...
Did Andrew Jackson Say He Wanted to Shoot Henry Clay and Hang John Calhoun?
Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago Donald Trump said this: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCW9RwwH6g&w=560&h=315] Many interpreted his remarks about “Second Amendment people” to mean that he was calling gun owners to take matters into their own hands...
Is the Gadsden Flag Racist?
This flag was designed in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden, South Carolina planter and delegate to the First and Second Continental Congress. The rattlesnake, as best as I can tell, was used as a symbol for the British colonies as early...
The Author's Corner With J.L. Bell
J.L. Bell is a historian and blogger at Boston 1775. This interview is based on his new book, The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War (Westholme Publishing, 2016). JF: What led you to write The Road to...
The Stamp Act and Marriage
Check out J.L. Bell’s fascinating post at Boston 1775 about how colonists in Massachusetts married earlier than originally intended in order to avoid paying for a ten shilling stamp on their marriage certificates. Another consequence of the Stamp Act. Here is a taste:...
Boston 1775 on the End of the Stamp Act Congress
This month marks the 250th anniversary of the Stamp Act Congress, a New York meeting of representatives from the British-American colonies to discuss the best way to resist the Stamp Act of 1765.Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell has been...