Boston

Slavery at Boston’s Old North Church

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Here is Artemis Moshtaghian at CNN: On Tuesday, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced that the Old North Church Foundation was awarded a $75,000 grant. Stewart says the foundation plans on creating a program that reinterprets the church and its congregation’s...

Who was Prince Hall?

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Here is Danielle Allen at The New York Times: Massachusetts abolished enslavement before the Treaty of Paris brought an end to the American Revolution, in 1783. The state constitution, adopted in 1780 and drafted by John Adams, follows the Declaration of...

Episode 66: The Boston Massacre

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What happened when British soldiers and their families arrived in Boston in 1768? In Episode 66 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast, we talk with Carleton College history professor Serena Zabin about her new book, The Boston Massacre:...

When Paul Revere Got the Scoop

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Many of us use Paul Revere’s image of the Boston Massacre when we teach the American Revolution.   But over at the blog of the New York Historical Society, we learn that Henry Pelham was the first person to produce...

Mapping 1648 Boston

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Who lived in Boston in 1648?  History professor Chris Parsons and his team at Northeastern University have initiated the “Birth of Boston” project.  The centerpiece of the project is an interactive map of Boston in 1648 that allows users to...

On the Road in Late July

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I am in the at the midpoint of two weeks of work with the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.  As some of you know, this last week I was in Mount Vernon, Virginia and Boston filming a 12-week lecture course...

What If Your Faith Makes You “Unpatriotic?”

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I am in Boston this week filming a series of lectures for an on-line course on colonial America produced by the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.  We have been shooting short introductions at places like the Long Wharf, Old South...

The Bachelorette and American History

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OK, I confess, I put the word “Bachelorette” in the title of this post just to garner a lot of hits. 🙂 But as an American historian I can’t pass up the opportunity to call your attention to Hannah Brown’s...

The Author’s Corner with Mark Peterson

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Mark Peterson is Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. This interview is based on his new book, The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power (Princeton University Press, 2019). JF: What led you to...

Why Did God Allow the Great Boston Fire of 1760?

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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...