Revolution

Watch people get massacred downtown

adamg — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:48:38 +0000

It's the annual reenactment of the Boston Massacre, tonight at 7 at the Old State House.

Revolutionary iPhone app

adamg — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:23:49 +0000

J.L. Bell reports a new app maps out key Revolutionary sites in downtown Boston - and that a planned upgrade will include GPS linking, "allowing users to match colonial-era locations with today’s crossroads."

When did they pave over Lexington Green?

adamg — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:41:52 +0000

A movie company hired by the Tea Party Museum will film a re-creation of the Battle of Lexington on a field just west of Richmond, Va.

The Herald summons ye olde outrage over the moviemaking, set for next month. As the Herald notes, the Tea Party Museum is getting $21 million in Massachusetts tax subsidies.

On its site, LionHeart FilmWorks claims:

The concentration of events in this 10-minute project to the events of early 1775 is allowing the Director to be able to focus on intimate details of the era and events from Lexington Green, so that it may be portrayed and illustrated with strict detail, perhaps for the first time with such detail and authenticity on screen. That is our mission.

Or maybe it's because we just don't have enough Revolutionary recreators around here. Right?

A detailed and authentic Eastern Massachusetts civilian impression is requested to most accurately portray the 77 American Patriots that stood on Lexington Green. Even though we are filming in summer, the night of April 18th and early morning of the 19th would have been more than a little chilly. Wool garments are preferred, including coats and some greatcoats.

Mmm, yeah, wool greatcoats in July in Virginia.

The mystery of the man who fatally shot a British major at Bunker Hill

adamg — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:37:06 +0000

Was it Peter Salem of Framingham or Salem Poor of Andover? J.L. Bell tries to unravel the mystery of the black colonist who put Major Pitcairn in a grave.

Before Lexington and Concord came Jamaica Plain

adamg — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:58:10 +0000

Mark recounts how the British attack on the better known historical spots was foreshadowed a month earlier by a similar, if less bloody, march down Centre Street toward Dedham.

Redcoats retake the Common

adamg — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:19:00 +0000

His majesty's regiments of foot reasserted their control over the Boston Common today with an encampment and a successful battle against rebel colonists. The encampment continues on Sunday.

The lighthouse war

adamg — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:27:17 +0000

Boston 1775 begins the saga of Revolutionary War skirmishes over Boston Light, the lighthouse that basically controlled nighttime navigation into Boston Harbor.

While John was away ...

adamg — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:01:32 +0000

J.L. Bell fills us in on the goings on in the Adams household whilst John was off in Europe.

There, there, neither do we

adamg — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:34:00 +0000

Like sci-fi fans who delight in finding continuity errors in Star Trek episodes, history buffs are enjoying themselves tremendously picking apart HBO's John Adams mini-series, including a sequence involving smallpox, which forced J.L. Bell to admit:

I must confess that I don't know my pus that well.

Oliver Wendell Holmes did not own slaves

adamg — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:24:38 +0000

J.L. Bell compares the Boston Massacre trial on the John Adams mini-series with the historical record, concluding with the possibility that the screenwriters got confused between Oliver Wendell, who had a slave who testified, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the monicker of two rather more famous Bostonians (one of whom I can thank for the name of this site), neither of whom were even alive during the Revolution.

And so Washington's army marches into Boston

adamg — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:09:14 +0000

J.L. Bell concludes his recounting of Evacuation Day:

... Immediately upon the fleet's sailing the Select Men set off, through the lines, to Roxbury to acquaint General [George] Washington of the evacuation of the town. After sending a message Major [Joseph] Ward aid to General [Artemas] Ward, came to us at the lines and soon after the General himself, who received us in the most polite and affectionate manner, and permitted us to pass to Watertown to acquaint the Council of this happy event. ...

The occupying army prepares to leave

adamg — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:53:30 +0000

J.L. Bell reports on British preparations on March 15, 1776 to evacuate Boston:

... The General told us the Troops would embark this day and was told by General [James] Robertson it would be by three oclock. The Regiments all mustered, some of them marched down the wharf. Guards and Chevaux De Freze, were placed in the main streets and wharves in order to secure the retreat of Out Centinels. Several of the principle streets through which they were to pass were filled with Hhds. [hogsheads] filled with Horse-dung, large limbs of trees from the Mall [a tree-lined walk on Boston Common] to prevent a pursuit of the Continental Army. They manifestly appeared to be fearful of an attack. ...

The Revolution was for white people

adamg — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:51:26 +0000

Mark posts a copy of a Boston newspaper ad from Sept. 25, 1777 offering a reward for the return of a slave who escaped from her master in Jamaica Plain.

Sticking up for the good name of John Hancock

adamg — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:01:31 +0000

J.L. Bell reports that while the upcoming HBO mini-series on our own John Adams might be riveting, possibly the most riveting scene of all never happened: A royal customs agent was not tarred and feathered here by a mob acting on the orders of John Hancock (although there was an actual tarring and feathering a year later; Adams represented a defendant in that case, which involved a ship that had been seized from Hancock).

Submarine warfare in Boston Harbor

adamg — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:00:32 +0000

J.L. Bell recounts how Boston Harbor almost became the site of the first submarine attack in history.