On this day 250 years ago the Massachusetts House of Representatives named one of its members, 68-year old Seth Pomeroy, as “general officer” for militias. Pomeroy would subsequently fight as a volunteer without command at Bunker Hill, serve as the Major General in command of the Massachusetts Militia and serve in the Continental Army as a Brigadier General. He would die of disease in Continental Service in 1777 at the age of 70.
Month: February 2024
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On this day 250 years ago, the New Jersey Assembly created a Committee of Correspondence making New Jersey the twelfth colony to do so.
Source: https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/deep-dives/committees-of-correspondence/
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On this day 250 years ago the Boston Evening Post published Resolutions from the Town of Concord that resolved that anyone who continued to buy, sell, or use East India Company’s tea would be “for the future deemed unfriendly and enemical to the happy constitution of this country” and that anyone attempting to import the tea would be treated “as enemies to their country and with contempt and detestation.” The Resolutions also thanked the Patriots of Boston for the “rational measures” they had taken to preserve the colony’s rights and liberties.
Source: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/alyssa-kariofyllis-women-of-the-battle-road-paper4.htm
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On this day 250 years ago Isaiah Thomas published the first issue of The Royal American Magazine in Boston. Notwithstanding the name of his new publication, Thomas was not a Loyalist, and the magazine supported the Patriot cause. He also published the Massachusetts Spy which was the preferred publication for letters and editorials by Patriots in Massachusetts, both before and during the Revolution. Thomas’s publications were constantly threatened with shutdown by British authorities, and just before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Thomas smuggled his printing presses out of Boston and he then fought with the Patriots at Concord.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Thomas_(publisher); https://www.teachushistory.org/files/u2/IsaiahThomas/it_timeline.pdf
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On this day 250 years ago the Boston Gazette and Country Journal published a letter from a Patriot from the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts complaining about “Resolves of the town of Marshfield” that opposed “the destruction of teas, &c.” and supported the British authorities rather than the Sons of Liberty. The letter writer asserted the Marshfield Resolves were “effected principally by the insinuating act of a certain man, who having lately rendered himself odious to the Province by his conduct in a public station, is endeavoring to wipe off the infamy on the people of that town.” That man was named Nathaniel Ray Thomas and during the next year accept an appointment as a government official and invite British troops to occupy Marshfield, and protect him and other Loyalists from the wrath of the Patriots.
Source: https://historicaldigression.com/2015/01/24/a-tea-party-tories-and-redcoats-in-marshfield/
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On this day 250 years ago, Dr. Benjamin Rush delivered an oration “before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia: containing, an enquiry into the natural history of medicine among the Indians in North-America, and a comparitive view of their diseases and remedies, with those of civilized nations ; together with an appendix, containing, proofs and illustrations”. Rush would later serve as Surgeon General of the Continental Army, represent Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress and sign the Declaration of Independence.
https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-2569044R-bk
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On this day 250 years ago the Town of Andover, Massachusetts appointed a Committee of 5 — Samuel Phillips, Esq., Captain Asa Foster, Joshua Holt, Samuel Osgood and Dr. Joseph Osgood — to respond to a letter from the Boston Committee of Correspondence about the arrival of ships carrying East India Company tea.
At her family’s home Mount Airy Plantation, Maryland, Eleanor Calvert married John Parke Custis, the son of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington and George Washington’s step-son. George and Martha Washington attended the wedding.
Sources: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/55607279/samuel-osgood
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/john-parke-custis
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On this day 250 years ago the Pennsylvania Gazette published “A Lady’s Adieu to Her Tea Table” — a poem that, as the name implies, shows that the Patriots protesting the Tea Act were not all men.
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On the day 250 years ago America’s greatest supporter in Parliament, Edmund Burke, wrote future American General Charles Lee, who had recently emigrated to America, about Wedderburn’s “furious Philippic against poor Dr. Franklin” in the Privy Council a few days earlier.
Source: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/01/brilliant-agony-edmund-burke-spring-1774.html
[sorry I am posting this one a little late]
On This Day In The Revolution 