On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, Virginia, Governor Dunmore ordered seamen and marines from the HMS Magdalen to seize the gunpowder stored in Williamsburg’s Powder Magazine.

Sources: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/the-gunpowder-incident/; https://www.revwartalk.com/04-20-1775-battles-gunpowder-affair-in-williamsburg-virginia/https://250andcounting.com/; https://daybydayamerica.com/day-by-day/year-1775/april-20-1775/

Tonight and tomorrow night, April 20 and 21, 2025, Colonial Williamsburg is reenacting the Gunpowder Incident at the Powder Magazine where it happened 250 years ago.

Source: https://www.whro.org/arts-culture/2025-04-17/williamsburg-marks-the-250th-anniversary-of-the-shot-not-heard-around-the-world

On this day 250 years ago in Charlestown, South Carolina, the General Committee of the South Carolina Provincial Congress led by the president of the Provincial Congress, Colonel Charles Pinckney, convened to discuss the news received from England that the British Army was sending additional troops to America to put down the rebellion. The General Committee appointed William Henry Drayton to head a “Secret Committee” to plan the seizure of government-owned weapons and gunpowder in the colony to make sure that they would not be used against the Patriots.

Source: https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/rebellion-south-carolina-april-21st-1775

Also on this day 250 years ago in New York City, a Provincial Convention convened to elect delegates from New York to the Second Continental Congress.  This Convention had delegates from all New York counties except Tryon, Gloucester and Cumberland and was New York’s first state-wide governmental body organized without royal authority. The Provincial Convention elected Philip Livingston as it chairman and adjourned two days later after electing delegates to the Continental Congress.

Sources: https://www.archives.nysed.gov/node/361227; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Provincial_Congress

At the beginning of this day 250 years ago at the Alden House in Duxbury, Colonel Theophilus Cotton, commander of the Plymouth County Militia, held a council of war with his subaltern, Lt. Col. Briggs Alden, Major Ebenezer Sproat of Middleborough, and other officers to plan an assault on the British detachment guarding Loyalists in the adjacent town of Marshfield, the only town outside of Boston occupied by British troops. The militia companies from Plymouth, Kingston and Duxbury had assembled and were ready to make the short march on Marshfield. In addition, Marshfield’s Patriot militia commanded by Colonel Anthony Thomas and Captain William Thomas were ready to rise up and expel the British soldiers.

Before the end of the day, three companies of militia totalling 150 men from the Town of Middleborough commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Wood, Capt. Isaac Wood and Capt. Amos Wade, Captain Josiah Hayden’s company of Bridgewater minutemen (which included Luther Jotham, Elias Sewell and other free men of color), and Captain Israel Fearing’s Wareham company had arrived in Duxbury. And on that day militia companies from Hanover, Plympton, Scituate, Rochester, Sandwich, Barnstable, and Yarmouth were marching to join Col. Cotton’s command. In all, more than a thousand militiamen from Plymouth and Barnstable Counties were on their way to drive the British and Loyalists from Marshfield.

Sources: https://historicaldigression.com/2011/01/10/the-almost-battle-of-marshfield/; https://historicaldigression.com/2025/04/20/the-brink-of-war-in-plymouth-county-april-20-1775/; https://alden.org/

On that day 250 years ago in Cambridge and the other towns surrounding Boston, thousands of Massachusetts Militia began the Siege of Boston. General William Heath is nominally in command of the militia but is succeeded by General Artemas Ward that evening. In Cambridge, Joseph Warren writing for the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, issued this letter to the towns of Massachusetts:

The barbarous murders committed on our innocent brethren, on Wednesday the 19th instant, have made it absolutely, necessary that we immediately raise an army to defend our wives and our children from the butchering hands of an inhuman soldiery, who, incensed at the obstacles they met with in their bloody progress, and enraged at being repulsed from the field of slaughter, will, without the least doubt, take the first opportunity in their power to ravage this devoted country with fire and sword. We conjure you, therefore, by all that is dear, by all that is sacred, that you give all assistance possi­ble in forming an army. Our all is at stake. Death and devastation are the instant consequences of delay. Every moment is infinitely precious. An hour lost may deluge your country in blood, and entail perpetual slavery upon the few of your posterity who may survive the carnage. We beg and entreat, as you will answer to your country, to your own consciences, and, above all, as you will answer to God himself, that you will hasten and encourage by all possible means the enlistment of men to form the army, and send them forward to head­quarters, at Cambridge, with that expedition which the vast importance and instant urgency of the affair demand.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Boston; https://www.drjosephwarren.com/2014/04/barbarous-murders-committed-on-our-innocent-brethren/

And on this day 250 years ago word of the Battles of Lexington and Concord had reached Providence, Rhode Island, Portsmouth, New Hampshire (where the New-Hampshire Gazette published the “Bloody News” before the end of the day) and the towns of Brooklyn, Woodstock, Norwich, New London, and Pomfret, Connecticut. When French and Indian War hero Israel Putnam received the news at 3:00 pm in Pomfret, he immediately mounted his horse and rode the 100 miles to Cambridge, arriving 18 hours later.

Sources: Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride at 324; https://collections.americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/exhibits/show/age-of-revolution/item/38; https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/american-revolutionary-war-timeline-1775-january-june/