On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, Virginia, Royal Governor Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation against “a certain Patrick Henry, of the County of Hanover, and a Number of his deluded Followers.” 

Sources: https://www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/early-america-review/volume-8/the-proclamation-against-patrick-henry; https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/314

On this day 250 years ago in Baltimore, Maryland, Col. George Washington and the other delegates reviewed four companies of the Town’s militia including the Baltimore Independent Cadets commanded by Capt. Mordecai Gist. Gist would go on to serve heroically in the Continental Army under Washington rising to the rank of Brigadier General in command of the Maryland Line.

Source: “[Diary entry: 6 May 1775],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0005-0010-0006. [Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1 January 1771–5 November 1781, ed. Donald Jackson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, pp. 327–328.]

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Assembly voted to add Benjamin Franklin, Scottish immigrant James Wilson and Thomas Willing to the Pennsylvania Delegation to the Continental Congress. Franklin and Wilson would end up signing the Declaration but Willing would refuse to sign. Willing was one of the richest men in America but lost public office because he opposed Independence. Nevertheless, he did not join the Loyalists and contributed 5000 pounds (which would be more than $1 million today) to the Patriot cause during the War, and after the War was appointed as the first President of the Bank of North America, the first bank chartered by Congress.

Source: “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 23 July 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0164. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 252–254.]

And on this day 250 years ago in Watertown, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress voted

That Gen. John Whitcomb and Col. Benjamin Lincoln be, and hereby are appointed muster masters in the Massachusetts army, whose business it shall be to pass muster on every soldier that be enlisted into said army, and by no means to accept of any but such as are able bodied, effective men ; and also to examine if their arms and accoutrements are in proper order : and said muster masters are hereby directed and empowered to receive . . . twenty shillings, lawful money, for each and every non commissioned officer and private soldier thus mustered and sworn, who shall appear with their arms and accoutrements

Source: Journals of each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts at 199

General Whitcomb would serve as a General in the Massachusetts Militia for the rest of the year but was then forced to retire from service the next year due to old age (63 years old, which troubles me at age 62!). Col. Lincoln would go into Continental Service and advance to the rank of Major General as Washington’s second-in-command at Yorktown.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Whitcomb_(general)