On this day 250 years ago in Savannah, the Second Provincial Congress of Georgia convened at Tondee’s Long Room. Over the next two weeks the Congress effectively created the first independent government of Georgia, naming a Council of Safety and a “Parochial Committee” to act when the Provincial Congress was in recess. Mordecai Sheftall, a Jewish man, was named Chairman of the Parochial Committee and would later become the highest ranking Jew in the Continental Army and spend two years as a prisoner to the British. The Provincial Congress on this first day of the session unanimously elected Archibald Bulloch as its President and George Walton Secretary. After it adjourned for the day, Bulloch led six other delegates and some Liberty Boys of Savannah to seize cannon, gun carriages and other military supplies from the Governor’s storehouse. Bulloch and his men then hauled the cannon and carriages to the schooner Elizabeth docked in the Savannah River. They rechristened the schooner as the Liberty and outfitted her as the first ship of the Georgia Navy.

Sources: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/peter-tondee-ca-1723-1775/1; Weeks at 194-95.; https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/georgia-patriots-meet-at-tondees-tavern.html; https://www.jstor.org/stable/43057796?seq=3; Weeks at 194-95; https://colonialbrewer.com/2025/01/01/did-jews-participate-in-the-american-revolution-well-here-are-a-few-stories-mordecai-sheftall-5/

On this day 250 years ago in Amherst, New Hampshire, the Hillsborough County Congress met, as one of the many counties in America governing themselves independent of British authority.

Source: https://archive.org/details/diaryofmatthewpa00patt/page/344/mode/2up

And on this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress declared that two recent British Acts of Parliament restraining trade of the American colonies are “unconstitutional, oppressive and cruel and that” the colonies should oppose them.

Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293020542571&seq=131