On this day 250 years ago in Alexandria, Virginia, Captain James Hendricks and Lieutenants George Gilpin and Robert Hanson Harrison of the Fairfax Independent Company signed a letter to the Company’s former commander George Washington giving him the Company’s

most hearty congratulations upon your appointment to the supreme military command of the American confederated forces.

Firmly convinced Sir, of your zealous attachment to the rights of your Country & those of mankind, and of your earnest desire that harmony & Good will should again take place between us & our parent state, we well know that your every exertion will be invariably employed, to preserve the one & effect the other.

Your kind recommendation, that a strict attention be had, to disciplining the Company, shall be complied with, & every possible method used for procuring arms & ammunition.

We are to inform you Sir, by desire of the Company, that if at any ⟨ti⟩me you shall judge it expedient for them to join the Troops at Cambridge, or to march elsewhere, they will cheerfully do it.

Captain Hendricks would soon join the Continental Army and rise to the rank of Colonel and end the war as Mayor of Alexandria. Lt. Harrison also joined the Continental Army and would become Washington’s aide de camp with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Lt. Gilpin would become the Colonel of the Fairfax Militia.

Source: “To George Washington from the Fairfax Independent Company, 8 July 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0042. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775 – 15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 77–78.]

On this day 250 years ago in Massachusetts, a Continental Army detachment led by Maj. Benjamin Tupper and Capt. John Crane attacked the British outpost on Boston Neck, routing the British soldiers and burning the guardhouse to the ground. Tupper was a farmer, and Crane a shopkeeper (and participant in the Boston Tea Party) before the War but both would serve in the Continental Army through the end of the Revolutionary War,

Sources: https://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/battles/1775-skirmish/; https://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/battles/1775-skirmish/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crane_(soldier)

And on this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress signed the Olive Branch Petition to the King and approved an Address to the People of Great Britain that asserted:

Every day brought an accumulation of Injuries, and the Invention of the Ministry has been constantly exercised, in adding to the Calamities of your American Brethren.

After the most valuable Right of Legislation was infringed; when the Powers assumed by your Parliament, in which we are not represented, and from our local and other Circumstances cannot properly be represented, rendered our Property precarious; after being in many instances divested of those Laws, which were transmitted to us by our common Ancestors, and subjected to an arbitrary Code, compiled under the auspices of Roman Tyrants; after those Charters, which encouraged our Predecessors to brave Death and Danger in every Shape, on unknown Seas, in Deserts unexplored, amidst barbarous and inhospitable Nations, were annulled; when, without the form of Trial, without a public Accusation, whole Colonies were condemned, their Trade destroyed, their Inhabitants impoverished; when Soldiers were encouraged to embrue their Hands in the Blood of Americans, by offers of Impunity; when new modes of Trial were instituted for the ruin of the accused, where the charge carried with it the horrors of conviction; when a despotic Government was established in a neighboring Province, and its limits extended to every of our frontiers; we little imagined that any thing could be added to this black Catalogue of unprovoked Injuries: but we have unhappily been deceived, and the late Measures of the British Ministry fully convince us, that their object is the reduction of these Colonies to Slavery and Ruin. . . .

Boston . . . That once populous, flourishing and commercial Town is now garrisoned by an Army sent not to protect, but to enslave its Inhabitants. The civil Government is overturned, and a military Despotism created upon its Ruins. Without Law, without Right, Powers are assumed unknown to the Constitution. Private Property is unjustly invaded. The Inhabitants, daily subjected to the Licentiousness of the Soldiery, are forbid to remove in Defiance of their natural Rights, in Violation of the most solemn Compacts. Or if, after long and wearisome Solicitation, a Pass is procured, their Effects are detained, and even those who are most favored, have no Alternative but Poverty or Slavery. The Distress of many thousand People, wantonly deprived of the Necessaries of Life, is a Subject, on which we would not wish to enlarge . . .

We have nevertheless again presented an humble and dutiful Petition to our Sovereign, and to remove every imputation of Obstinacy, have requested his Majesty to direct some Mode, by which the united Applications of his faithful Colonists may be improved into a happy and permanent Reconciliation….

Yet conclude not from this that we propose to surrender our Property into the Hands of your Ministry, or vest your Parliament with a Power which may terminate in our Destruction. The great Bulwarks of our Constitution we have desired to maintain by every temperate, by every peaceable Means; but your Ministers (equal Foes to British and American freedom) have added to their former Oppressions an Attempt to reduce us by the Sword to a base and abject submission.

Source: https://americanfounding.org/entries/second-continental-congress-july-8-1775/