On this day 250 years ago, Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, an immigrant from Ireland, led 1400 Continental soldiers, New York and Connecticut militia, and Green Mountain Boys from Vermont to assault Fort Saint Jean (also called Fort Saint John), Canada. Like four earlier assaults during the previous week, the Americans were repulsed but instead of retreating they began building entrenchments and gun placements in order to besiege the fort. The fort was manned by 600 British soldiers, Canadian militia and Indigenous allies, was well-fortified with artillery, and the British had stockpiled supplies. The British were prepared for a long siege.

Sources: https://revolutionary-war.org/campaigns/canadian-campaign/siege-of-fort-saint-jean; https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/siege-of-fort-st-john-1775/; https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/richard-montgomery/

On this day 250 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, General Washington ordered that

The Revd Mr John Murray is appointed Chaplain to the Rhode-Island Regiments and is to be respected as such.

Washington appointed Rev. Murray, a recent immigrant to America from England, as a chaplain despite complaints about his radical religious views and suspicion based on his English origin that he might be a spy. After the Revolution, Murray would become the founder of the Universalist Church in the United States.

Source: “General Orders, 17 September 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0002. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 1–2.]

And also on that day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about Rev. John Zubly taking a seat in Congress as a delegate from Georgia:

as he is the first Gentleman of the Cloth who has appeared in Congress, I can not but wish he may be the last. Mixing the sacred Character, with that of the Statesman, as it is quite unnecessary at this Time of day, in these Colonies, is not attended with any good Effects.

Source: “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 17 September 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0181. [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. 280–281.]