On this day 250 years ago in Boston, James Warren wrote to John Adams in Philadelphia:

When you are Informed, that on the variety of Changes that have taken place in this Town, it is now become A Great Hospital for Inoculation, you will wonder to see A Letter from me dated here, but so it is that the rage for Inoculation prevailing here has whirled me into its vortex, and brought me with my other self into the Croud of Patients with which this Town is now filled. Here is A Collection of Good, Bad, and Indifferent of all Orders, Sexes, Ages and Conditions. Your good Lady and Family among the first. She will give you (I presume) such an account of her self &c. as makes it unnecessary for me to say more on that head.

She will perhaps tell you that this is the reigning subject of Conversation, and that even Politics might have been suspended for A Time, if your Decleration of Independence, and some other political Movements of yours had not reached us. The Decleration came on Saturday, and diffused A general Joy. Every one of us feels more Important than ever. We now Congratulate each other as freemen. It has really raised our Spirits to A Tone Beneficial to mitigate the Malignancy of the small Pox, and what is of more Consequence seems to Animate, and Inspire every one to support, and defend the Independency he feels.

Source: “James Warren to John Adams, 17 July 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0169. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, February–August 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 389–391.]

On this day 250 years ago in Maryland, Lord Dunmore’s British fleet and soldiers on St. George’s Island continued combat with Maryland militia but were still blocked from crossing to the mainland.

Sources: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/chron/html/chron17.html; https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=18720; Wrike at 91