On this day 250 years ago, George Washington was visiting the home of his sister-in-law Anna Maria Dandridge Bassett (Martha Washington’s sister) and her husband Burwell Bassett Sr. Burwell Bassett was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses with Washington and would join his brother-in-law as a member of the First and Second Virginia Conventions that took control of Virginia after Royal Governor Dunmore dissolved the House of Burgesses and continue as an elected member of the Virginia legislature throughout the Revolution.

Source: https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=GEWN-print-01-03-02-0003-0022-0007

Today in Virginia we are again electing our State legislators. I hope you exercise your right to vote for the representatives of your choice, the right that our Patriot antecedents risked all to gain for themselves and future generations of Virginians and Americans. Please choose the candidates who honor the legacy of the Patriots who founded our Nation by showing their commitment to protecting the right to vote of all Americans now and in the future.

On this day 250 years ago George Washington was authorized to survey 10,000 acres along the Kanawha River in western Virginia (now in West Virginia) by the Virginia Governor’s Council. He had been granted 5000 acres for his service in the French and Indian War and purchased the remaining acreage from other officers who had been granted land for their service. Within a year Native Americans would be fighting Virginia militia in this area and the combat would continue throughout the Revolution.

Source: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/the-kanawha-tracts/

On this day 250 years Patriots in both Boston and New York City held public meetings to organize opposition to the importation of East India Company tea. The Sons of Liberty in New York organized a huge crowd outside of the King’s Arms coffeehouse to protest the tea then on its way to New York. In Boston,  Samuel Adams called a town meeting at Faneuil Hall that elected John Hancock as moderator and then declared anyone who aids or abets the “unloading receiving or vending the tea is an enemy to America!” 

Sources: https://www.onthisday.com/date/1773/november/5; https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/faneuil-hall; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuccotti_Park

On this day 250 years ago Elizabeth Griscom of Philadelphia ran off to New Jersey to elope with John Ross. You will recognize her and her contributions to American independence under the name “Betsy Ross”.

Source: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/betsy-ross

On this day 250 years ago, citizens of Boston met under the Liberty Tree and adopted the Resolutions of the Town of Boston written by Sam Adams that resolved

“That a virtuous and steady opposition to the Ministerial Plan of governing
America, is absolutely necessary to preserve even the shadow of Liberty, and is a duty which every Freeman in America owes to his Country to himself and to his Posterity [and]

That whoever shall . . . in any wise aid or abet in unloading receiving or vending the Tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an Enemy to America”

Source: http://www.samuel-adams-heritage.com/documents/resolutions-of-town-of-boston.html

On this day 250 years ago the Sons of Liberty in Boston delivered the following letter to one of the consignees of the tea then on ships on their way to Boston:

The Freemen of this Province understand, from good authority, that there is a quantity of tea consigned to your house by the East India Company, which is destructive to the happiness of every well-wisher to his country. It is therefore expected that you personally appear at [the] Liberty Tree, on Wednesday next, at twelve o’clock at noon day, to make a public resignation of your commission…

Fail not upon your peril.

Source:

Click to access AP-US-History-I-Lesson-4-Steeping-Tea-in-Boston-Harbor.pdf

On this day 250 years ago, the Cambridge, Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence issued a letter asserting:

If we cease to assert Our rights we shall dwindle into supineness and the chains of slavery shall be fast rivetted upon us …

The late act of the British Parliament impowering the East India Company to export tea … is a recent proof of the determination of the Ministry to persue their Diabolical Plan to inslave the Americans.

One of the Members of the Cambridge Committee who signed the letter was an elderly farmer from nearby Menotomy named Samuel Whittemore. Little more than a year later, then 78-year old Captain Samuel Whittemore of the Cambridge militia shot retreating British soldiers after the Battle of Concord from behind a stone wall near his home. He was bayonetted six times and clubbed in the head, losing half his face, yet somehow survived to live to age 96.

Source: https://allthingsliberty.com/2017/06/bayonetting-untold-story-capt-samuel-whittemore/

On this day 250 years ago, Sarah Franklin Bache wrote her father Benjamin Franklin in London that she was “much disapointed at your not coming home this Fall.” Franklin was serving as the agent of the American colonies in London and was working to convince the British Government to change its policies oppressing the Colonies.

Source: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%2230%20October%201773%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=2&sr=

On this day 250 years ago, the British 23rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Welch Fusiliers), and the 4th Battalion, Royal Regiment of Artillery, paraded on the outskirts of New York City before the Royal Governor and a large crowd of New Yorkers. The military maneuvers by these units, which were garrisoned in New York City, were intended in part to intimidate the growing Patriot sentiment in New York that was then organizing to block imports of East India Company tea.

Source: https://www.rwfmuseum.org.uk/downloads/070319-journal-of-the-brigade-of-the-american-revolution-winter-2011.pdf

On this day 250 years ago Josiah Flagg conducted a “final Grand Concert” at Faneuil Hall with about 50 players from the militia band of Boston that he had organized. Flagg later served as a Patriot lieutenant colonel during the Revolution. 

Source: https://prabook.com/web/josiah.flagg/3767419