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On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, Peyton Randolph died at age 54 of a stroke while having dinner with his cousin and fellow delegate to the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson. Although little known today, Randolph was the first President of the Continental Congress and the President of the first three Virginia Conventions. He…
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On this day 250 years ago in Braintree, Massachusetts, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John attending the Continental Congress an interesting account of a man named Haskings who had escaped from Boston: He had been in Irons 3 weeks, some malicious fellow having said that he saw him at the Battle of Lexinton, but…
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On this day 250 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, General Washington’s military secretary Lt. Col. Joseph Reed suggested a flag for the new Continental Navy that Washington had commissioned: Please to fix upon some particular colour for a flag, and a signal by which our vessels may know one another. What do you think of a…
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On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail: Congress has appointed Mr. [George] Wythe, Mr. [Silas] Deane and me, a Committee to collect an Account of the Hostilities committed by the Troops and Ships, with proper Evidence of the Number and Value of the Houses and other Buildings…
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On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the New Hampshire delegates to the Continental Congress formally presented their instructions from the New Hampshire requesting the Congress to advise and direct New Hampshire in establishing a new government. On this day 250 years ago the British fleet bombarded Falmouth, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine) and a…
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On this day 250 years ago, Captain Henry Mowat, the British commander of the HMS Canceaux, HMS Halifax, and two other ships anchored in the harbor of Falmouth, Massachusetts (today’s Portland, Maine) sent Lieutenant Alexander Fraser onshore to deliver this warning: After so many premeditated Attacks on the legal Prerogatives of the best of Sovereigns;…
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On this day 250 years ago, a squadron of four ships — HMS Canceaux, two other warships and a troop transport — under the command of Captain Henry Mowat anchored in Casco Bay off the Town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine). The Reverend Jacob Bailey later recalled that Mowat’s small fleet fired on a small schooner…
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Prime Minister Lord North wrote a memorandum to King George III recommending an expedition to the southern colonies to suppress the rebellion. North contended that the Patriots in the southern colonies were in a “perilous situation” because of “the great number of their negro slaves, and the…
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On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress resolved that “a director general and chief physician of the Hospital in Massachusetts be appointed in place of Doctor Benjamin Church, who is taken into custody for holding a correspondence with the enemy” and scheduled the vote for his replacement on the next day…
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On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress received a report from Gen. George Washington that a British fleet, including six ships-of-the-line, was transporting five regiments of Royal Marines to America, and that four heavily armed ships and two transports with 600 men, two mortars, four howitzers, and several other artillery pieces,…
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On This Day In The Revolution 