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On this day 250 years ago in Boston, General Gage issued an order for British Army officers in his command to let him know if they are “capable of taking sketches of a Country.” Although Gage did not disclose the nature of the assignment that needed these skills, he wanted to produce maps and directions…
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Benjamin Franklin forwarded his friend Jonathan Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph, a copy of the Continental Congress’s Petition to King George IIII. Franklin wrote that he considered that Congress, as consisting of Men, the free, unbias’d, unsollicited Choice of the Freeholders of a great Country, selected…
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On this day 250 years ago in Boston, Vice Admiral Samuel Graves reported: The rebellious proceedings of the Rhode Islanders, in forming a Magazine of Arms at Providence, and seizing the King’s Cannon at Fort George, made the Admiral lay aside his Design of keeping the Swan at Boston . . . ; and he…
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On this day 250 years ago, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety orders the removal of 2 cannon from Boston that had been hidden away by William Dawes and other Patriots in Boston. Dawes would be better known a few months later as the second rider with Paul Revere who warned John Hancock, Samuel Adams and…
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Lord Dartmouth wrote a circular letter to each of the governors of the American colonies informing them what they already knew about the First Continental Congress requesting that each colony appoint delegates to attend a Second Continental Congress scheduled to convene in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775.…
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On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, William Milnor replied to a letter from George Washington in Mount Vernon requesting arms for the Fairfax Independent Company that: I engaged 40 Musquets this Morning. Mr Palmer says he will certainly have them all ready by the first of Aprill. The Cartouch boxes, I have agreed…
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On this day 250 years ago, the Town Meeting of Watertown, Massachusetts voted “that a minute company should be formed for military exercises, each man being allowed for his attendance once a week four coppers (for refreshment).” The officers of the Watertown Minutemen were: Captain Samuel Barnard; First Lieutenant John Stratton; Second Lieutenant Phineas Stearns;…
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On New Year’s Day 250 years ago the Patriots and Loyalists in America were celebrating the New Year. A British officer in Boston recorded in his diary: Nothing remarkable but the drunkenness among the Soldiers, which is now got to a very great pitch, owing to the cheapness of the liquor, a Man may get…
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On New Year’s Eve 250 years ago, Josiah Quincy, Jr. on his mission to Britain to inform British leaders “of the true situation of political affairs” in Massachusetts, met in Bath, England with Catherine Macauley. Quincy wrote that he visited the celebrated Mrs. Macaulay: delivered my letters to her, and was favoured with a conversation…
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On this day 250 years ago in Annapolis, Maryland, Royal Governor Robert Eden wrote: The spirit of resistance against the Tea Act, or any mode of internal taxation, is as strong and universal here as ever. I firmly believe that they will undergo any hardship sooner than acknowledge a right in the British Parliament in that…
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On This Day In The Revolution 