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On this day 250 years ago in Plymouth, Massachusetts a crowd of Patriots accosted merchants from nearby Marshfield who had travelled to Plymouth to attend an auction of hemp and other commodities. The Marshfield merchants were members of an association that had pledged loyalty to the King and Parliament. Members of the Plymouth crowd shouted…
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On this day 250 years ago, the Town of Walpole, Massachusetts voted that “one Quarter part of the Training Band Soldiars should be Inlisted in the Province Service to be Ready at a minutes warning.” The Town also voted that these minutemen should be paid out of the town’s treasury two shillings per day and…
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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 This Day In The Revolution 