On this day 250 years ago in New York City, John Jay on behalf of the New York Committee of Sixty wrote to the New Haven, Connecticut Committee:
Notwithstanding a small Majority of our House of Assembly have taken no notice of the Proceedings of the Congress the People in general are zealous in the Cause. A provincial Convention for the Appointment of Delegates will be held this week and this City & County & indeed, almost all the principal Counties in the Province have already chosen their Deputies.
The anonymous Letter you have recd. contains many Misrepresentations, and in Times like these Misrepresentation is too common to cause Surprize. It is the Interest of our Enemies to sow Jealousies & Dissentions among us. Nothing but mutual Confidence & a free & candid Intercourse with each other can prevent it.
. . .
In short we have no Reason to apprehend a Defection of this Colony, whose Inhabitants are as sensible of the Blessings of Liberty as any People on the Continent and are too well apprized of the Importance of the present Union to violate or destroy it.
Men there are among us, and such there are in every Colony, to whom a Defection would be an agreable Event, but happily for us this is not the Case with the Bulk of the People. At present little more is to be feared from this Class of Individuals than impotent Invectives & illiberal Calumny
Source: “New York Committee of Sixty to the New Haven Committee, 17 April 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-01-02-0076. [Original source: The Selected Papers of John Jay, vol. 1, 1760–1779, ed. Elizabeth M. Nuxoll. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, pp. 114–115.] accessed at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-01-02-0076
On that day in Alexandria, Virginia, a meeting of the Fairfax Committee elected George Washington and Charles Broadwater as delegates to the Virginia Convention. Washington and George Mason rode together from Mount Vernon to attend the meeting and Washington had wanted Mason to run for delegate. Mason declined but would be elected to take Washington’s seat when Washington departed Virginia to attend the Second Continental Congress.
Source: “[Diary entry: 17 April 1775],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0005-0008-0017. [Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1 January 1771–5 November 1781, ed. Donald Jackson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, p. 322.] accessed at https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%2217%20April%201775%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=5&sr=
And on that day in Concord, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety held a joint meeting with the Massachusetts Committee of Supplies and appointed captains for artillery companies from Boston, Dorchester, Charlestown, Marblehead, Worcester, Hadley and Concord, deployed two Four-Pounders now at Concord, four Six-Pounders to Groton, two seven-inch Brass Mortars to Acton, and ordered
that an Instructor, for the use of the cannon, be appointed, and to be put directly in pay, [and when called to duty that] six Pounds, lawful money, per month, be for Captain’ s pay in the Artillery Companies; that the First and Second Lieutenants have four Pounds; the Lieutenant of fire-works to have three Pounds five Shillings; the Sergeants to have forty-two Shillings per month; the Corporals thirty-eight Shillings per month; the common men thirty-six Shillings per month; the Drummers and Fifers thirty-eight Shillings per month; also, that four Shillings per week be allowed for their board.
Sources: https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/committee-safety-prepares-war-april-17-1775/; https://250andcounting.com/2025/04/17/april-17-1775-some-prescient-preparations/
On that day in Woburn, Massachusetts, the Town Meeting voted
to raise a number of Minutemen so called, not exceeding fifty, and they to meet half a day every week in each month the six succeeding months, viz: May, June, July, August, September and October, for Instructing themselves in the military science of handling the firelock; and if called into service, the town voted to each man a Dollar as a premium for their services, exclusive of what they shall be allowed by the government.
Source: https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/lexington-and-concord-woburn-militia/
Two days laters, the minutemen of Woburn, and companies of artillery, minutemen and militia from across Massachusetts would be called into service to defend American liberty.
On This Day In The Revolution 