With today the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, J.L. Bell has been taking a look at some of the people involved, including a Bostonian who happened to be in London when the 1773 Tea Act was passed and so was able to secure his family one of the contracts to import East India Company tea, and some of the other Boston merchants who'd secured what they thought would be lucrative contracts as tea wholesalers.
Even before the tea party itself, though, things were going south in Boston.
The US Attorney's office in Boston has begun the legal process to formally return a Revolutionary War missive from Hamilton to Lafayette to the Massachusetts State Archives, some 75 years after it was stolen by a worker there who was stealing and selling historic documents written by such authors as Washington, Franklin, Revere and Benedict Arnold. Read more.
Soldiers disembarking on Long Wharf in 1768. See it larger.
Some 250 years ago today, ships carrying British soldiers to a restive Boston moved into the inner harbor in preparation for landing. This coming Saturday, modern-day re-enactors will step off a boat at Long Wharf, march to Boston Common and begin the city's occupation all over again. Read more.
Black Perspectives interviews Mitch Kachun, author of First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory, about Attucks, both for how he died in front of what is now the Old State House and the use of his memory in later struggles for abolition and civil rights. Read more.
Via the diary of Charles Francis Adams, J.L. Bell recounts the first meeting in 40 years of the Revolutionary stalwarts, at the Adams home in Quincy.
J.L. Bell introduces us to the mystery of the missing royal seals in the waning days of British rule in Boston.
RoadTrip New England took in the Evacuation Day commemoration at Dorchester Heights this morning.
J.L. Bell unearths a British officer's report to the folks back home that mentioned how awful the weather was on Dec. 4, 1775. Only thing is, the weather was actually quite nice that day. What gives?
Revere, we know. J.L. Bell tries to piece together where William Dawes wound up.
J.L. Bell ponders who might have been taking notes during discussions of patriots leading up to the Boston Tea Party and forwarding them to His Majesty's Government.
Andrew Oliver, appointed by His Majesty's Government to enforce and collect the stamp tax on all paper products, today announced his resignation from the position on the steps of the Old State House after a rabble of protesters marched his effigy around the town, put it on "trial," found it guilty and ripped it to shreds. Read more.
Johnathan Kraft was on with Felger and Massarotti yesterday and it sure sounds like he was saying good bye, Curtatone, hello Walsh:
Unfortunately, I don’t think this was something Mayor Menino saw the value in, and it didn’t get a lot of attention.
“I think Mayor Walsh believes in the sport and understands the impact it could have on the city beyond just the sport but what you can do with the use of the city and cultural events. Hopefully we’ll see if become a reality in the near future.
Seems a member of the Fox commentariat was prattling on recently about how Estonia is now a better place than America because Estonians know their history, while Americans
Don’t even know why some guy in Boston got his head blown off because he tried to secretly raise the tax on tea. Most people don’t know that.
As Politifact and J.L. Bell point out, most people don't know that because it didn't happen:
Capt. John Baker, died in 1781, aged 75.
Roslindale is not the sort of place you associate with the Revolution, but it turns out a cemetery there, by the side of a road Washington's forces used to ferry supplies from Dedham to Boston, was the final resting place for a number of Revolutionary War soldiers. Read more.
It's the annual reenactment of the Boston Massacre, tonight at 7 at the Old State House.
J.L. Bell reports a new app maps out key Revolutionary sites in downtown Boston - and that a planned upgrade will include GPS linking, "allowing users to match colonial-era locations with today’s crossroads."
A movie company hired by the Tea Party Museum will film a re-creation of the Battle of Lexington on a field just west of Richmond, Va.
The Herald summons ye olde outrage over the moviemaking, set for next month. As the Herald notes, the Tea Party Museum is getting $21 million in Massachusetts tax subsidies.
On its site, LionHeart FilmWorks claims:
Was it Peter Salem of Framingham or Salem Poor of Andover? J.L. Bell tries to unravel the mystery of the black colonist who put Major Pitcairn in a grave.
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