250 and Counting

John Henry Hobart was born on this day in 1775, and he came that close to dying on the same day in 1830, on September 12. We read once that, statistically, men tend to die before “big” dates, e.g. birthdays and major holidays, while women tend to die afterwards. In Claude’s family anyway, it does have a ring of general truth to it. Go figure. Although Hobart was an Episcopalian m...

Let’s talk state vexillology. Believe it or not, there are people who are very passionate about state flags. (Not me, he said, about to go into a mini-rant. ) Most states have a very utilitarian purpose. They kind of lean in, announce themselves, and lean out again. Some flags are weirdly cluttered (New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Delaware). Some flags are rather boring (Alabama, Minnes...

We mentioned a while back that John Adams had siblings, as did George Washington. This wasn’t one of them, and as far as anyone can tell, it’s more of a cousin-type relationship. William Washington essentially won a bet with his brothers, and his prize was the ability to join the militia in Virginia to fight for independence. From this day in 1775 until 1781 he was engaged in multiple...

As the winter of 1775 approached, George Washington had to think about the state of the siege of Boston. In short, housing and clothing thousands of men in a New England winter is a very different proposition than doing it in the summer. So Washington convened his War Council to discuss the possibility of breaking the siege by attacking the city from a different direction. Meanwhile up in Canada,...

The riflemen in the Continental Army were a special breed of soldier. They weren’t subject to all the drudge work that most of the other soldiers had to endure. The downside to this is, they knew it and they took advantage of it. So when one rifleman got himself in trouble, word got out and suddenly a relatively small problem turns into a relatively big one. And while George Washington kinda...

The Independence Hurricane from September 2 is still going strong, and on this day it made landfall again, this time in Newfoundland, Canada. The devastation was immense, and perhaps would have been worse had it happened in modern times (we get it, there are satellites and stuff now). It remains Canada’s worst natural disaster and it’s still in the Top Ten chart for North Atlantic hurr...

As late as the 1970s, pioneers like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone had achieved a kind of mythical status, largely because of fictionalized stories created about them by the folks at Disney. Sometimes it gets tough to determine what’s fiction and what isn’t, since they tend to embellish things that may have actually happened for the sake of a story. (Not a knock on Disney, so don&#8217...

The Turtle, or the American Turtle as it’s often called, was invented by a man who thought it should be possible to stealthily attach a bomb to a ship and then detonate it shortly thereafter, by approaching the ship from under the waterline. The Turtle was a brilliant idea in concept, if not in execution. There were just too many things that had to go exactly right for the turtle to successf...

The Second Continental Congress tried appealing to the Canadian leadership in order to get support for the Independence cause, but they apparently weren’t biting. So George Washington tried a different tack: write to the Canadian people themselves. He reasoned that the folks in charge were mostly wealthy landowners who were doing all right financially under British rule. Maybe, he thought, t...

American forces began to move on Fort St. Jean in Canada. Unfortunately they ran into a couple of unexpected obstacles on the way, so they had to adjust their approach. This led to a six-week siege of the fort. The post September 5, 1775: Setback in Canada appeared first on 250 and Counting .

An invasion of Canada seems a little absurd on its face, but when you think about it in the context of the Revolution, it actually starts to make sense. After all, Canada was also a few British colonies in the North American continent, but they were a little more obedient to the whims of Parliament and they had Loyalist leanings. So the Patriots had a choice between bringing them over ideologicall...

Anyone who’s been to Boston in the modern day has a hard time recognizing that the city of Boston was just the segment in the top center of the map. The area called Boston Neck is clearly marked at the bottom left, and wasn’t part of the city. The Continental Army’s line ran about where the blue line ends. (The blue line is modern-day Washington Street.) It was the city having th...

Sometimes when we research these shows we learn stuff that doesn’t have a lot to do with history—not directly—but is interesting nonetheless, and does have some historical impact. Hurricanes would be one of those things. On the east coast of the US, we pretty much take them for granted as a weather phenomenon. They’re definitely scary and destructive, and oftentimes the damage comes af...

Nothing beats the speed of gossip, and apparently the Virginia Gazette on this day had plenty of it to share. A few of the stories were quite serious, relating to events in both Virginia and Massachusetts. They closed out with a local story that had a more humorous edge to it…though it’s likely that the people involved had a hard time seeing the humor in it all. PS Why is there a pictu...

The cover art for today’s episode may be one of the most famous art pieces depicting an event of the American Revolution, and it happened under the Liberty Tree, which is clearly marked here. This event, the tarring and feathering of Loyalist John Malcolm, took place about 18 months earlier and shows Malcolm already tarred and feathered, and now he’s having (also marked) tea poured int...

The HMS Rose was a 20-gun ship of the Royal Navy, built in 1757. When hostilities broke out between the Colonies and the Crown, the Rose was tasked with preventing smuggling off the coast of Connecticut and (especially) Rhode Island. She spent the first few years of the Revolution in Narragansett Bay, in the Long Island Sound, in the Hudson River and down to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The Ros...

George Washington was a very good general and a disciplined soldier, but the fact that his men weren’t…well, that worried him a lot. He had a huge number of soldiers with him at Cambridge for the Siege of Boston. But since the British were so bottled up in the city, there weren’t many things for them to do other than patrol and keep an eye open for any possible moves the British...

As farfetched as it sounds today, considering the need to invade and occupy Canadian territory was considered important early in the war effort, largely because the colonies in the Great White North had been treated a little more favorably by Parliament. Therefore they were more likely to lean on the Loyalist side of things. In making the decision to do so, however, there were lots of things to co...

Frederick Graff feels like one of those guys who gets so little credit for what he did, you wind up feeling pretty badly for him. But the fact is, if not for him, over three dozen cities in the US wouldn’t have adequate water systems. So good on Frederick! Hoist your favorite beverage in his honor! (Though, in this case, it really should be water.) The post August 27, 1775: Frederick Graff a...

Rhode Island has been proactive about the war effort ever since the events at Lexington and Concord. And one thing you’re going to learn today is just how much coastline there is to Rhode Island, and why having a navy was important to them. But it’s important to get an outsider’s view of things, and this wasn’t necessarily the Continental Congress’ viewpoint. It took...

Today we take a look at two letters composed today: The first was an account of the activities around the Battle of Bunker Hill, from the time they were assigned to protect the hill, to the time they were finally defeated by the British—because they were out of ammunition. In the other letter, Thomas Jefferson composes a letter to a fellow Virginia politician in which he writes very specific prose...

Fraunces Tavern is an historic landmark and the oldest and most historic bar in New York City. That’s what it says on their website, so. At various points in its history, Fraunces Tavern served as a headquarters for George Washington, a venue for peace negotiations with the British, and housing federal offices in the Early Republic. The building is still open to the public ( there’s a...

When the Olive Branch Petition arrived in England, its contents hardly even mattered. There were elements of Parliament who were strongly disposed toward punishing the Colonies, and punishing them hard. The folks who were still pro-American were dwindling in number, because of the way it could affect their political futures. In short, the King had decided what he thought, and how he was going to h...

Things were heating up all over, but it was still especially prevalent in the northeast. This time around, problems are cropping up in New Hampshire. The HMS Scarborough was designated to keep the peace by patrolling the mouth of the Piscataqua River, but when relations broke down between the British and the colonists there (and with good reason), when the ship ran out of supplies they had to re-l...

We have two events taking place on this day. First, Rhode Island allows the death penalty for certain activities at sea. Next, word goes out that the Continental Army is in need of supplies…lots of supplies. It’s looking like General Washington isn’t seeing an end to the Siege of Boston anytime soon. The post August 21, 1775: Rhode Island Cracks Down appeared first on 250 and Cou...