250 and Counting

Joseph Joachin Moraga along with a party of colonists and soldiers first set forth from Monterey to the future site of San Francisco, along with supplies for beginning a new community. He supervised the selection of a location for the presidio (fortress), then managed its construction and provided leadership. He also ensured that a ramada—a roof ssupported by poles—was built, which eventually beca...

Loyalty oaths are a peculiar thing. They ask a person to commit in writing a thing they may–or may not–have done already. Look, if you’re an undercover spy staring at children from across the street, you’re already raising more questions than answers. But if— IF —you’re an undercover spy and you want to lay low, for goodness’ sake, find a plausible lie and stick...

Separation Day is a genuine holiday in Delaware, during which the day is marked with parades and historical reenactments, though of course they (like the rest of the world) took a couple of years off because we had that little global pandemic thing. And like most good niche holidays, there’s a small faction of people who call themselves “Unificationists,” most of whom can trace t...

It’s not a misspelling; it’s a pun—oh, forget it. Connecticut had already been fighting the war for independence since Bunker Hill, but that’s not the same thing as separating politically from Great Britain. In retrospect, we made it look relatively easy, but once again, remember: something like this hadn’t been done before, and sending instructions to their delegates to vo...

The life of Elizabeth Scott is an open book and is still quite mysterious. It’s not 100% clear when she was born, other than it was “probably” in 1708. Her personal life isn’t very well known, and her work as a hymnist is still a matter of speculation, since so many of her pieces didn’t have her name on them, for some reason. It’s only been through careful analy...

While the Virginia Declaration of Rights wasn’t adopted until today, and Thomas Jefferson only got started on writing the Declaration of Independence yesterday, it’s known that the Virginia document was one of the few references that Jefferson had with him when he first began writing. The other one we know about for sure is the draft of the Virginia Constitution, which Jefferson himsel...

After temporarily tabling the Lee Resolution, which called for our independence from Great Britain, the Second Continental Congress identified its Declaration Committee. Five men were chosen to articulate why we were asking King George to go screw himself in the politest possible terms. While the Committee involved five men—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and Robert...

With the Lee Resolution on hold for the time being, but still a very real thing, the Continental Congress needed to get organized with regard to how this was going to be presented and effected. As we told you a few days ago , some delegates needed hard instructions. Others needed a little more clarity regarding the structure. Still others determined that a formal declaration was necessary. Why? Yo...

It was a busy day for corresponding with George Washington on this day, as three letters to Washington were sent. Each one had a bit of information that was negative at its worst and neutral at its best. But these letters were a bit of a problem, in that information took so long to get from one place to another: by the time Washington received warning that British troops were enroute, they were th...

As a nation, we should be able to face our failures as squarely as we crow our triumphs, and make no mistake: the invasion of, and withdrawal from Canada was a botched effort from one end to the other. Perhaps the only thing that kept it from being a bigger deal was the distraction a few weeks later of the Colonies delcaring themselves to be states independent from Great Britain. We barely had an...

It was one of the last major steps before the Declaration, and it happened on this day. The Lee Resolution, as it came to be known, was named after Richard Henry Lee, delegate from Virginia, who was given instructions from his government to propose that the Colonies become designated as free and independent states. Now, because some of the delegates didn’t have specific instructions on the L...

Mike is having a big day today (that is, his son is having a big day), so apologies for the delay in getting today’s episode to you, and thanks for your patience. William Reed was from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and while Mike has said about all there is to say, I thought I’d talk about Marblehead a little bit. I had an aunt who lived there when I was a small child (under 10 or so). I...

Using the input of George Washington from just a few days earlier, the Second Continental Congress wasted little time putting together some Continental Army protocols to ensure that this relatively ragtag group of men would adhere to some kind of formalized behavior. But the Continental Army protocols they worked on also helped to establish better pay for some personnel, or set up protocol ranks f...

The Rockland County area of New York State is some lovely country. It’s just north of New York City and, along with adjacent Duchess and Westchester Counties, could be considered the heart of the area where the Dutch settlers came and stayed. As a result you’ll find many place names that have Dutch origins. This is why so many places in the downstate New York area (the triangle above N...

Josiah Bartlett was, in fact, the inspiration for the presidential character who appears in the TV show The West Wing . The modern day president, Jed Bartlet only spelled his name with a single T at the end, but it was only around this time that the spelling of English words was starting to standardize, so Bartlett gets a pass. Bartlett, of course, was involved in the creation of the state constit...

John Thomas was a doctor and a soldier from Massachusetts who was in Quebec during the attempted invasion and was in charge of the withdrawal until he got smallpox and died on this day in 1776. Thomas discovered he liked military service about as much as he liked being a surgeon, so in 1747 he became a lieutenant in the British army. A few years later he served as a surgeon for a different regimen...

George Schetky came from a very musical family. As we mention in the episode, his father was also a cellist and composer who was originally from Vienna. As a result his home always had plenty of music present and was a regular hub of performances. In fact, one could say that the Schetky family was a musical dynasty, between George, his father, his uncle on his mother’s side (Alexander Reinag...

José Antonio de la Garza was born in what we now call San Antonio. They may have called it that back then as well, but the area was called San Antonio de Béjar at the time, and was a mission around which the eventual city grew. Texas was still a territory belonging to Mexico (i.e., Spain), and in the early 1700s the popular thought was that building these missions would strengthen Spain’s cl...

Ben Franklin in Canada isn’t completely unreasonable, even though he was already the oldest delegate to the Continental Congress at 70. He was America’s first diplomat and a very skilled one at that, with oodles of charm. But Franklin in Canada was also a bad idea, because his health was bad and it’s not like he could just shoot up the New York Thruway to get there. He had to hea...

While the Second Continental Congress always had a lot going on, not creating “an animated address” to make the Independence movement appearent to everyone seems like an odd failure. But sure enough, when it was recommended that such an address be created, this specific committee came up with nothing. Other committees appear to have presented addresses without problems, and many delega...

There’s a cool thing about Joseph Lee Smith that Mike doesn’t cover in his story today, probably because he is SO JEALOUS OF ME. Nah, I’m kidding. But the fact is, Joseph Lee Smith is tied up a little bit in my distant family history. I mentioned once before that my family can trace back to a common ancestor, Thomas Call, who arrived in America sometime in the 1640s. Thus, anyone...

Justice John Johnson had a brief career in the Indiana Supreme Court, but this shouldn’t be the legacy he leaves behind, especially inasmuch as there were no important decisions handed down during the six-ish months in which he was part of that bench. It would be his earlier efforts as an Indiana politician that you want to know about. And yes, Johnson was an active politician early in the d...

The Battle of the Cedars was actually a series of skirmishes that took place near the end of the American invasion of Quebec, which started in September 1775 . The Cedars was an area just under 30 miles west of Quebec, and in April, Benedict Arnold had placed a detachment of troops in that area, because he’d heard that British and Indian troops were forming there. When Arnold’s men eng...

The Continental Congress knew that good relationship with the Native Americans was the smart thing to do, but it took them months to put together the Committee for Indian Affairs, even when their first attempt to bring the natives in failed miserably. In that first try, they came to the upstate New York and framed the Revolution as though it was a family dispute. The Iroquois, taking that literall...

The idea of George Washington in Philadelphia sounds kind of like a no-brainer, but with dealing with a war against the greatest army in the world, plus having to put up with ill-trained troops to fight that war, he was a busy guy and didn’t get out there much. Later on, after the war, of course, it was a common sight. But given Washington’s post-war stature as the soldier who delivere...