Revolutionary War 250

@revwar250.bsky.social

Followers

Following

2253

Posts

Posts from 1774! The American Revolution and War of Independence and the world in which they happened, 250 years ago.

Posts Replies Media

8 JULY 1774, HARRODSBURG, KENTUCKY: Nine settlers are surveying lands when twenty Shawnee attack them out of the trees, killing two. Either tomorrow or the next day, the three dozen settlers led by James Harrod will abandon their settlement and head east to safety.

8 JULY 1774, PITTSBURGH: John Connolly, Virginia’s chief magistrate in the region, sends a message to the Shawnee demanding they apprehend Chief Logan and his war party, and any others who “committed murder last winter.”

8 JULY 1774, CHARLESTON: After three days of argument over whether their delegation should lobby the Continental Congress to adopt nonexportation as well as nonimportation, the South Carolina convention ends by simply not issuing an instruction one way or the other.

8 JULY 1774, BOSTON: Englishwoman Ann Hulton writes to friends in England that “I am sorry to say there appears no disposition yet in the People towards complying with the Port Bill. The distress it will bring on the Town will not be felt very severely before Winter.

7 JULY 1774, BOSTON: Nathaniel Coffin writes that after other provinces’ tepid response to Boston’s call for a trade embargo, “most of the considerate part of the Community began to think of nothing else than paying for the Tea & Complying with the other Requisitions of the Act.”

7 JULY 1774, NEW YORK: The Committee of 51 votes to censure the radicals for yesterday’s public meeting and to repudiate the instructions the meeting passed for New York’s congressional delegation, prompting radicals Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall to storm out.

7 JULY 1774, WINDHAM, CONNECTICUT: The Norwich Packet carries an account of Francis Green, “one of the insiduous crew who fabricated and subscribed the adulatory address”; one of those who signed an address of praise to outgoing Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson.

7 JULY 1774, FALMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS: “I am engaged in a famous Cause,” John Adams writes: “The Cause of King, of Scarborough vs. a Mob, that broke into his House, and rifled his Papers, and terrifyed him, his Wife, Children and Servants in the Night.”

Founders Online: John Adams to Abigail Adams, 7 July 1774founders.archives.gov John Adams to Abigail Adams, 7 July 1774

6 JULY 1774, BOSTON: “The harbor was quite emptied,” reports Nathaniel Coffin of life under the Port Act; “every day wore the appearance of one of our Sabbaths.” What’s more, he says, Bostonians are discouraged at other towns & provinces calling for a congress:

6 JULY 1774, NEW YORK: Led by Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall, the radicals call a public meeting at the Fields in order to ratify radical instructions for the province’s delegation to the Continental Congress, thus nullifying the committee of 51’s selection of a moderate delegation.

6 JULY 1774, FALMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS (now Portland, Maine): John Adams bemoans appeals to emotion over reason in politics: “We very seldom hear any solid Reasoning. I wish always to discuss the Question, without all Painting, Pathos, Rhetoric, or Flourish of every Kind.

6 JULY 1774, LONDON: “The state in which you found things at your arrival at Boston was better than I expected,” Lord Dartmouth writes to Thomas Gage, “& … I am inclined to hope that the tranquillity of the province & the authority of government in it will be speedily restored.”

6 JULY 1774, LONDON: John Rann is tried for the robbery of John Deval of a watch worth £10 and of seven guineas cash. The punishment for the crime is death. The key witness in the case is a woman long of Rann’s acquaintance, Eleanor Roach.

5 JULY 1774, BIG BEAVER CREEK, OHIO FRONTIER: Militia under Alexander Steele encounter traders led by William Wilson, “bringing up a quantity of skins,” who have been escorted to safety from Newcomer’s Town by a group of Indian warriors.

5 JULY 1774, DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS: General Gage writes to Lord Dartmouth of the difficulty “spirit[ing] up every friend to government, and encourag[ing] many to speak & act publicly” due to “the usurpation & tyranny established here by edicts of town meetings enforced by mobs.”

4 JULY 1774, MOUNT VERNON: “Have we not addressed the Lords, and remonstrated to the Commons? And to what end? Did they deign to look at our petitions?” George Washington replies to Bryan Fairfax’s argument that the colonies should petition before embargoing trade with Britain.

4 JULY 1774, WILLIAMSBURG: The redcoat Augustine Prevost dines with the earl and countess of Dunmore. Lady Dunmore is “a most agreable pretty woman, has a large family, two of her daughters being 11 & 12 years of age.

4 JULY 1774, NEW YORK: Competing factions on the Committee of 51 submit two competing slates for New York’s delegation to the Continental Congress: a radical one, including Alexander McDougall, and a more moderate one, which includes John Jay.

4 JULY 1774, PLYMOUTH, SOUTH COAST OF ENGLAND: A chest of 400lbs. of gunpowder explodes aboard the man-of-war Kent (74 guns), killing eleven and injuring 34. The Marines drummer boy sitting atop the chest is blown overboard but reportedly suffers no injuries.

3 JULY 1774, FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA: “The Newspapers abound with the heroic behaviour of ye Females,” merchant William Wiatt writes, who are giving up “the only Liberty which they are posses’d of (Drinking Tea).”

3 JULY 1774, NEW YORK: It’s “very extraordinary,” William Franklin writes to his father Ben, that neither Boston nor Massachusetts as a whole will even hint at repaying the East India Company or the customs office,

2 JULY 1774, YORK, MASSACHUSETTS BAY: “Mr. Winthrop tells me, that he has heard the late Governor Hutchinson … frequently say for seven Years together, that Salem was the most proper, convenient, and suitable Place in the Province for the Seat of Government,” relates John Adams.

1 JULY 1774, MOUNT PLEASANT, VIRGINIA: James Madison feels Virginia is attacked from both east and west: “I must confess not a little disturbed by the sound of War blood and plunder on the one Hand and the Threats of Slavery and Oppression on the Other.

1 JULY 1774, PHILADELPHIA: The Pennsylvania committee of correspondence’s letter to the Virginia committee calls for a continental congress, but stresses throughout that the delegates must only be chosen by legal means—by the legally elected provincial assemblies:

1 JULY 1774, YONKERS, NEW YORK: Mary Eliza Philipse writes to her second cousin, Sarah Livingston, to congratulate her on her marriage to John Jay: “It was no small Mortification to me In not having It In my Power to accept of your kind Invitation of being one of the Bridesmaids.

1 JULY 1774, LONDON: In a private audience, former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson tells George III and the earl of Dartmouth that he does not believe the other colonies will join Massachusetts in a boycott of trade with Great Britain.

30 JUNE 1774, PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE: Local officials write to the board of customs collectors in Massachusetts about a cargo of legal tea that arrived. Though a committee of “gentlemen” prevented the mob from attacking and destroying the cargo, it was not allowed to land.

30 JUNE 1774, LONDON: “I hear a non-importation agreement is intended,” Ben Franklin writes to his son William, royal governor of New Jersey. “If it is general, and the Americans agree in it, the present Ministry will certainly be knocked up, and their Act repealed;

29 JUNE 1774, DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS BAY: Governor Thomas Gage issues a proclamation against the “unlawful” Solemn League & Covenant and the “scandalous, traiterous and seditious Letter” accompanying it.

29 JUNE 1774, BOSTON: 129 merchants sign a complaint against the committee of correspondence, who “falsely, maliciously, scandalously, vilified and abused the character of many of us, only for dissenting from them in opinion;