A People’s Guide to Greater Boston is a new kind of guidebook to Boston and surrounding towns. Instead of giving an overview of the Freedom Trail and introducing readers to the hot restaurants and hotels of Boston, this guide uncovers the forgotten stories of radicals and activists hidden in every neighborhood and suburb. It has sections covering Boston’s urban core, the neighborhoods, adjoining towns, and suburbs from Brockton to Haverhill. In each section, the authors unearth a wide range of sites, and in some cases former sites, that are tied to Black, indigenous, labor, or other radical historic events and figures. For listeners who complain that our normal episodes are too political, or our point of view is too liberal… well, sorry in advance. This guide definitely doesn’t keep politics out of history, and its point of view is well to the left of our usual editorial voice.
Tag: 18th Century
Pamphlets, Statues, and the Selling of Joseph (episode 191)
In June 1700, a brief pamphlet titled The Selling of Joseph was published in Boston. It’s considered the first abolitionist tract to be published in what’s now the United States. Authored by Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall, the three page pamphlet uses biblical references to argue that enslaving another person could never be considered moral. Listen to find out what motivated Sewall to write the tract, how his peers in Boston reacted to it, and what its effect was on the wider world. In light of recent events, we’ll also consider the current debate around statues and their removal.
Continue reading Pamphlets, Statues, and the Selling of Joseph (episode 191)
Dissection Denied (episode 188)
Levi Ames was a notorious thief who plagued the Boston area in the years just before the Revolutionary War began. He stole everything from shirts to silver plate, crisscrossing New England, until he finally got caught right here in Boston. Tune in to learn about his criminal background, his supposed jailhouse religious conversion, and the desperate race between some of the most prominent Bostonians to steal his body after his execution.
Henry Knox’s Noble Train, with William Hazelgrove (episode 184)
Henry Knox commanded the Continental Army’s artillery, founded the academy that became West Point, and went on to become the first Secretary of War for the new United States. Before any of that, though, he was a young man in Boston. He was a Whig sympathizer who was in love with the daughter of a Tory, and he owned a bookstore frequented by both sides. Young Henry Knox was catapulted to prominence after one nearly unbelievable feat: bringing 60 tons of heavy artillery 300 miles through the New England wilderness in the dead of winter, from Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to Cambridge. William Hazelgrove joins us on the show this week to describe how Knox accomplished this nearly impossible task. He’ll also tell us about his new book Henry Knox’s Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller’s Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution, which comes out this week.
Continue reading Henry Knox’s Noble Train, with William Hazelgrove (episode 184)
Unequal Justice in Boston (episode 182)
This week we’re revisiting two classic episodes to highlight injustice in how the death penalty has been applied in our city’s history. First, we’re going to visit early Boston, in a time when execution by hanging was a shockingly common sentence for everything from murder and piracy to witchcraft and Quakerdom. During this period, hanging was the usual, and execution by fire was decidedly unusual. This punishment was reserved only for members of one race and one sex, and in Boston’s history, only two enslaved African American women were burned at the stake. After that, we’ll fast forward to the mid-19th century, when it seemed like the death penalty would soon be abolished. After 13 years without an execution in Boston, a black sailor was convicted of first degree murder. Despite the fact that white men convicted in similar circumstances were sentenced to life in prison, he was condemned to death. And despite tens of thousands of signatures on petitions for clemency, he was hanged at Leverett Street Jail in May of 1849.
Dr. Thomas Young, the Forgotten Revolutionary, with Scott Nadler (episode 179)
Doctor Thomas Young was a native of New York’s Hudson Valley who seemed to be present at all of Boston’s revolutionary events, from the creation of the committee of correspondence, to the Boston Massacre, to the Tea Party. He had been an early and influential friend of Ethan Allen, and he was a critic of established religious practice at the time. Though he died early in the Revolutionary War, he was instrumental to the revolutionary movements in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Strategy consultant and independent researcher Scott Nadler will explain who Thomas Young was and why he is a forgotten revolutionary today.
Continue reading Dr. Thomas Young, the Forgotten Revolutionary, with Scott Nadler (episode 179)
The Deleterious Effects of Marsh Miasmata (episode 177)
Instead of profiling a historic Bostonian or bringing you a dramatic story, let’s read a letter together. This brief letter gives an account of a strange, frightening, and funny occurrence on Boston’s Long Wharf in the summer of 1797. Along with one delightfully funny incident, the letter includes details about Boston’s infrastructure and commercial port at the turn of the 19th century. Don’t worry, we’ll flesh out the letter with context from other sources, as well.
Continue reading The Deleterious Effects of Marsh Miasmata (episode 177)
Epidemics and Public Health in Boston (episode 176)
I had planned an episode on a different topic for this week, but in light of our current COVID-19 state of emergency, I decided to share some classic clips about Boston’s experiences with epidemics and public health. Speaking of public health, I hope you’re already practicing social distancing, staying at home as much as you can, limiting contact with strangers, and staying six feet away from other people whenever you can. During the 1918 “Spanish” flu, cities that practiced social distancing fared much better than those that didn’t, and in that case Boston was slow to close schools, churches, theaters, and other gathering places. I hope we’ll do better this time around. Along with the 1918 flu pandemic, we’ll be discussing an 1849 cholera epidemic that Boston fought with improved sanitation, and the 1721 smallpox season, when Cotton Mather controversially used traditional African inoculation techniques that he learned from Oneismus, who was enslaved in the Mather household.
Continue reading Epidemics and Public Health in Boston (episode 176)
Remembering the Boston Massacre, with Nat Sheidley (episode 174)
March 5th marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, when a party of British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five. It was a terrible personal tragedy in a small town of 15,000 residents, and it almost immediately became politicized. Nat Sheidley, the president and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces, is going to remind us what happened on that terrible night, how tightly intertwined the lives of the soldiers and town residents were at the time, and how every generation reinterprets what the tragedy means.
Continue reading Remembering the Boston Massacre, with Nat Sheidley (episode 174)
Boston’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman (episode 163)
At just 19 years old, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette joined our American Revolution. Commissioned as a Major General in 1777, he served with distinction as an aggressive combat commander and trusted adviser to George Washington. Nearly a half century later, the aging general would return to his beloved United States for a nationwide tour, and his first and urgent destination after arriving on this continent was Boston. In the summer of 1824, he arrived in our city as the greatest celebrity it had yet seen. He was received by Governor William Eustis, former President John Adams, and Boston mayor Josiah Quincy before launching his national tour. The next spring, he returned, presiding over the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument on the 50th anniversary of the battle.
Continue reading Boston’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman (episode 163)