January 1776 was a dark and scary time in Boston. By this time, the city had been on a wartime footing for nine months following the battles at Lexington and Concord the preceding April. The redcoats had transformed the city into an armed garrison, but they were outnumbered and cut off by the patriots who surrounded them in Roxbury and Cambridge. The Americans had the numbers, but the British had artillery regiments and the guns of the Royal Navy to dissuade a frontal assault on the city. Those Navy ships were a lifeline for the British troops, bringing in enough food and supplies to keep them alive, but only barely. Even though many residents had fled the town, leaving mostly loyalists behind, there was not enough food or firewood to go around. Things weren’t much better on the other side of the lines. The patriots had enough to eat, though they were usually gouged on the prices that winter. But they were spending the winter shivering in hastily-built barracks with no insulation and little firewood. They must have watched with some jealousy as the redcoats across the river tore down the meetinghouse in North Square to use the timber as firewood. On January 24, George Washington seethed in a letter to John Hancock, “no man upon Earth wishes more ardently to destroy the Nest in Boston, than I do—no person would be willing to goe greater lengths than I shall to accomplish It, If it shall be thought advisable—But If we have neither Powder to Bombard with, nor Ice to pass on, we shall be in no better situation than we have been in all the year.” Little did the general know that Boston’s salvation was just a day away. The next day, 25-year-old Henry Knox arrived in Cambridge with 60 tons of artillery in tow. Against all odds, he had managed to float, cart, and sled 59 cannons and mortars from Fort Ticonderoga, on the icy shores of Lake Champlain in upstate New York, over the Berkshire mountains, to the Continental headquarters in Cambridge. This week, we are going to revisit an interview that first aired in May 2020 with author William Hazelgrove about his book Henry Knox’s Noble Train and the audacious expedition that saved Boston 250 years ago this week.
Category: Episodes
Burgoyne’s Thespians and Boston’s First Theater Season, with Susan Lester
With the British military occupying Boston and patriots laying siege to the city, conditions in Boston deteriorated in the early weeks of 1776, with shortages of food, firewood, insulation, and almost everything leading to desperate circumstances. Against this grim background, audiences flocked to a makeshift playhouse to watch Boston’s first season of theater, including a play called “The Blockade of Boston” that premiered 250 years ago this week, only to be interrupted by a real life attack on the British lines in Charlestown. Our first listener-guest, Dr. Susan Lester, joins us this week to describe what her research has revealed about the legality of theater in colonial Boston, the format of a typical 18th century performance, and even the identities of a few of the actors who tread the boards at Faneuil Hall in January 1776.
Continue reading Burgoyne’s Thespians and Boston’s First Theater Season, with Susan Lester
Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston and Urban Glory, with Michelle LeBlanc (episode 343)
Allan Rohan Crite was a world renowned artist who grew up in Boston’s South End in the early part of the 20th century. After enrolling in the Children’s Art Center and graduating from English High, he attended the MFA School and graduated in 1936. His work was first shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1936 and his first solo show at the Boston Athaneaum was in 1948. He went on to work at the Charlestown Navy Yard for over thirty years, while his paintings drew local and then national and international attention. During this time, he attended Harvard Extension School, where he earned an ALB degree in 1968. Looking at all of these experiences together, Allan Rohan Crite truly was a son of Boston, his work opening a window on the experience of Black Bostonians in the 30s, 40s, and beyond. If you are a lover of Boston history, you won’t want to miss the special exhibition of his work on view at the Boston Athenaeum through January 24 and at the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum through January 19th. In this episode, Michelle Leblanc from the Athenaeum joins us to discuss the two wonderful exhibitions Crite’s work that are on display in Boston right now and what we can learn about Boston history from them.
Interpreting Christmas, with Ken Turino
In this episode, Nikki is joined by Ken Turino, a public history career professional and expert on the interpretation of Christmas at historic sites. This week, they’ll be talking about the Boston origins of some of our favorite Christmas traditions, like Christmas cards and Christmas trees. They will also be talking about Ken’s new book Interpreting Christmas at Museums and Historic Sites, which offers practical guidance on how to use holiday cheer to engage interested visitors without alienating those who don’t celebrate.
How the Nascent Navy’s Nancy Armed the Army (episode 341)
By late November 1775, George Washington and the Continental Army encircling Boston faced a crisis: their soldiers were facing a frigid New England winter, their enlistments were expiring, and they were critically short of guns and gunpowder and essential supplies. General Washington was desperate to strike the British before his army melted away, even contemplating the use of spears as a last resort against the world’s most powerful military. The Continentals’ luck began to change when Washington commissioned a small squadron of six lightly armed schooners, the first American Navy, and ordered them to patrol New England waters. One of these schooners, the Lee, was commanded by a Captain John Manley of Marblehead. Operating under Washington’s directive to harass enemy shipping, Captain Manley cleverly tricked and captured the British ordnance brigantine Nancy near Boston Harbor on November 29, 1775. This single ship that had strayed from the safety of a larger convoy proved to be an “immense acquisition” for the patriots, yielding a treasure trove of military stores: cannons, thousands of muskets, and perhaps most importantly, a cache of ammunition and gunpowder that, paired with Henry Knox’s noble train of artillery, would provide the Continentals with enough firepower to finally drive the British out of Boston.
Continue reading How the Nascent Navy’s Nancy Armed the Army (episode 341)
Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer, and the Origins of a National Myth, with Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin (episode 340)
This will be our 2025 Thanksgiving episode, and nothing says Thanksgiving quite like football… At least for most people, I guess. Somehow, the gene for caring about football missed me. The last football game I saw was a Super Bowl, and cohost emerita Nikki remembered that Beyonce sang Formation that year, which means it must have been 2016. All that to say that if the new book Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer, and the Origins of a National Myth can get me interested in the early history of football, it can do it for anyone. Inventing the Boston Game follows the story of a group of upper-class Boston private school boys who called themselves the Oneida foot ball club. During the height of the Civil War in 1862, they started playing a ball game on Boston Common. Authors Mike Cronin and Kevin Tallec Marston join us this week to discuss how generations have argued about whether their Boston Game was some of the first soccer in the US or the first organized American football team. Especially after a group of teammates placed a stone monument on Boston Common 100 years ago this week, it was clear that they were deliberately inserting themselves into American sports history, but a century later it is hard to tell how much of their shared mythology was true.
Revolutionary Self Defense (episode 339)
In this episode, we’ll revisit two murder trials that were held in revolutionary Boston. The first case was against four ordinary sailors accused of murdering an officer of the Royal Navy on a ship in Massachusetts coastal waters, and the other was against nine British prisoners of war who were accused of murdering a guard aboard a prison ship in Boston Harbor. The sailors were accused in 1769, when Boston was under military occupation and the tensions that would result in the Boston Massacre were coming to a head. The redcoats stood trial over a decade later, in the midst of a bloody war that had touched the lives of all Bostonians by 1780. In both cases, attorneys and judges worried whether a jury could deliver justice in a polarized city. Both cases were argued by signers of the Declaration of Independence, with John Adams defending the American sailors in 1780 and Robert Treat Paine prosecuting the redcoats in 1780. In both cases, the defendants argued that they had acted in self defense, and amazingly, both cases ended in acquittal.
Boston’s Country Fair (episode 338)
In October 1855, exactly 170 years ago this week, Boston hosted the third annual exhibition of the United States Agricultural Society, a grand five-day event that was lauded in the press as “a greater show of cattle and horses than has ever been given previously in the world.” Set on a newly created, fifty-acre fairground in the South End, the exhibition showcased Boston’s civic pride and economic power at a time when agriculture was still a primary driver of the American economy. While originally envisioned to showcase a range of crops, fruits, and agricultural implements, the Boston fair ultimately focused almost entirely on livestock and featured a significant amount of horse and harness racing, which was controversial in a city with a reputation for uptight conservatism. The event was promoted as a wholesome, family-friendly affair, with extensive amenities for women and children, deliberately distancing itself from the rough-and-tumble reputation of traditional cattle markets. The exhibition successfully attracted throngs of visitors, offered over $10,000 in cash prizes, and drew national attention, ultimately contributing to the popularity of harness racing in New England and strengthening the case for federal support of scientific agriculture.
America’s First Traitor (episode 337)
250 years ago today, a letter from George Washington revealed a devastating secret: there was a British spy at the highest level of patriot leadership. The traitor was none other than Dr. Benjamin Church, a man who seemed to embody the American cause. He was a Harvard-educated physician who had been appointed as our first surgeon general, he was a close confidant of leaders like Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren, and he was officially in charge of organizing the war effort as head of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. Church had risked his life for liberty and was trusted with the revolution’s deepest political and military secrets, but a coded letter, a secret mistress, and a suspicious baker would unravel a web of deceit that would make Benedict Arnold blush.
The Hard Work of Hope, with Michael Ansara (episode 336)
This week’s guest is Michael Ansara, author of a new volume of memoir called The Hard Work of Hope. It is a personal story, but it’s also a history of Boston in the 1960s, and especially of anti-war activism at Harvard and organizing among the New Left political movement during the Vietnam era. Michael went from a middle class childhood in Brookline to the playground of the elites at Harvard, just at the historical moment when the civil rights movement entered mainstream consciousness and as the US government dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam. Michael remembers the chaos and fear of those times, but also the patriotism and the optimism of youth that drove so many of his contemporaries, and the relentless organizing it took to shape that youthful optimism into a political movement that had the potential to change the world, though that potential may not have been fully realized. In our conversation, he looks back on hard-won lessons learned and grapples with the question of how today’s organizers might save a democracy teetering on the brink.
Continue reading The Hard Work of Hope, with Michael Ansara (episode 336)