18th Century Archives

Boston’s 17th Century Interstate System (episode 352)

America’s first “interstate” highway was built to link Boston to New York City. The 17th century Boston Post Road is often overlooked in the city’s early history, but it marked the earliest and one of the most ambitious attempts to knit the fragmented English colonies of North America into a single, cohesive entity. From Boston’s first post office, which accepted only overseas letters, to the post riders who braved “mountainous passages” and roaring rivers, this primitive road network was the original interstate, forged not just for convenience, but for the survival of the British colonial project.

In this episode, we’ll explore how the Boston Post Road evolved from an indigenous trade route into the King’s best highway, a crucial artery for colonial and early federal correspondence. We’ll trace the routes of the upper Post Road through the wilderness of Central Massachusetts and Connecticut and the coastal lower Post Road that shaped the roads and transportation networks of modern New England. Along the way, we’ll uncover the stories of the people who marked the miles, from wealthy landowners like Paul Dudley, to determined travelers like Madam Sarah Kemble Knight, to George Washington, who arrived in Boston for his first official visit as President along the Post Road.

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Paul Revere NOT on the Road to Concord (episode 351)

For Patriots Day this year, let’s talk about Paul Revere. Instead of focusing on his famous ride 251 years ago, let’s go into the back catalog to uncover some lesser known aspects of Paul Revere’s involvement in the Patriot cause. First, we’ll look at Revere as a messenger. He’s known for his famous ride on April 18, 1775, but Paul Revere was chosen for that ride because he already had a reputation as a reliable express rider, carrying secret messages from the Boston Committee of Correspondence on horseback to patriots in New York, Philadelphia, New Hampshire, and beyond. Then, we’ll turn the clock forward and look at Revere’s support for the cause after his famous ride. In 1779, Paul Revere was the colonel in charge of the Massachusetts artillery regiment, and he was tapped as one of the commanders of an expedition to dislodge the British from the Penobscot Bay in today’s Maine. The resulting fiasco was the worst American naval defeat prior to Pearl Harbor, and it left Revere’s soldiers half-starved and wandering through the Maine wilderness. In this episode, we’ll learn how much blame Revere bore for the chaotic retreat.

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The Original Crypto: 18th Century Burial Practices at Old North Church (episode 347)

At a time when most Bostonians were interred at burying grounds with familiar names like Copp’s Hill and the Granary, usually under slate markers decorated with winged skulls or cherubs, the congregants at Old North and just a handful of other Boston churches preferred to be sealed up inside the basement walls of their beloved churches. In this episode, co-host emerita Nikki is going to be interviewing one of her colleagues at Old North Illuminated, education director Emily Spence. They will be visiting the nearly-300 year old crypt that lies beneath the floorboards of the historic church, and talking about why it exists, who is buried there, and what researchers learned when the tombs were opened for a restoration project three years ago.

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Religion and the Revolution at 250, with Nikki Stewart and Dr. Kyle B Roberts (episode 346)

In this episode, Nikki Stewart of Old North Illuminated and Dr. Kyle B. Roberts of the Congregational Library and Archives discuss the pivotal role of religion in the American Revolution. The conversation explores how Boston’s religious landscape—ranging from established Congregationalist churches to the Church of England—acted as a catalyst for revolutionary thought or a source of complex loyalist tension. As the 250th anniversary of independence approaches in 2026, both organizations are shifting their focus toward a more inclusive historical narrative. Initiatives like “New England’s Hidden Histories” and new educational exhibits aim to uncover the long-overlooked stories of Black and Indigenous congregants. Ultimately, the episode emphasizes that understanding these intricate ties between faith and politics is essential for interpreting modern American identity and fostering a more nuanced perspective on our shared history.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Battle of Bunker Hill at 250, with Mike Troy of the American Revolution Podcast (episode 329)

June 17th, 2025 will mark the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was the largest Revolutionary War battle to take place in the Boston area and the bloodiest battle of the war (at least on the British side). Following the outbreak of war in April, the siege of Boston soon became a stalemate, but until Bunker Hill, British officers expected the American provincial army to evaporate the first time they came face to face with the fearsome power of the King’s army. Fought over a year before America declared independence, Bunker Hill proved this assumption wrong, with the redcoats suffering devastating casualties, even though they defeated the Americans in a pyrrhic victory. In just a few minutes, I’m going to be joined by Mike Troy, host of the American Revolution Podcast. Together, we’re going to uncover where the battle was fought and how you can find traces of the battlefield in today’s Charlestown. We’ll look at the officers and men on both sides of the battle, and what the experience of battle was like for the untested American militia soldiers, as well as the lessons that both sides learned from the carnage of June 17, 1775.

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Drinker, Draftsman, Soldier, Spy (episode 321)

250 years ago this week, General Thomas Gage, the royal governor of Massachusetts and commander in chief of all British forces in North America, sent two British spies into the rural communities around Boston. He carefully selected two redcoats to go undercover, roaming highways and country lanes and taking painstaking notes about their terrain and relative military advantages. First they surveyed the western roads to Worcester, then the northern roads to Concord, anticipating a spring offensive against one town or the other. Unfortunately for them, however, their disguises weren’t as good as they hoped, and they were soon under nearly constant surveillance from patriot counterintelligence that left them in fear for their lives.

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Beastly Boston (episode 318)

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! This week, we’re talking about Boston’s first encounters with exotic animals. I will be talking about the very first lion to make an appearance in Boston, but instead of tigers and bears, we’ll take a look at Boston’s experiences with elephants and alligators. Our story will span almost 200 years, with the first lion being imported in the early 1700s, the first elephant in the late 1700s, and the first alligators that most Bostonians got acquainted with were installed in the Public Garden in 1901. Can you imagine proper late-Victorian Bostonians crowding around a pool of alligators to watch them tear live animals limb from limb? I couldn’t either before digging into this week’s episode.

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