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.
Tag: interview
The Noble Train Arrives
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Water for Boston, part 3 – Lost Towns of the Swift River Valley: Drowned by the Quabbin, with Elena Palladino (episode 322)
This week, we’re speaking with Elena Palladino, the author of the recent book Lost Towns of the Swift River Valley: Drowned by the Quabbin. This book outlines the 20th century development of Boston’s modern water supply system through the eyes of the residents of the four towns in north central Massachusetts that were sacrificed to create the Quabbin reservoir: Greenwich, Enfield, Dana, and Prescott. The story is bookended by the farewell ball, held on the night when the four towns legally ceased to exist, and largely told by following the lives of three prominent valley residents. The book reaches back to the last ice age to describe the forces that shaped the Swift River valley into the ideal site for a reservoir, to English colonization to explain why the valley remained less populated and less developed into the 1930s, and thus easier to take through eminent domain, and forward to today to understand the immense benefits modern Bostonians enjoy thanks to the sacrifice of Swift River valley residents of a century ago.
Martin Luther King’s Boston, with Dr. Imari Paris Jeffries (episode 320)
This week, Dr. Imari Paris Jeffries joins us to talk about the years when Martin Luther King, Jr lived in Boston. As you’ll hear him say in just a few minutes, Dr. King is a figure that most of us only imagine as a grainy newsreel image or a voice crackling on an old recording, so it can be hard to imagine Dr. King as flesh and blood. With Dr. Paris Jeffries’ help, we’re going to imagine the Boston that Reverend King experienced: where he studied, where he fell in love with Coretta Scott, and where he would return over a decade later, when he had already become a legend in his own time.
Continue reading Martin Luther King’s Boston, with Dr. Imari Paris Jeffries (episode 320)