Tag: 18th Century

Granite, Glass, and the Construction of King’s Chapel (episode 279)

This week’s story ties one of modern Boston’s iconic Freedom Trail sites to the earliest days of English settlement in the Shawmut Peninsula.  It’s a story that ties the first Puritan to die in Boston to the hated Royal governor Edmund Andros, and it ties some of the earliest non-English immigrants in Boston to Ben Franklin and Abigail Adams through the invention of two local industries.  King’s Chapel is beloved in Boston today, but it was seen as an unwelcome invasion when it was first proposed in 1686.  In this week’s show, we’ll look at how Boston found room for an unwanted church, how the church was reinvented three times, and how it launched local glassmaking and founded the granite industry in Quincy.  We’ll also see where you can still find the last traces of the original, wooden King’s Chapel hiding inside the walls of a more modern church, but not here in Boston.


Continue reading Granite, Glass, and the Construction of King’s Chapel (episode 279)

Revolution’s Edge, with Patrick Gabridge and Nikki Stewart (episode 276)

The new play “Revolution’s Edge” will debut at Old North Church in June 2023.  It tells the story of three Bostonians and their families on the eve of the Revolution.  Mather Byles is the Loyalist rector of Old North Church, Cato is an African American man who’s enslaved by Byles, and John Pulling is a whiggish ship’s captain and member of the Old North vestry.  The three men have very different stations in life, but they all have young families with intertwined lives, and on April 18, 1775, they all had very different decisions to make about those lives.  My guests this week are Patrick Gabridge, producing artistic director of the Plays in Place theater company, and Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated.  Together, they’ll tell us how this, um, revolutionary new drama came to be.


Continue reading Revolution’s Edge, with Patrick Gabridge and Nikki Stewart (episode 276)

The Persuasive Powers of John Adams (episode 272)

John Adams later described the prosecution of William Corbet as a case “of an extraordinary Character, in which I was engaged and which cost me no small Portion of Anxiety.”  In 1769, four common sailors were brought into Boston to stand trial for murder.  The victim was an officer in the royal navy, and the crime had taken place just off Cape Ann, almost within sight of home.  As Boston suffered under military occupation, could a military victim receive justice in a radicalized Boston?  And what really happened on that ship near Marblehead?  Had the dead officer really just been searching for cargo that the captain hadn’t declared and paid customs on?  Or were they up to something darker, like illegally kidnapping Massachusetts sailors and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy?


Continue reading The Persuasive Powers of John Adams (episode 272)

Watchmen, Redcoats, and a Fire in the Old Boston Jail (episode 267)

In the 1760s, the town gaol (jail) where prisoners were held while awaiting trial was a cold, dark, and truly terrifying edifice on Queen Street, just up the hill from the Old State House.  When a fire was discovered in the jailhouse just after 10pm on January 30, 1769, it briefly became the focal point of the long-simmering tensions between the town and the occupying British soldiers that would eventually culminate in the Boston Massacre.  Who deliberately set the fire in the jail, and why were some of the prisoners grievously injured before they could be rescued?  Who was responsible for patrolling the streets of a city under military occupation?  What was the legal role of the occupiers during a fire emergency, and how did the fire at the old Boston jail become a surprising story of cooperation between the rival factions in Boston?  Listen now for all those answers and more!


Continue reading Watchmen, Redcoats, and a Fire in the Old Boston Jail (episode 267)

They Burnt Tolerable Well: In Search of Boston’s First Street Lamps (episode 266)

How can something as simple as streetlights transform a city?  What can the Boston Massacre teach us about how dark the streets and alleyways of Boston were in the years before streetlights?  How did the town decide to buy English oil lamps for the streets but fuel them with American whale oil?  How did Boston’s very first street lamps survive a shipwreck and the Boston Tea Party, and who decided where they would be installed and how they would be maintained?  In the era of climate change, what does the future hold for Boston’s quaint remaining gas street lamps?  Let’s find out!


Continue reading They Burnt Tolerable Well: In Search of Boston’s First Street Lamps (episode 266)

Madam & Miss Will Shake Their Heels Abroad: In Search of America’s First Concert (episode 264)

How did Boston come to host the first concert ever performed in what’s now the United States?  Why was Boston resistant to the idea of a concert until almost 60 years after they became common in our ancestral city of London?  When did Puritan Boston relax its rules and customs enough to allow public performances of secular music?  Who brought the idea of charging for admission to a musical performance to colonial Boston, and what artistic legacy did he leave behind here?  Listen now to find out!


Continue reading Madam & Miss Will Shake Their Heels Abroad: In Search of America’s First Concert (episode 264)

Old North and the Sea (episode 255)

Independent researcher TJ Todd recently gave a presentation about Old North Church and the sea.  TJ’s talk focuses on two notable sea captains, both of whom longtime listeners will remember from past episodes.  Captain Samuel Nicholson was the first, somewhat hapless, captain of the USS Constitution, and Captain Thomas Gruchy was the privateer who captured the carved cherubs that keep watch over the Old North sanctuary from the French.  Exploring the lives of these two famous captains will reveal what life was like for the ordinary sailors and dockworkers who made up a significant portion of Boston’s population in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as drawing connections to other incidents from Boston’s maritime past, including many that we’ve discussed in past episodes.

Thanks to our friends at the Old North Foundation for allowing us to share this presentation with you.


Continue reading Old North and the Sea (episode 255)

Hostibus Primo Fugatis: The Washington Before Boston Medal (episode 253)

Back in 2015, I was at the Boston Public Library for a special exhibition called “We Are One,” which showcased items from their collection dating from the French and Indian War to the Constitutional Convention, showing how thirteen fractious colonies forged a single national identity.  Libraries have a lot more than just books, of course.  The BPL has everything from streaming movies and music to historic maps to medieval manuscripts to Leslie Jones’ photos to one remarkable gold medal.  Some of the items on display were breathtaking, like a map hand drawn by George Washington, Paul Revere’s hand drawn diagram showing where the bodies fell during the Boston Massacre, and a gorgeous 360 degree panorama showing the view from the top of Beacon Hill during the siege of Boston.  What stopped me in my tracks, though, was a solid gold medal.  It was about three inches in diameter, but it was hard to tell through the thick and probably bulletproof glass protecting it. 

On the side facing me, I could see a bust of George Washington and some words, but they were too small to read.  A special bracket held the medal in front of a mirror, and on the back I could make out more lettering, as well as a cannon and a group of men on horses.  Later, I learned that this was the Washington Before Boston Medal, commemorating the British evacuation of Boston.  It was the first Congressional gold medal, and the first medal of any kind commissioned by the Continental Congress during our Revolutionary War.  This illustrious medal’s journey to the stacks of the Boston Public Library will take us from Henry Knox’s cannons at Dorchester Heights to John Adams at the Second Continental congress in Philly to Ben Franklin in Paris to a Confederate’s dank basement in West Virginia during the Civil War.  


Continue reading Hostibus Primo Fugatis: The Washington Before Boston Medal (episode 253)

Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands, with Dr Pavla Šimková (episode 239)

The new book Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands explores how the city of Boston has transformed the islands on its doorstep time and time again, as the city’s needs shifted over the centuries.  From a valuable site for farming, to a dumping ground for all of Boston’s problems, to a wilderness of history and romance, to an urban park, these many transformations reflect a changing city.  Author Dr. Pavla Šimková joins us this week to discuss how Boston initially embraced the islands, later turned its back on the Harbor, and more recently has embraced them both again.  You’ll hear us argue about the 1960s plan to hold a bicentennial expo on the harbor and the role of storyteller Edward Rowe Snow in promoting the Harbor Islands to a new generation, and you’ll hear us agree about the beauty and importance of this urban asset.


Continue reading Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands, with Dr Pavla Šimková (episode 239)

Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, with Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren (episode 237)

Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren is a practicing surgeon and author of the recent book Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, which is a profile of eleven Revolutionary War surgeons.  Dr. Hasselgren joined Jake to discuss the Boston physicians, brothers, and brothers in arms Joseph and John Warren.  Joseph is famous for arranging the lantern signal from Old North and dispatching Paul Revere on his famous ride, as well as for his heroic death at Bunker Hill.  His little brother John followed him into politics and medicine, and went on to found Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Hasselgren brings a unique perspective to the conversation, examining the medical careers of these eminent physicians through a physician’s eyes.  The episode explores how 18th century physicians learned their craft, how they earned a living, and how they intermingled medicine and politics, as well as how surgery was changing during the Revolution and the groundbreaking surgery pioneered by John Warren and his son John Collins Warren.


Continue reading Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, with Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren (episode 237)