Tag: Early Boston

The 1689 Uprising in Boston, revisited (episode 165)

Early one April morning, the people of Boston rose up in revolt against the royal government of Massachusetts.  Militia marched in the streets, while an alarm brought more armed men from towns all over the area. Soon, the rebels controlled the mainland, while the royal navy still commanded the harbor.  You might think I mean the “shot heard ‘round the world” that started the American Revolution in Lexington. Instead, we’re talking about the 1689 Boston revolt, when the people rose up and overthrew their royal governor, 86 years and one day before the battles at Lexington and Concord.  


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Treasure of the Caribbean: the Legend of Governor’s Gold (episode 123)

Sir William Phips was the first royal governor of Massachusetts under the charter of William and Mary.  As governor, he would implement the notorious Court of Oyer and Terminer that led to the executions of 20 innocent people during the Salem witch hysteria.  But long before he was a royal governor, he was a poor shepherd boy in rural Maine, who dreamed of Spanish gold.  Eventually, he made that dream a reality, leading one of the most successful treasure hunts in history and amassing one of the continent’s greatest fortunes.


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Apocalypse on Boston Bay (episode 119)

In the years immediately before English Puritans settled on the Shawmut Peninsula, a series of epidemics nearly wiped out the indigenous population of New England.  The worst of these plagues was centered on Boston Harbor, and swept from Narragansett Bay in the south to the Penobscot River in the North. It was the greatest tragedy to befall Native peoples of the region, who sometimes referred to it as “the Great Dying,” while English settlers called it a “wonderful plague” or a “prodigious pestilence.”  They believed the disease had been sent by God to purge the native inhabitants of the continent and make way for his chosen people.


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Smallpox Remastered (episode 114)

Although Cotton Mather is best known for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, he also pioneered smallpox inoculation in North America, using a traditional African method he learned from a man named Onesimus who Mather enslaved.  This week, you’ll hear about Boston’s history with smallpox, including multiple epidemics, the controversy surrounding Mather’s inoculation movement, and the final outbreak in the 20th century.  We first covered this topic way back in Episode 2, but these days we’re better at researching, writing, and recording, so this episode should be a step up.


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Mary Dyer, the Quaker Martyr (episode 108)

Mary Dyer was an early Puritan settler of Boston.  Born in England, Mary moved to Boston in 1635 and was soon drawn to the Quaker religion, in part because of the opportunities it afforded women to learn and lead.  New laws forbade her from professing her faith publicly.  Not one to back down, Mary was arrested and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony several times before finally being hanged on Boston Neck, becoming one of our city’s four Quaker martyrs.  Today, a statue of Mary Dyer stands in front of the State House, just to the right of the Hooker entrance.


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Hunting the King Killers (episode 97)

This week, we tell a story from very early in Boston’s history, a story partly shrouded in legend.  The cast of characters includes everyone from Increase Mather to Nathaniel Hawthorne, encompassing two kings, two continents, two colonies, and Royal governors Endecott, Andros, and Hutchinson.  It is the story of two judges who signed the death warrant for a king, famously known as the regicides, or king killers. Edward Whalley and William Goffe became celebrities in Boston, before being forced to flee in the face of what one historian called “the greatest manhunt in British history.”


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Pirate Classics (episode 80)

Arrrr, matey!  Nikki and I are running a pirate themed relay race on Cape Cod this weekend instead of recording a new episode, so of course we’re going to play three classic pirate stories this week.  The first two clips will highlight the role Boston played in the golden age of piracy, while the third discusses Puritan minister Cotton Mather’s complicated relationship with the pirates whose execution he oversaw.  Listen now!


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Original Sin: The Roots of Slavery in Boston (Ep74)

The Boston slave trade began when a ship arrived in the harbor in the summer of 1638 carrying a cargo of enslaved Africans, but there was already a history of slave ownership in the new colony.  After this early experience, Massachusetts would continue to be a slave owning colony for almost 150 years.  In this week’s episode, we discuss the origins of African slavery in Massachusetts and compare the experience of enslaved Africans to other forms of unfree labor in Boston, such as enslaved Native Americans, Scottish prisoners of war, and indentured servants.  

Warning: This week’s episode uses some of the racialized language of our 17th and 18th century sources, and it describes an act of sexual violence.


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Episode 64: Harvard Indian College, Promises Broken… and Kept

There’s an oft forgotten clause written into Harvard’s 1650 charter promising to educate the Native American youth of Massachusetts.  This week’s episode looks at the early, mostly unsuccessful efforts to create an Indian College on the Harvard campus, the abandonment of that plan after King Philip’s War soured the English settlers on their earlier plans for Christianizing local Native American tribes, and how modern scholarship is helping to rediscover this legacy and rededicate Harvard to embracing Native Americans.  

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Episode 63: Puritan UFOs

What did TV character Fox Mulder have in common with John Winthrop, the Puritan founder of Boston? They both recorded strange lights in the sky and other unexplained phenomena in extensive detail. This week, we’re going to explore the close encounters Winthrop described in 1639 and 1644. There were unexplained lights darting around the sky in formation at impossible speeds, ghostly sounds, and witnesses who claimed to have lost time. It’s a scene straight out of the X-Files, except these are considered the first recorded UFO sightings in North America.

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