Tag: Samuel Sewall

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)

The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)

The Puritan dissenters who founded the town of Boston are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might think that Christmas in Puritan Boston would be a big deal.  You’d be wrong though.  Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more.  What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas?  What were the practices of misrule, mummery, and wassailing with which Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century?  And why did the Puritans literally erase Christmas from their calendars?   


Continue reading The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)

Pamphlets, Statues, and the Selling of Joseph (episode 191)

In June 1700, a brief pamphlet titled The Selling of Joseph was published in Boston.  It’s considered the first abolitionist tract to be published in what’s now the United States.  Authored by Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall, the three page pamphlet uses biblical references to argue that enslaving another person could never be considered moral.  Listen to find out what motivated Sewall to write the tract, how his peers in Boston reacted to it, and what its effect was on the wider world.  In light of recent events, we’ll also consider the current debate around statues and their removal.  


Continue reading Pamphlets, Statues, and the Selling of Joseph (episode 191)