The Liberty Tree: Where Boston Learned to Rebel
An elm near Boston Common became a gathering place, a political symbol, and one of revolutionary America’s most famous trees.
Read More1765: The Stamp Act Comes to Boston
A tax on printed materials helped turn Boston’s constitutional arguments into street politics and organized resistance.
Read MoreClash of Empires: How a Global War Changed Boston Forever
The Seven Years’ War stretched from North America to Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia—and its aftermath pushed Boston toward revolution.
Read MoreThe Great Awakening: When Religion Shook Boston
The Great Awakening challenged established authority and turned sermons into mass events across eighteenth-century New England.
Read MoreThe Boston Smallpox Wars: The Experiment That Divided a City
During Boston’s 1721 smallpox epidemic, Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston backed inoculation—and ignited a fierce public battle.
Read MorePirates, Privateers & the Dangerous Waters of Colonial Boston
Boston’s harbor connected the town to an Atlantic world of merchants, privateers, smugglers, sailors—and pirates.
Read MoreKing Philip’s War: The Conflict That Nearly Destroyed New England
The brutal 1675–1676 conflict transformed Native and colonial New England and left scars that shaped Boston’s future.
Read MoreThe Great Fire of 1676: The Night Boston Burned
A devastating seventeenth-century fire exposed just how vulnerable early Boston was to flame, crowding, and wooden construction.
Read MoreJohn Winthrop’s Boston: The City Upon a Hill
John Winthrop’s famous vision helped shape Boston’s civic mythology—but the reality of Puritan Massachusetts was far more complicated.
Read More1630: The Ships That Brought Boston Into Being
In 1630, a Puritan migration transformed a small peninsula into the nucleus of one of English America’s most consequential towns.
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