New Jersey has been pretty quiet since the Lexington and Concord fighting took place. But no more: today they came back…with a vengeance!

The post May 23, 1775: New Jersey Gets Into the Act appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Up until now, New Hampshire has been rather quiet when it came to resisting British rule. But today was the day that “Live Free or Die” was more than a motto for their license plates, which had yet to be invented. New Hampshire already had militias, of course, but they had a much broader range […]

The post May 22, 1775: New Hampshire Gets Into the Act appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Like so many people who lived in upstate New York in the Revolutionary era, David Woods was an immigrant from Ireland when he came over with his family in 1775. New York was unusual compared to the other colonies in that the overwhelming percentage of the population was immigrants; as a result it became a […]

The post May 21, 1775: David Woods appeared first on 250 and Counting.

When the folks in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, heard about the events at Lexington and Concord a month earlier, they were quite incensed. So much so that they decided they were going to declare independence from Britain. Maybe. Maybe not. Tune in as Mike explains the controversy.

The post May 20, 1775: The Mecklenburg Declaration appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Baltimore has a lot of historic pride in its street names. Nearly all of them can be traced back to an historic figure or event: Key Highway, named after Francis Scott Key. (Also the Key Bridge, but we’re all still sad about that.) Fort Avenue, leading to Fort McHenry. And while I’m at it, McHenry […]

The post May 19, 1775: From Sam Adams to Samuel Purviance appeared first on 250 and Counting.

People seem to have an inherent need to excuse their own unfortunate behaviors. One of the most common is to point to someone else breaking a rule and making it about them. Or, in the case of most of the battles of the early American Revolution, the colonists seemed always to be the aggressor, making […]

The post May 18, 1775: 18th Century Spin Doctors appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Is it just me or does Daniel LeRoy look a lot like actor Richard Kind? Daniel LeRoy was born in upstate New York and started to put together a pretty good settlement, but an unfortunate choice on his part caused him to lose it all. So he moved west and rebuilt his life and, by […]

The post May 17, 1775: Daniel LeRoy appeared first on 250 and Counting.

While the Declaration of Independence was still about 15 months away, a small community in the far western reaches of Pennsylvania decided not to wait around for it to happen, and they took matters into their own hands. The Hanna’s Town Resolves was probably the most direct challenge to British rule to date, if you […]

The post May 16, 1775: The Hanna’s Town Resolves appeared first on 250 and Counting.