250 and Counting

For those of you new to this podcast (or those who haven’t been paying attention), I grew up on Long Island, and have lived or worked pretty much from one end of the map in today’s cover art to the other at one time or another. For instance, my childhood home is just about where […]

The post September 23, 1775: Independence Day on Long Island appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Philip Milledoler was a minister and the fifth president of Rutgers University (Rutgers College, then), but it’s a little more complicated than that. Milledoler took a moribund college and transformed it into the intellectual powerhouse it is today. But how it happened is at the heart of our story.

The post September 22, 1775: Philip Milledoler appeared first on 250 and Counting.

In the episode itself I took the time to hammer home the point that many of our historical legends aren’t quite what they seem to be. But also important is the forgotten people of our history as well. Not just the faceless folks who fought and died (or didn’t but remained in obscurity), but the […]

The post September 21, 1775: RIP Abel Prescott appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Calling Bernard Romans a “Renaissance Man” wouldn’t be far from the truth, given his various talents and the fact that folks from that era were much more like people from the Renaissance than they are from modern times. Romans was a surveyor, a naturalist, an artist and an author. He was also an entrepreneur, which […]

The post September 20, 1775: War for Sale appeared first on 250 and Counting.

We think of “Benedict Arnold” and the word “Traitor” comes immediately to mind. The two are essentially synonymous. Say one, and you’ve said the other. But Benedict Arnold was quite loyal to the Independence cause in the early days of the war. In fact, he was often eager to show what he could do. And […]

The post September 19, 1775: Up the River appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence is one of those names that sounds like they should be on Double Secret Probation or something. However, when you look at their purpose, the name makes sense. The Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed to seek out support from other nations. They reached out to France, Spain, and a […]

The post September 18, 1775: A Secret Committee appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The Minuteman statue in Lexington, Massachusetts is said to represent Captain John Parker, who died on this day. Except Parker wasn’t a minuteman. He also probably didn’t look like the man in the statue, given his age and what other small details we know about him. But as usual, nobody lets the facts get in […]

The post September 17, 1775: Death of a Militiaman appeared first on 250 and Counting.

So obviously this Josiah Bartlett isn’t the guy on The West Wing, in part because President Bartlet is fictional. (Okay, maybe entirely because of that.) But he is supposed to be a direct descendant of the Founding Father. Why, and when, the terminal T dropped off was never explained. Anyway, Josiah Bartlett and John Langdon […]

The post September 16, 1775: New Delegates to Congress appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Since the early 1700s there have been several Fort Johnsons on James Island in the Charleston Bay. The curious thing is that few people know what happened to each fort as it was destroyed, with the exception of the third one, which was definitely damaged in a storm. But the first two? Who knows. Today’s […]

The post September 15, 1775: The Occupation of Fort Johnson appeared first on 250 and Counting.

John Henry Hobart was born on this day in 1775, and he came that close to dying on the same day in 1830, on September 12. We read once that, statistically, men tend to die before “big” dates, e.g. birthdays and major holidays, while women tend to die afterwards. In Claude’s family anyway, it does […]

The post September 14, 1775: John Henry Hobart appeared first on 250 and Counting.