250 and Counting

First, I think we need to address the elephant in the room that Mike brought up during this episode: Winona Ryder comes third out of four; Katharine Hepburn and Saoirse Ronan are way ahead. And let’s just pretend June Allyson didn’t happen. Mary Sherwood is one of those authors who, it appears, was fated to […]

The post May 6, 1775: Mary Sherwood appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Alexander McNair wasn’t especially well-educated, but he became a judge and a governor of a territory and then that same area when it became a state, so he must have had something going on besides high-level friends. Then again, as governor, he wasn’t able to get a ton of stuff done, and when his term […]

The post May 5, 1775: Alexander McNair, First Governor of Missouri appeared first on 250 and Counting.

As we noted a few days ago, both Payton Randolph and George Washington managed to quell a couple of militia-based riots which would have resulted in the torching of the Royal Governor’s mansion. Both of those riots came from Fredericksburg. What nobody counted on, however, was that militia from other parts of Virginia had the […]

The post May 4, 1775: How the Gunpowder Incident Ended appeared first on 250 and Counting.

More often than not, items that appear in the Bill of Rights derive directly from actions that the British took at one time or another in the past. Ban guns, will you? Here’s a nice Second Amendment. Ban free speech? Here’s your First Amendment. And so on. Today’s edition could be considered a Part Two […]

The post May 3, 1775: You Can’t Keep a Good Spy Down appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Rachel Walker Revere was Paul Revere’s second wife. When he married her, he’d only been a widower for a few months, so clearly she made a big impression on him, especially since they remained together until her death in 1813 (one year after the portrait in today’s artwork was painted), and he didn’t remarry after […]

The post May 2, 1775: Meet Rachel Revere appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Wellll….ordered to be destroyed. But it didn’t happen. Oddly, it was also quite susceptible to the foibles of weather, so when the British took South Carolina back five years later, it was assumed that the garrison had been destroyed on purpose, but nobody knows for sure.

The post May 1, 1775: Invasion of Quebec, and a Fort is Destroyed appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Nova Scotia could have been the fourteenth state, except we ruined it for them over the whole fishing rights thing. And then when push came to shove, they decided that rebellion wasn’t for them, and they sent troops down to Boston to help the British there. Ain’t that a kick in the head!

The post April 30, 1775: The Fourteenth Colony appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Payton Randolph was the Speaker of the House of Burgesses during this period in 1775, and while what was said wasn’t recorded, he managed to put down two riots in which Virginians were ready to trash the Royal Governor’s place with the Royal Governor inside of it. He did it twice. No question, this man […]

The post April 29, 1775: The Gunpowder Incident, Part 2 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Jonathan Trumbull was one of only two men to serve as governor of a Colony and of a State. (Nicholas Cooke of Rhode Island was the other.) This, to us, gives him a kind of air that perhaps he could be trusted by all parties to act appropriately. And when push came to shove, Trumbull […]

The post April 28, 1775: Jonathan Trumbull Chooses a Side appeared first on 250 and Counting.

The war was hot in Massachusetts, but it was still cold elsewhere. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t rebellious activity going on, since by this point everyone knew what was going on up north. It manifested itself in different ways. In Maryland, it appeared that Patriots were straight-up lying to the Royal Governor in […]

The post April 27, 1775: Skullduggery and Rebellion Here & There appeared first on 250 and Counting.