Posts Tagged ‘American Revolution’
History Café: Harriet Jacobs and the World of Abolitionist Cambridge Women
Harriet Jacobs is best known for her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in which she chronicles her enslavement in North Carolina, her subsequent period in hiding in a tiny attic garret, and her eventual escape north to freedom. But Jacobs was also for many years a resident of Cambridge, where she ran…
Read MoreMercy Scollay and the Lifelong Work of Mending
By Katie Turner Getty, Independent Researcher and Writer When Mercy Scollay’s presumptive fiancé, Dr. Joseph Warren, was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June of 1775, she was thrust into emotional and financial turmoil that would both parallel and outlast the political upheaval of the American Revolution. As the caretaker and surrogate mother…
Read MoreEvent Recap: Politics Beyond the Parlor
Missed the event? Watch the video here! Funding for this project was made possible through the generosity of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati On Monday, June 29, CHS held a Facebook Live event entitled “Politics Beyond the Parlor: The Loyalist Women of Cambridge.” During this event our spring semester intern, MaryKate Smolenski, spoke about…
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Loyalist Women of Cambridge
By MaryKate Smolenski, Tufts University Intern, June 2020 Download the tour here as a PDF with photos or without photos Funding for this project was made possible through the generosity of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati For further reading, see: Who were the Loyalist Women of Cambridge? Introductory post and Part 1: Mary Browne…
Read MoreWho Were the Loyalist Women of Cambridge? Part 1: Mary Browne Serjeant
“The people of England are so different in every respect that you would hardly suppose they were of the same species as the Americans.”
Read MoreWho were the Loyalist Women of Cambridge? Introduction
“The work of Loyalist women included expressing their political views and dealing with the consequences of politics and war.”
Read MoreSerjeant Family Letters Transcribed
Thanks to generous funding from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, the Serjeant Family Letters (1769-1840) have now been digitized and transcribed. This collection offers insight into the life of a Loyalist family in the years leading up to and following the Revolutionary War. The letters, transcribed below, illuminate the connections between family and religion…
Read MoreEast Cambridge’s Road to Revolution
By Darleen Bonislawski, 2013 The events leading to the April 19, 1775, skirmish on Lexington Green began in East Cambridge. Years ago, while walking in East Cambridge (where I was born), I saw a stone marker on Second Street near the Probate Court, stating to all that “Near this spot 800 British soldiers from Boston…
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Cambridge and the American Revolution
This tour hopes to shed light on the Revolutionary events that occurred in Cambridge. It is intended to personify its leaders, highlighting both their strengths and their humanity. It also hopes to take the viewer back to a time before the United States was born, before the Constitution was ratified, and before an American victory was assumed.
Read MoreSerjeant Family Letters, 1769-1840: Digital Collection
This collection was featured at our 2019 Open Archives. In 2019, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati generously provided funding to digitize and transcribe the Cambridge Historical Society’s Serjeant Family Letters (formerly titled “The Winwood Serjeant Letters”). The collection is now accessible online (view it here). Winwood Serjeant (c.1730?-1780) was born in England and ordained…
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