#bostonhistory

[rexstewartoriginals]

USS Constitution in Boston, MA celebrated its 226th anniversary yesterday, marking the day October 21st, 1797 as the moment of her launching. Some thirty years ago I produced this one of a kind wood diorama of her crew members -circa the War of 1812. But prior to that she had her first engagement in Tripoli c.1805.

So many people from all walks of life enjoyed viewing this work, so before I sell it I feel it's best to reach another audience on the social networks.The video can be viewed here https://youtube.com/watch?v=wv0_HC0cwrM .

[jonathanvanbilsen]

Beautiful Boston •

[patriciadlr]

THE GREAT MOLASSES FLOOD 1919 The Great Molasses Flood (1919) The Great Molasses Flood (1919): In Boston, Massachusetts, a massive tank of molasses burst, sending a tidal wave of sticky syrup through the streets, resulting in 21 deaths and extensive property damage.

[bygonely]

Stunning Historical Photos of Franklin Park Zoo, Boston in the Early 20th Century

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Still coming down off the high of performing with my ridiculously talented friends with @revspaces for their commemoration of the 249th anniversary of the #BostonTeaParty. Getting to share the stage with the stellar @madamestuckcatman, @dianamdunlap, @kingianthegreat, and @philly0405 was an honor. Especially nice to reunite with so many fellow #BostonTeaPartyShipsAndMuseum alumnae! We helped flesh out the image of pre-Revolution Boston and helped give voice to the people excluded from the political process. Follow them for more excellence in the realm of historical interpretation! #oldsouthmeetinghouse #bostonhistory #reenactors #historicalinterpretation #historicalinterpreter #18thcentury #18thcenturyfashion #18thcenturycostume #18thcenturydress #revolutionarywar #americanrevolution #americanhistory #historicalreenactment https://www.instagram.com/p/CmZK8okuS4Q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[effortlessinfo]

Siege of Boston

The Siege of Boston began on April 19, 1775 and saw heavy fighting in and around the city. #BostonHistory #SiegeOfBoston

The Prelude to the Siege The Siege of Boston was a pivotal event in the American Revolutionary War. Leading up to the Siege, tensions were high between the British and the colonists. Following the 1773 Boston Tea Party protest, the British reacted with punitive measures called the Intolerable Acts. This led to sizable public outcry and a call for unity among the thirteen colonies. As a response,…

[sandyhookhistory]

Folks... today is one of the most God-Awful Days we can cover as we look at the 80th Anniversary of World War 2. There's also no way on earth we can fit it all here on Instagram, and to try and cut the story down to fit would be a disservice. We ask that you please head to our Facebook page and read the whole post. **** 80 Years Ago Today (Saturday) November 28th, 1942, as World War 2 rages across the globe, we are not invulnerable to tragdy here at home as we see the deadliest nightclub fire in our nation's history when the Cocoanut Grove goes up in flames in Boston, MA. The story has everything you'd expect- overcrowding, flammable decorations, blocked safety exits from a cheapskate mob-connected manager.... and a human crush inside of an inferno that swamped the doors and trapped hundreds. It also sees incredible heroism from Boston's first responders and from Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who rushed to the scene to help... and in many cases, pulled their dead comrades from the wreckage. The hospitality industry would never be the same. Nor would triage medicine. Please... go read the full article on our FB page. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲 🇺🇲🇺🇲 ** Please Like & Follow "Sandy Hook History" on Facebook & Instagram for more amazing maritime and military histories of the Garden State and New York Harbor as well as a review of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle Of The Atlantic and World War 2** 🇺🇲🇺🇲 Photos: Various #visitmonmouth #newjerseybuzz #thejournalnj #locallivingnj #journeythroughjersey #onlyinnewjersey #njspots #centraljerseyexists #discovernj #yesnj #newjerseyhistory #newjerseyforyou #sandyhookbeach #sandyhooknj #sandyhookhistory #forthancockhistory #forthancock #battleoftheatlantic #cocoanutgrovefire #bayvillage #bostonnavyyard #triage #lundandbrowder #bloodplasma #emergencyexit #bostonhistory #masscasualty #burnvictim #massachusettshistory #thisreallyhappened (at Fort Hancock, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClhrgiiN2WM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[aka-xn]

Details you may have missed. The #aestheticsmovement fired up around 1870. It was a movement that said things should be pretty or engaging or delightful or fascinating just because joy is a valuable human experience. Even if all art communicates, the statement doesn’t have to be emblematic or overt beyond just being darn pretty. The movement was influential in the “applied arts,” which is stuff like architecture and design and media. As such, it was a movement that empowered the middle and lower classes to take appreciation and value in beauty as something we can all engage. Sure, the movement was cloistered among intellects and the privileged, but its populist influence leaked into attitudes beyond the erudite. After all, by their own philosophy, everyone liked pretty things. #Boston has always been obsessed with showing off its forward, trendy embrace of all fads #European and all styles of the #privileged. Much of the historic #SouthEnd, #Fenway, and sections of #BackBay were influenced by the #AestheticsMovement. You can see added “bonus designs” and pilots else’s extra flourishes even tucked away in the tenement row houses that were essentially meant as humble abides. As neighborhoods were ghettoized through racism@and xenophobia, these tiny “art for art sake” details went along for the ride, gaining patina and absorbing history in their oxymoronic faces of humble vanity. And then a simple #tile seems leftover from some #ancientruins even though it’s clumsily lodged in the stoop of a #soupkitchen. So I guess, maybe, the #Aesthetes had it right. Artistry for its own sake offers dignity and value beyond its perceived immediate value. It’s a detail you might have missed. ▫️ #arthistory #bostonhistory #ceramictile #Bostonia #haleyhouse #relic #artifact #urbanart #arg #artforartsake #bostonarchitecture #design #designhistory #workingclass #antique #hiddengems #akaXN #TheRealXN (at South End) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGFT8orjJpv/?igshid=zf016gtt0fnz

[theofficialbibliodotcom]

This beautiful copy of the second edition of a cookbook was used as a fund-raising tool for Massachusetts suffragettes. Take a look at this bright, clean copy listed on Biblio by @burnsiderarebooks!⁠ ⁠ https://www.biblio.com/book/woman-suffrage-cook-book-burr-hattie/d/1312977829⁠ ⁠ #suffragette #womensrights #cookbook #culinaryhistory #bostonhistory #boston #massachusetts #rarebook #vintagebook #1880s #1890s

[husheduphistory]

Puritans, Origins, and UFOs

On June 24th 1947 everything changed, and pilot Kenneth Arnold was the first to know it. Arnold was flying over Washington state from Chehalis to Yakima and he took a short detour toward Mount Rainier where a U.S. Marine Corps C-46 transport airplane had reportedly gone missing. By Arnold’s account the flying conditions were perfect, clear and smooth, but then at 3pm he saw them. A chain of shining, metallic, saucer-shaped objects stretching at least five miles long. When Arnold landed his story spread like wildfire and he is largely credited with being the first to ignite America’s feverish pursuit of UFOs. But, Arnold was not the first to see unexplained phenomena in the sky. The first recorded incident happened well before he was born, before there were airplanes, and before America was even a country.

Kenneth Arnold

In the 1600s Massachusetts was a wilderness with much promise, but few people. The first major settlement in the state was the Plymouth Colony which was followed up by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a wave of immigrants arriving from England in 1630 led by Puritan lawyer John Winthrop. Winthrop came from a wealthy family and he served as the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for twelve of the colony’s first twenty years, founded what is now the city of Boston, and formed numerous settlements along the Charles River. He was also an active writer and although they were not considered valuable at the time, his works A Model of Christian Charity and The History of New England are now considered to be invaluable accounts of Puritan living in the new world, the journey across the Atlantic, and the history of Massachusetts through the 1640s.

These works are considered historical treasures, but one entry from Winthrop’s diary dated March 1, 1639 raises the eyebrows of almost everyone who reads it. In this entry Winthrop writes about an incident involving James Everell, a “sober, discrete man” and an experience shared by him and two others one night on the Muddy River. Everell and his companions were in a small boat when they spotted a bright light in the sky that expanded, contracted, and darted back and forth between the starting point and a spot near Charlestown (a distance of approximately two miles) for two or three hours:

“In this year one James Everell, a sober, discreet man, and two others, saw a great light in the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours.”

When the phenomena disappeared the men report that they found themselves one mile upstream, a feat that would have required them to actively row against the tide. They said that they had done no such thing and that they had no memory of how they got there. The account could have marked them as mad, but they were not the only ones to see the mysterious darting light. According to the entry from Winthrop “Diverse other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place.”

While some have tried to explain the light as natural phenomena, the March 1, 1639 entry is not the only time that Winthrop recorded bizarre sightings in the sky above his newly founded city. Years later on January 18, 1644 Winthrop wrote another diary entry describing how two men traveling to Boston by boat witnessed another strange incident:

“About midnight, three men, coming in a boat to Boston, saw two lights arise out of the water near the north point of the town cove, in form like a man, and went at a small distance to the town, and so to the south point, and there vanished away. They saw them about a quarter of an hour, being between the town and the governor’s garden. The like was seen by many, a week after, arising about Castle Island and in one fifth of an hour came to John Gallop’s point”

One week later another celestial event caused Winthrop to take up his pen. In this latest incident a light “like the moon” was reported joining and separating in the skies over Boston:

“A light like the moon arose about the N.E. point in Boston, and met the former at Nottles Island, and there they closed in one, and then parted, and closed and parted diverse times, and so went over the hill in the island and vanished. Sometimes they shot out flames and sometimes sparkles. This was about eight of the clock in the evening, and was seen by many.”

Map showing Boston circa 1649

This account from Winthrop was like the previous in that it focused on unexplained light phenomena in the sky, but it continues further, taking a turn to also include a ghostly encounter. Several months earlier, the approximate location of the lights was the site of a horrific accident on the water where a ship exploded after a sailor accidently set the cargo of gunpowder on fire. Five crew members were killed and all bodies were recovered except for the man responsible for igniting the powder. Before the explosion the man claimed to have unusual powers, like speaking to the dead, which made some believe that he died in the explosion only to have his body and soul taken by the devil. According to the diary entry of Winthrop, men experienced more unexplained occurrences at the same time that the “moon” light was rising above Boston, and again approximately two weeks later:

“About the same time, a voice was heard upon the water between Boston and Dorchester, calling out in a most dreadful manner, ‘Boy! Boy! Come away! Come away!’; and it suddenly shifted from one place to another a great distance, about 20 times. It was heard by diverse godly persons. About 14 days after, the same voice in the same dreadful manner was heard by others on the other side of the town towards Nottles Island.”

The Puritans of New England had many beliefs and claims that are easily explained away by more modern applications of science and general common sense. It is because of this that it can be startling to read unexplained accounts from over 300 years ago that so closely resemble reports still being filed today. John Winthrop was a prime example of the upstanding, honest, law-abiding Puritan citizen and yet in his diaries, now historical documents used as scholarly works, there are at least three entries addressing unexplained phenomena of lights moving through the skies and disembodied voices, all with multiple “diverse godly persons” witnessing them.

Regardless of one’s belief in the paranormal, it is a fact that within the early dawning years of this country one of the leading men who helped plant the roots of America recorded his experiences with the new world around him, including phenomena that we were not able to explain in the skies over Washington in 1947, and  are no closer to explaining today.

John Winthrop

[baseballhistory1839]

Ossee Freeman Schreckengost, born F. Osee Schrecongost, was an American professional baseball catcher and first baseman. He played for seven Major League Baseball teams between 1897 and 1908. Played only a single season for the Boston Americans (1901) he played 7 years with the Philadelphia Athletics. An original “Utility Player” at the catcher and first base, he had a .271 lifetime batting average. He may be best remembered for being Rube Waddell’s primary catcher and roommate for the duration of Waddell’s Philadelphia Athletic years.

[ofgraveconcern]

21st January 1677, publication of the first medical pamphlet in North America, published in Boston: ’A brief rule to guide the common people of New-England how to order themselves and theirs in the small pocks, or measels.’ written by Thomas Thacher, appeared on this day during the smallpox epidemic of that year. Boston in 1677 had only been established for 37 years; however smallpox had already become established in Native American populations, who had had no previous contact with the disease, it would kill an estimated 90 percent of North America’s Native peoples, before the end of the 17th century. Even in populations where it was established, smallpox would continue to kill an estimated 400,000 people a year in 18th Century Europe alone. Again in Boston in 1721, the Reverend Cotton Mather, best known for his involvement in the Salem witch trials, would provoke controversy by pushing for a treatment told to him by his African slave Onesimus, who had been inoculated in Africa as a boy. On June 6, 1721, Mather sent reports on inoculation to local physicians, most viewing inoculation as violating the natural laws of medicine. However Boston doctor, and great uncle of future President John Adams, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, did successfully try the procedure on his youngest son and two slaves. In 1798 a smallpox vaccination was successfully demonstrated and proved to be effective by Dr. Edward Jenner, leading to smallpox’s global eradication in 1980. All art shown is influenced by the history of medicine and mortality. You can find all the art plus lots more at the website: www.ofgraveconcern.com/medicineandmortality For More dark art and history follow @ofgrave.concern #thisweekinhistory #gothichistory #medicalhistory #historyofmedicine #smallpox #newenglandhistory #medicalpost #nativeamericans #historyofdisease #epidemic #epidemics #innoculation #ᴠᴀᴄᴄɪɴᴇssᴀᴠᴇʟɪᴠᴇs #vaccination #bostonhistory #cottonmather #medicinemaking #edwardjenner #17thcentury #18thcentury #tarotart #tarotillustration #medicinebottle #medicinebottles #ceramicbottle #ceramicartist #medicineart #medicalart #historicalmedicine #smallpoxhospital https://www.instagram.com/p/CZFF286FMna/?utm_medium=tumblr

[mumbaitalks-blog]

#mumbaitalks #letstalkhistorytours #Apollobunder #heritagewalk Did you Know? Mumbai had a Ice house and ice were sold to public at 4annas (25 paise) per pound by the britishers. Read and slide the images to trace it's history. Follow @letstalk_history to learn more.@letstalk_history #mumbaihistory #mumbaiblog #bostonhistory #icehouse #ice #icecream #britishraj #cityheritage #heritagewalk #tudoricecompany #federicktudor #jamsetjeejejeebhoy #parsee #bhooligool #kabraji #zorastrian #iranian #camaoriental #Letstalkhistory #Instagramdaily #instagood #Facebook #twitter #tumblr #Instagram (at K. R. Cama Oriental Institute) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGWiiCsn8O0/?igshid=5jqxl83bvavk

[noblebend]

In decades past you could come to this spot (or perhaps the adjacent bldg) and pay off your debt to Whitey Bulger or go for a last ride with his friend Stephen. Now you can park your car there while you attend a New Kids concert at the Garden... * * * * However, I made the photo because I liked the shadow * * * * * * * * #Afieldbook #FriendStreetStudios #Boston #FollowingBoston #BostonDotCom #raw_boston #BostonPhotographer #raw_community_member #cityscapeboston #CanonG7X #TeamCanon #CanonUSA #winterhillgang #whiteybulger #bostonhistory (at Boston, Massachusetts) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGU7QayA9rS/?igshid=1e65obgwxgfc7

[jqlouise]

The @bostonducktours is such a fun activity to re-explore Boston! And we are excited to announce that we have teamed up with the @pruboston to GIVE AWAY 4 Duck Tour tickets! To enter: 1) follow @jqlouise & @pruboston, 2) like this post, and 3) comment quack! #PruBoston #PruBostonPartner . . . . . . . .#ducktpurs #duckboats #bostonducktours #visitBoston #bostonhistory #historiccity #historybuff #localtravel #localtravelideas #visitboston #bostonmassachusetts #Boston #massachusetts #newengland #newenglandfall #prudentialcenter #iloveboston #discovermassachusetts #bostondotcom #bostontourism #bostontours #weekendideas #activities #familytravel #backbay #backbayboston (at Prudential Center Boston) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGINGqlHK6s/?igshid=marhbjmypc2f

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

It was an incredible honor to portray playwright, historian and revolutionary woman Mercy Otis Warren at @revspaces’ 249th #BostonTeaParty anniversary reenactment last night. For her elite station in life, Mercy and her family held some extremely progressive ideals, including being anti slavery, pro women’s education, and acknowledging the injustice done to Indigenous people. As peoples’ struggles for liberation from oppressive regimes is an evergreen problem, it felt good to portray a woman who fought for not only her own freedom but for a more equitable society. #reenactment #reenactor #americanhistory #historicalinterpretation #americanrevolution #revolutionarywar #womensrights #historicalreenactment #bostonhistory #massachusettshistory #18thcenturyfashion #18thcenturydress #18thcentury https://www.instagram.com/p/CmSWzg7uhRa/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=