J. L. Bell

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About J. L. Bell
I'm a writer specializing in the history of the American Revolution in New England. I grew up in a suburb of Boston during the Bicentennial years, and the stories we celebrated during that time stuck with me. But I'm even more excited to find stories and details that aren't so well known or may never have been told before.
The easiest way to sample my writing is to check out my website at Boston1775.net. I update that site daily with doses of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about Revolutionary New England. The most lucrative way to sample my writing (for me) is to buy "The Road to Concord," my take on what set off the Revolutionary War.
In addition, I've contributed chapters and articles to a number of other books: "Children in Colonial America" by James Marten; "Reporting the Revolutionary War" by Todd Andrlik; and volumes of the "Journal of the American Revolution" and the "Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife." I'm an assistant editor and one of the writers of "Colonial Comics: New England," edited by Jason Rodriguez.
We're now passing through the Sestercentennial, or 250th anniversary, of the events that led up to the creation of the U.S. of A. as an independent republic. In 1766 Americans celebrated how Parliament had repealed the Stamp Act, the first big rift between Britain and its North American colonies. Everyone felt the crisis was over. No one knew what was coming up. That's the big story I find so fascinating.
The easiest way to sample my writing is to check out my website at Boston1775.net. I update that site daily with doses of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about Revolutionary New England. The most lucrative way to sample my writing (for me) is to buy "The Road to Concord," my take on what set off the Revolutionary War.
In addition, I've contributed chapters and articles to a number of other books: "Children in Colonial America" by James Marten; "Reporting the Revolutionary War" by Todd Andrlik; and volumes of the "Journal of the American Revolution" and the "Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife." I'm an assistant editor and one of the writers of "Colonial Comics: New England," edited by Jason Rodriguez.
We're now passing through the Sestercentennial, or 250th anniversary, of the events that led up to the creation of the U.S. of A. as an independent republic. In 1766 Americans celebrated how Parliament had repealed the Stamp Act, the first big rift between Britain and its North American colonies. Everyone felt the crisis was over. No one knew what was coming up. That's the big story I find so fascinating.
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Author Updates
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Blog postOn Saturday, 27 February, the Friends of Minute Man National Park will host its free Winter Lecture, this time beamed through the walls of our own homes.
This year Prof. Robert Thorson will speak about “The Stone Walls of Minute Man National Park.” Those walls are of course an icon of New England’s agricultural past.
After the battle of Lexington and Concord, many British officers and officials commented on the provincial militiamen using stone walls for cover. Histor7 hours ago Read more -
Blog postChawton House is an Elizabethan manor once owned by Jane Austen’s brother. It houses the research library of the Centre for the Study of Early Women’s Writing, 1600–1830.
In that capacity, Chawton House will host an online conference on 14-15 May 2021 on the theme of “Adventurous Wives in the Long Eighteenth Century: or, Virtue Reconsidered.”
While some of this program was planned for last year and postponed, organizers Alison Daniell and Kim Simpson have reopened the cYesterday Read more -
Blog postLast March we commemorated the Sestercentennial of the Boston Massacre.
There was a big gathering at the Old South Meeting-House with remembrances of each victim. There were book talks and signings. There were many reenactment scenarios around the center of Boston, both before and after our dramatic recreation of the shooting near the original site.
And of course there was the Covid-19 virus. The news and health guidelines were both still hazy, but I remember elbow ha2 days ago Read more -
Blog postBefore February ends, I need to note one event from this month 250 years ago.
On 11 Feb 1771, the Fleet brothers’ Boston Evening-Post ran as its first front-page item a letter signed “Mentor.” It recalled the previous year’s Boston Massacre and repeated the Whig arguments against standing armies and quartering troops in a populous town.
The author then offered a new idea: I therefore propose it to the understanding and discreet, as well as the zealous, friends of libert3 days ago Read more -
Blog postEarlier this month, the Boston Public Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts department announced that it had finished scanning its entire card catalogue and uploading the result to the Internet Archive.
“With this project now complete,” the department’s blog said, “information about nearly every manuscript in the BPL’s collections is available online in at least some form — a major first.”
Curator and cataloguer Jay Moschella explained further on Twitter:The BPL manusc4 days ago Read more -
Blog postOn 21 Feb 1775, Dr. Benjamin Church secretly told Gen. Thomas Gage that “Twelve pieces of Brass Cannon mounted, are at Salem, & lodged near the North River, on the back of the Town.”
Gage was hunting for the brass cannon of the Boston militia train, which had disappeared from armories under redcoat watch the previous September. He therefore ordered Lt.-Col. Alexander Leslie to lead an expedition to Salem on Sunday, 26 February.
That mission got the name “Leslie’s R5 days ago Read more -
Blog postIn December the Shelburne Museum in Burlington, Vermont, purchased John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Mercy (Greenleaf) Scollay (1719-1793).
Unknown to the seller, at least at first, the museum already owned Copley’s matching portrait of Scollay’s husband, John Scollay (1712-1790).
Here’s the backstory recounted by Enfilade, the newsletter of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture: Completed in 1763, Mrs. Scollay’s portrait demonstrates Copley’s t6 days ago Read more -
Blog postThis advertisement appeared in the 13 Oct 1761 New-York Gazette.
Here are some tasty extracts from Washington biographer Alexis Coe’s conversation with Prof. Mary Draper about the background behind this ad: Mary: In the 18th century, colonists throughout British America loved eating turtle. No one compared it to chicken (that I know of), but people routinely likened it to venison or veal. Merchants would ship live turtles in the hulls of vessels — alongside the other goods they boug1 week ago Read more -
Blog postFrom David Frum’s essay “The Founders Were Wrong about Democracy” in The Atlantic Monthly: If there was one idea shared by just about every author of the Constitution, it was the one articulated by James Madison at the convention on June 26, 1787.
The mass of the people would be susceptible to “fickleness and passion,” he warned. They would suffer from “want of information as to their true interest.” Those who must “labour under all the hardships of life” would “secretly sigh for a1 week ago Read more -
Blog postOn Wednesday, 17 February, the National Parks of Boston and Boston Harbor Now will host an online discussion on “Revolutionary Harbor: The Transatlantic World of Peter Faneuil,” about the role of slavery in shaping Boston’s eighteenth-century economy.
Peter Faneuil was one of the town’s richest merchants in the first half of that century, honored for giving money that went to building the earliest version of Faneuil Hall.
Much of Faneuil’s inheritance and business was1 week ago Read more -
Blog postOne of my big unanswered questions about the Battle of Lexington and Concord on 19 Apr 1775 is why the provincial forces didn’t deploy any of the cannon they had just spent months collecting and preparing for a fight.
The guns that James Barrett had been overseeing in Concord were probably unavailable after being rushed into hiding-places in other towns. But what about the rest?
We can assume that the men of Lexington and Cambridge, towns along the British route, didn1 week ago Read more -
Blog postThe 3 Feb 1775 petition to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety about eight iron cannon can’t answer the question of what happened to those guns.
Did the congress assume control of them and add them to their other weapons? Or did they remain under the control of the four towns that had undertaken to equip them for use?
Or did the congress and the towns come to some sort of compromise, in which the towns continued to assume responsibility for tho1 week ago Read more -
Blog postI’m at last getting to the original purpose of the 3 Feb 1775 petition to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety that I’ve been discussing.
All four men who signed the petition were delegates to the provincial congress that started meeting in Cambridge on 1 February. After explaining that their towns had undertaken to mount and equip eight iron cannon obtained by William Molineux inside Boston in the fall of 1774, they wrote: Since which the late Congress held [1 week ago Read more -
Blog postI’ve been analyzing a letter about cannon sent to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety in February 1775.
This posting looks at the four men who signed that letter, in order of their signatures.
James Barrett (1710-1779) of Concord is already a big presence in The Road to Concord and on Boston 1775. He was a sixty-five-year-old farmer, patriarch, and community leader. In the fall of 1774, the town made Barrett a militia colonel and a representativ1 week ago Read more -
Blog postThis posting continues the analysis of a 3 Feb 1775 letter that I started quoting yesterday, from men in four different towns to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety.
Yesterday’s extract shows the letter was about eight cannon purchased by William Molineux in Boston in the fall of 1774. Somehow the Patriots got those guns out to Watertown. And then… …and after Some time Information was given yt it was desired that Watertown & the Neighboring Towns would mo2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postLast month I wrote about William Molineux obtaining eight cannon for the Massachusetts resistance in the last weeks before he died on 22 Oct 1774.
When I did, Joel Bohy of Bruneau & Co. and Antiques Roadshow, a truly dedicated local and living historian, sent me a letter from the Massachusetts state archives showing what happened to those guns.
Dated 3 Feb 1775, this letter was addressed to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of supply by four men fro2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postFrom the Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts: A Stated Meeting of the Society was held at the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, No. 28 Newbury Street, Boston, on Thursday, January 28, 1926, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Samuel Eliot Morison, Ph.D., in the chair.
The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.
Mr. George P. Anderson spoke on William Molineux (1717–1774), a militant Boston Patriot, giv2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postAs I quoted yesterday, Isaiah Thomas grew up as an apprentice printer hearing stories about how his master, Zechariah Fowle, had helped to secretly print a New Testament in the late 1740s.
Thomas also heard about a complete Bible completed by another Boston printing partnership, also surreptitiously, by 1752.
However, it’s worth noting that in his History of Printing in America (1810), Thomas admitted about the New Testament publication, “I have heard that the fact has2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postIn 1756 the Boston Overseers of the Poor indentured Isaiah Thomas as an apprentice to the printer Zechariah Fowle (1724-1776). He was seven years old and didn’t yet know how to read.
Isaiah’s father had died, and his mother apparently felt she couldn’t support him by herself. The Overseers were used to finding masters for children in that situation.
As he grew up, Isaiah listened to stories from Fowle, from other printers, and from a former printer named Gamaliel Roge2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postOn 16 July 1770, six days after the Boston town meeting reaffirmed its ban on selling copies of its Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre locally, this advertisement appeared in the Boston Evening-Post:Next WEDNESDAY will be Published,
[from the London Edition]
And to be Sold at the Printing-Office in Milk Street,
A NARRATIVE of the last horrid MASSACRE, in BOSTON, perpetrated in the Evening of the 5th of March 1770, by Soldiers of the 29th Regiment; which with the 14th Regime2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postThis week I watched an online talk by Robert Darnton about his new book Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment. He described various stratagems printers and booksellers used to get around two stifling forces in ancien régime France: censorship by the government and monopoly by Paris’s licensed printers and booksellers.
That topic made me think of another event from 1770 Boston in that I didn’t mention on its Sestercentennial anniversary, in2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postUnder the project title of “New England’s Hidden Histories,” the Congregational Library and Archives has been digitizing the records of early churches and related documents.
The library has just announced the publication of a finding aid for material across that digitized collection which illuminate the religious lives of people of African and indigenous descent.
The introductory text by Prof. Richard J. Boles of Oklahoma State University explains: Though historians h3 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postYesterday I recounted the British army’s march in February 1780 from their lines at King’s Bridge, New York, up to Joseph Young’s farmhouse in White Plains.
The Continental Army had moved into that stone house and used it as a base to impede food shipments into British-occupied New York. That winter, the outpost was under the command of Lt. Col. Joseph Thompson of Brimfield.
According to Gen. William Heath’s report on the fighting, Thompson had five companies under him3 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postOn Friday, 2 Feb 1780, the British army holding New York City set out to attack a Continental outpost that had become troublesome.
Charles Stedman described the situation this way in 1794: The enemy having established a post at [Joseph] Young’s House, in the neighbourhood of the White Plains, which greatly annoyed the provincial loyalists, as well as the British army, by the interception of cattle and provisions intended to be brought to New York, it became an object of importance3 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postYesterday we left Israel Putnam at noon on Saturday, 3 Sept 1774, sending letters to many other Connecticut militia officers, passing on dire news he had heard about Boston.
Putnam himself set off toward Boston on horseback with his local militia regiment, becoming part of what was later called the “Powder Alarm.” Meanwhile, his dispatches made their way across the colony.
The Middletown lawyer Titus Hosmer (1736-1780, shown here) left a detailed and dramatic account o3 weeks ago Read more
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Books By J. L. Bell
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J. L. Bell
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With a Clash Between American Rebels and Royal Authorities Heating Up, Radicals Smuggled Cannon Out of Boston—and the British Came Looking for Them
In the early spring of 1775, on a farm in Concord, Massachusetts, British army spies located four brass cannon belonging to Boston’s colonial militia that had gone missing months before. British general Thomas Gage had been searching for them, both to stymie New England’s growing rebellion and to erase the embarrassment of having let cannon disappear from armories under redcoat guard. Anxious to regain those weapons, he drew up plans for his troops to march nineteen miles into unfriendly territory. The Massachusetts Patriots, meanwhile, prepared to thwart the general’s mission. There was one goal Gage and his enemies shared: for different reasons, they all wanted to keep the stolen cannon as secret as possible. Both sides succeeded well enough that the full story has never appeared until now.
The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War by historian J. L. Bell reveals a new dimension to the start of America’s War for Independence by tracing the spark of its first battle back to little-known events beginning in September 1774. The author relates how radical Patriots secured those four cannon and smuggled them out of Boston, and how Gage sent out spies and search parties to track them down. Drawing on archives in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, the book creates a lively, original, and deeply documented picture of a society perched on the brink of war.
In the early spring of 1775, on a farm in Concord, Massachusetts, British army spies located four brass cannon belonging to Boston’s colonial militia that had gone missing months before. British general Thomas Gage had been searching for them, both to stymie New England’s growing rebellion and to erase the embarrassment of having let cannon disappear from armories under redcoat guard. Anxious to regain those weapons, he drew up plans for his troops to march nineteen miles into unfriendly territory. The Massachusetts Patriots, meanwhile, prepared to thwart the general’s mission. There was one goal Gage and his enemies shared: for different reasons, they all wanted to keep the stolen cannon as secret as possible. Both sides succeeded well enough that the full story has never appeared until now.
The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War by historian J. L. Bell reveals a new dimension to the start of America’s War for Independence by tracing the spark of its first battle back to little-known events beginning in September 1774. The author relates how radical Patriots secured those four cannon and smuggled them out of Boston, and how Gage sent out spies and search parties to track them down. Drawing on archives in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, the book creates a lively, original, and deeply documented picture of a society perched on the brink of war.
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Hardcover
Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, Volume 5
Dec 12, 2018
by
Mike Barretta ,
J.L. Bell ,
Aubrey Campbell ,
Siobhan Carroll ,
Roan Clay ,
Rachel Delaney Craft ,
Shelia Crosby ,
Dana M. Evans ,
anne m. gibson ,
Bruce Golden
$0.99
Don't miss this brand new anthology of 24 stellar science fiction short stories for girls, boys and robots of all ages!
What’s it like to live in a world where humor is banned or to work on a deep-space lighthouse?
If you’re lucky, you might even discover how to escape the Yawning Men!
Curl up in your favorite rocket ship and set your coordinates for adventure in Volume Five of the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide!
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