The year 1771 broke upon New Hampshire with international rumors of a possible war with Spain and her ally, France, over the Falkland Islands.   The British army and navy continued to have trouble with desertion and 40 shilling rewards were being posted for the return of British sailors to their ships.   Governor Wentworth began cracking […]

Editor’s Note: perhaps a student of medicine might tell us what was happening in the late New England summer of 1771.   We’re thinking the water is getting a bum rap. Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette August 16, 1771 Boston, August 8, 1771:  The extreme heat has continued longer this season than has ever […]

Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette, August 2, 1771 The following odd, but true circumstance happened a few weeks ago at Paris.. Two gentlemen going to a masquerade, went to a place where habits are hired, in order to dress themselves; accordingly, one of them took it into his head to be dressed in resemblance […]

Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette, August 9, 1771 Those Pesky Frontiersmen The War against the Regulators (rebels) of North Carolina, and the disputes between Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and Connecticut Men on the frontier, prompted one Philadelphia writer to observe this about the people of frontier Colonial America: “..it is our opinion of folks in […]

Did I Mention the Mail?  And the Newspapers? And the Snow?   And how little profit I make on the Deal? You have to love John Stavers, the keeper of the Earl of Halifax tavern in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.   For many years, if his advertisement (below) is to be believed, he maintained a stage […]

Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette, July 12, 1771 Duxboro’, July 5, 1771:  A very malignant putrid fever has, for some time past, much prevailed in this town;  about 150 persons, chiefly children, having had it in the course of a few months; to a considerable proportion of whom it has proved fatal.  More especially […]

Reprinted from the New Hampshire Gazette, July 12, 1771 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 12, 1771: We hear from Damariscotta (Maine), that about three weeks ago, three men being in a canoe, fishing, about half a mile from the shore, a large shark came along side, and after going several times round the canoe, came up […]

Snow.   A Masquerade Country Ball at the Hawk’s Head Tavern.  Too Much Snow to travel.   Everyone is stuck in the tavern for the night.   The people of the town are absolutely charmed by …. 

In September of 1777, the gentleman at the right, François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois was traveling from Boston to Philadelphia, as secretary of the French legation to the newly born United States.    On the 6th of the month, some 22 miles outside of Boston, he had this to say about the inhabitants of New England: No […]