Watch our procedural, bureaucratic Admiral Mullen talk about pirates and then re-visit an age of moral clarity on the matter: Reprinted from the New Hampshire Gazette, June 21, 1771 New York, June 10: Extract of a letter from Kingston, Jamaica, April 10. “The 18th of March last was tried and convicted at a court of […]

  Do people still call on each other at Christmas? Drop by for a visit?  I’m not sure, post-Facebook, whether this is still done, but if they do, you need a gift-giving strategy.  It could happen: you could be upstairs, just out of the shower, toweling off, when your eleven year old yells out, “heah, […]

From Kalm’s Travels into North America we find this observation about marriage customs in the colonies: “…There is a very peculiar diverting custom here, in regard to marrying. When a man dies, and leaves his widow in great poverty, or so that she cannot pay all the debts with what little she has left, and that, notwithstanding […]

Reprinted from the New Hampshire Gazette, April 19, 1771 London, January 2, 1771: Friday last a press-gang was very busy at Newington-Butts, and having impressed a poor countryman from his wife and children, the distressed woman followed her husband with lamentations, which induced many women to sally from their houses.  Among the Amazons was the […]

Reprinted from the New Hampshire Gazette — May 24, 1771 When an Irish mob are at the height, their method of preventing the military acting against them is singular and very political; they secure the sons of several nobility, and placing them in front, march thus wherever they please, always facing the military.  When the […]

Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette, May 24, 1771 “Kept to Constant Labour” “Industry and Frugality are the Hands of Fortune” This maxim is no where better observed than in Holland, a Country naturally poor, but by the Industry of the Inhabitants made populous and opulent unequalled by any Nation in the World.  The maintenance […]

Re-printed from the New Hampshire Gazette April 19, 1771 Newport, Rhode Island – March 11, 1771: We are informed, that one day last week, 3 or 4 small boats from Warren, went up Providence River to catch Oysters, which the Providence people resenting, between thirty and forty persons went down in a fleet of boats […]

Re-Printed from the New Hampshire Gazette, May 10, 1771 Messieurs Fowles, Your Female Readers are quite tired with Politics,and entreat you to entertain them with something amusing and instructive, suitable to their Sex and Situation in Life. — Although we highly approve the spirit of the Times and the Zeal for Liberty, and should despise […]

From the New Hampshire Gazette, May 3, 1771 18th Century Funnies New England, to be certain, was both Pilgrim and Puritan at root, and this amusing story of a monkey in priestly robes would have tickled the most Puritan of ribs.  It was reprinted in New Hampshire, no doubt, because of a perception, widely shared, […]