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Still 1774, the Back Half

 Hello, History Friends! Do you feel like we've been in 1774 for forever?! It kind of seems like it, huh?

Well, a fun thing happened on Sept 26. The legend, Johnny Appleseed, was born. His actual name was John Chapman, but he really carried a bag of seeds! If you want to know more about him.... there is an internet full of stories. I'm not going to digress this time. :D

I will digress a bit on another city's "tea party" if you will. In October, on the 14th, Annapolis, MD had it's own colonials vs tea incident. I'm going to link you to an article I really enjoyed, but I will give you the tl;dr version here. Pretty much, a guy and his son in law had a ship named Peggy Stewart. It came back in bad condition. They couldn't send it to England bc it wouldn't make it. The guy paid the customs fees. That REALLY made people mad. Even after much apologies, it was agreed that the citizens of Annapolis would run the ship aground and burn it. They did.

Meanwhile, back in Philly, 1st ConCon was still in session. On the same day as the whole Peggy Stewart fire, the meeting Fathers made their "Declaration of Colonial Rights in Philadelphia". I legit don't know the difference between this one and the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, so.... sorry.

On Oct 20, the guys at the 1st ConCon did something a little weird. They officially put out a discouragement of entertainment... suggestion? decree? I don't even know. Pretty much, they strongly discouraged the serious people of the United Colonies to not participate in entertainment- like balls, card games, attending plays, that kind of stuff. Not sure what purpose that would serve and I'm REALLY grateful it didn't stay part of our country forever! It just makes me think how opposite it was when the pioneers were fleeing that they would still have music and dancing even in the hardest times.

The next day, Oct 21, in Taunton, Massachusetts (yes, I'm dying at the fact that a place is named Tauntaun- did George Lucas visit the town in MA and it was flipping cold, so he used  the name, but changed a few letters?!)- K, something cool happened there, I promise! The word LIBERTY was first used on a flag there, hoisted up the LIBERTY POLE!  Hopefully I don't get in trouble for posting it here, but I don't have any clue how to get proper permissions right now.  If you'd like to read another fantastic article, I'll post it here. If anyone wants to send me to the annual Liberty And Union Festival they hold there each year, I'm happy to send you my venmo. LOL. I kid. Kind of. :D


Things started to get a little serious as minutemen units began to form. One cool troop, the First City Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry also got together at Carpenter's Hall. That troop is still around! I mean, new people in it, obviously- I am pretty sure there are no zombies in service.

England had banned other countries from selling munitions to the colonies. There was a fort in New Hampshire called Fort William and Mary. The Patriots were paying attention to the goings on and knew that there was ammunition stored at the fort. When they noticed some warships approaching Portsmouth, Paul Revere and a pretty interesting guy named Wentworth Cheswell took a 66 mile ride to let their fellow Committee of Correspondence members know, then informed them when and where they needed to be. The militiamen gathered 400 members and marched on the fort. They were able to take it without any injuries and got a pretty decent haul of guns and ammo. Heaven knows they were about to need it for the next few years.


Did you have any family involved with this? Have you ever heard of the Liberty and Union Flag? Tell me how your family connects to all of this!!

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