History Of Plymouth Plantation

Source

General Miller In Hawthorne's Custom-House

The apartment opposite to Hawthorne's was, in his day, occupied by the brave warrior General James Miller... . (Source)

Gen. Miller was...collector of the port of Salem which post he resigned in 1840. He is the "old soldier collector" referred to in the introduction to Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. (Source)

General James Miller's desk and chair have come to us [the Essex Institute]... .
The old chair had not failed to attract the attention of [Nathaniel] Hawthorne while he served with General Miller at the Salem Custom House. In the preface of the "Scarlet Letter," he tells how the gallant old general would slowly and painfully ascend the Custom House steps and with a toilsome progress across the floor--for the step was palsied now that had been foremost in the charge--attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. (Source)

The Fort

Source: LOC of Penobscot Bay (Maine) Map

A quote from The Fort; A Novel of the Revolutionary War by Bernard Cornwell; the subject was the Siege of Penobscot Bay, then part of Massachusetts, from July 24, 1779 to August 14, 1779):

We have received intelligence...from patriots in the Penobscot region.  We know for certain that a considerable force of the enemy has landed, that they are guarded by three sloops-of-war, and that they are commanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean.  ...an experienced soldier.  Most of his service was in the Portuguese employment. (Page 96)

An authentic document that included a real-life character of The Fort:

Dr. Califf, affiant, was also a charachter in the book The Fort.

"Dr. Califf thinks that Matthew Lymburner cannot return to Penobscott.  he was taken prisoner by the Rebels during the Siege of Penobscott and cruelly treated but was liberated when the Rebel Fleet was drove a shore." [Source Audit Office: AO 12. Claims, American Loyalists...]

General McLean was also mentioned in the "Claims."

General Rufus Putnam's Biography

Journal of Gen. Rufus Putnam...

Heroism Of Hannah Duston

Source

Colver-Culver Genealogy

Source

"John Winthrop the younger, in whose company Edward Culver came to America, recruited his band of colonists from the counties Middlesex, Kent and Essex; as the Colver, or Culver, is found in the Middlesex records, especially in some parishes of London, it is more than probable Edward Colver was a native of those parts."

Edward Culver married Sarah Backus, daughter of William Backus and Elizabeth Pratt.

History Of Deerfield, Massachusetts

History Of Deerfield, Massachusetts:

The Gaspee's Mission

Narragansett Bay

From the book, When we destroyed the Gaspee: a story of Narragansett Bay in 1772:

"This vessel [Gaspee] of the king's was, in the beginning of March, sent to Narragansett Bay by the commissioners of customs at Boston, to prevent the people from breaking the revenue laws, and to put an end to what those gentlemen of Massachusetts were pleased to say was an illicit trade carried on between Newport and Providence."

Also see Detour June 9, 2013 

Conditions In Boston

The Spy Unmasked, or Memoirs of Enoch Crosby, alias Harvey Birch (Google version), "the hero of Mr. Cooper's take of the Neutral Ground...".

Spencer House In Newbury

Source

The Webster Genealogy According To Noah

Source [Not Governor John Webster's Property]

Family of John Webster:

Source

Cousin Dana's family.  Noah Webster would be Dana's father's 4th cousin 5x removed.

That Pattern Began To Crack

Below is an excerpt from And Wait For The Night by JohnWilliam Corrington...:

From the starched rectitude of the family, through the unsullied rondo of the schools, to the rich properties of his father’s bank, young Lodge had stepped without a hitch. There was one city: Boston.  One church: Episcopal. One state superior in all ways: Massachusetts. One law: gentlemanly conduct and smart business practice. One political party: Whig. And one view of life not sicklied o’er with the film of degeneracy and indecency: his kind of life. It was possible for a man to be born, to live, and to die within this regimen. It had been done. His father had done it. But as the century moved forward into the middle 1840’s, that pattern began to crack and shred along the edges. 

House In Louisiana (Chalmette Battlefield)

Vast new territories were being consumed into the Union (already swollen beyond decent bounds by the damnable and possibly treasonous Louisiana Purchase—which yet might prove the seed of ultimate disunion) and almost all of this territory was either in the hands of slave-state representatives, or well on the way to falling into their grasp. Not that Lodge, in 1845, was an abolitionist. Hardly that. Abolitionists were seedy radicals at least as distasteful as the slave-owning, pseudo-aristocratic barbarians themselves. A conservative man would have as little truck as possible with the latter and no conversation with the former at all. Still, the slave-power burgeoned and thrived: in Virginia, Nat Turner had revolted, slaughtered, been captured, and executed, and still the threat of another Santo Domingo, another slave-rising under a L’Ouverture yet to make himself known, seemed to hover over the states south of Washington City. Even a conservative like Jonathan Lodge could say this much: --The system is basically unstable. 

A Serious-Minded Girl

Source

"...'Lydia [nee Stetson] was always a serious-minded girl, loving the house and people of God, but I think without a radical change of heart until after her residence at Sackett's Harbor.  There Christ revealed himself to her....'".

Lydia's husband, Josiah Bacon, was a quartermaster and lieutenant in the Army.

More about the Bacons from A Historical Discourse, Delivered at Chelsea, Mass..... , By Isaac Pendleton Langworthy:

John Lees' Journal

Journal of J. L., of Quebec, merchant,  By John Lees, Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Michigan

An excerpt from the Journal:

"The passengers came all ashore at the long Wharff and were conducted by Captain Hall to one Collonel Ingarsols a good Tavern in Kings Street which leads down to the Kings Wharf."

A Canadian Abolitionist In John Brown's Circle

From John Brown's Target Of Harper's Ferry

In the Recollections and experiences of an abolitionist, from 1855 to 1865, by Alexander Milton Ross, Dr. Ross recounted his dealings with the famous abolitionist, John Brown, including the telegram and letter transcribed below:

"I received a telegram from Boston informing me that Capt. John Brown, of Kansas, would meet me in Cleveland in a day or two, and that he desired to confer with me on a subject of importance, connected with the Anti-slavery cause."

A letter to Dr. Ross from the same John Brown:

CHAMBERSBURG, PENN., 

October 6th, 1859. 

DEAR FRIEND, 

I shall move about the last of this month. 

Can you help the cause in the way promised ? 

Address your reply to Isaac Smith, Chambers- 

burg, Penn. ****** 

Your friend, 

JOHN BROWN. 

Dr. Ross positioned himself in Richmond, Virginia, awaiting the outcome of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry:

That John Brown had struck a blow that resounded throughout the Slave States was evident, from the number of telegraph despatches from all the Slave States, offering aid to crush the invasion. 

The experience of other compatriots of John Brown.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Boss

General James Miller was mentioned by actual name in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Custom House Sketch which introduces The Scarlet Letter.   Miller was the Collector of the Salem Custom House from 1825 to 1849, and was Hawthorne's immediate supervisor from 1846 until 1849.  [Source] 

In his younger days, James Miller was a War of 1812 officer, known as the Hero of Lundy's Lane.

Included in this article:
"...he [Hawthorne] tells how the gallant old general would slowly and painfully ascend the Custom House steps and with a toilsome progress across the floor--for the step was palsied now that had been foremost in the charge--attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. 

"...[in] the private office of the present chief executive [of the Custom House], the genial Collector Waters-- a portrait of the hero of Lundy's Lane now looks down from the wall upon the visitor; but no picture of Hawthorne is to be found in the edifice. [Source]

Between those two careers, James Miller was Governor of the Arkansas Territory.  He died in 1851.

Stagecoach And Tavern Days

From the book, Stagecoach And Tavern Days, included taverns, various drinks, implements, modes of transportation, signs, and plenty of pictures.

Travel in the South in the Thirties

The early taverns were not opened wholly for the convenience of travellers; they were for the comfort of the townspeople, for the interchange of news and opinions, the sale of solacing liquors, and the incidental sociability; in fact, the importance of the tavern to its local neighbors was far greater than to travellers. 

The Exchange Coffee-house of Boston was one of the most remarkable of all these houses. It was a mammoth affair for its day, being seven stories in height. During the glorious days of stage-coach travel, its successor, built after it was burnt in 1818, had a brilliant career as a staging tavern, for it had over two hundred bedrooms, and was in the centre of the city. 

At a sumptuous dinner given to President Monroe, who had rooms there, in July, 1817, there were present Commodores Bainbridge, Hull, and Perry; ex-President John Adams; Generals Swift, Dearborn, Cobb, and Humphreys; Judges Story, Parker, Davis, Adams, and Jackson; Governor Brooks, Governor Phillips, and many other distinguished men.

Any account of old-time travel by stage-coach and lodging in old-time taverns would be incomplete without frequent reference to that universal accompaniment of travel and tavern sojourn, that most American of comforting stimulants—rum.  ...“Rhum made from sugar-canes is called kill-devil in New England.” 

The tavern has ever played an important part in social, political, and military life, has helped to make history. From the earliest days when men gathered to talk over the terrors of Indian warfare; through the renewal of these fears in the French and Indian War; before and after the glories of Louisburg; and through all the anxious but steadfast years preceding and during the Revolution, these gatherings were held in the ordinaries or taverns.  

Springfield [MA] Library's Genealogy Fiction List

From a reading list for genealogical fiction (there's more at the site):

Sergeant David Holden's Journal - French And Indian War

Journal Kept By Sergeant David Holden concerning the French And Indian War:

From Emily Dickinson To Julia Moore In Fiction

A line in a mystery novel, Emily Dickinson Is Dead, made me think of my cousin.  The line was "...(he) was abandoning Emily Dickinson, getting ready to rip and claw at somebody else.  This time it was Julia Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan."

Just as a fictional Emily Dickinson symposium was hosted in Massachusetts, a real Julia Moore event, the Julia Moore Poetry Parody Contest, was held Michigan until budget cuts killed the poetry star (apologies to "Video Killed The Radio Star)."

According to this participant, it was "...Tom Powers, the retired Flint Public Library research librarian who'd been the demented brain behind the rowdy Julia A. Moore Bad Poetry Contest...".

An article in the Chicago Sun Times described Tom's thought process:

FLINT, Mich. - Julia A. Moore certainly took her lumps while she was alive.  So librarian Tom Powers figures: Why stop now?

Tom Powers is my cousin and the Julia A. Moore contest was his brainchild.

Though I never attended any of the Julia A. Moore contests, I'm guessing they were nothing like the fictional Emily Dickinson symposium that was in the thick murder and mayhem.