Caloosa Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution

05/19/2026

Compatriot Hank Hendry recommends this:

12 likes. "24,000 British Bodies, 1 Rifle: Washington’s BRUTAL Pennsylvania Secret"

05/16/2026

Compatriot Hank Hendry suggests this:

The founding generation in America was not of one mind. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson differed on crucial ideas, but exemplify the capacity for people to disagree and yet work for a common cause.

05/15/2026

On May 15, 1765, Parliament passed the Quartering Act, outlining the locations and conditions in which British soldiers were to find room and board in the American colonies.

The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses and the houses of sellers of wine. "Should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all such publick houses were filled," the act read, "the colonies were then required to take, hire and make fit for the reception of his Majesty’s forces, such and so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings as shall be necessary."

As the language of the act makes clear, the popular image of Redcoats tossing colonists from their bedchambers in order to move in themselves was not the intent of the law; neither was it the practice. However, the New York colonial assembly disliked being commanded to provide quarter for British troops—they preferred to be asked and then to give their consent, if they were going to have soldiers in their midst at all. Thus, they refused to comply with the law, and in 1767, Parliament passed the New York Restraining Act. The Restraining Act prohibited the royal governor of New York from signing any further legislation until the assembly complied with the Quartering Act.

In New York, the governor managed to convince Parliament that the assembly had complied. In Massachusetts, where barracks already existed on an island from which soldiers had no hope of keeping the peace in a city riled by the Townshend Revenue Acts, British officers followed the Quartering Act’s injunction to quarter their soldiers in public places, not in private homes. Within these constraints, their only option was to pitch tents on Boston Common. The soldiers, living cheek by jowl with riled Patriots, were soon involved in street brawls and then the Boston Massacre of 1770, during which not only five rock-throwing colonial rioters were killed but any residual trust between Bostonians and the resident Redcoats. That breach would never be healed in the New England port city, and the British soldiers stayed in Boston until George Washington drove them out with the Continental Army in 1776.

~ from history.com

05/14/2026

On May 14, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention began to assemble in Philadelphia to confront a daunting task: the peaceful overthrow of the new American government as defined by the Article of Confederation. Although the convention was originally supposed to begin on May 14, James Madison reported that a small number only had assembled. Meetings had to be pushed back until May 25, when a sufficient quorum of the participating states—Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia—had arrived.

As the new United States descended into economic crisis and inter-state quarrels, the new nation’s leaders had become increasingly frustrated with their limited power. When in 1785, Maryland and Virginia could not agree on their rights to the Potomac River, George Washington called a conference to settle the matter at Mt. Vernon. James Madison then convinced the Virginia legislature to call a convention of all the states to discuss such sticky trade-related issues at Annapolis, Maryland. The Annapolis Convention of September 1786 in turn called the Philadelphia Convention, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.

Between Madison’s initial call for the states to send delegates to Annapolis and the presentation of Madison’s Virginia plan for a new government to the convention in Philadelphia, a fundamental shift in the aims of the convention process had taken place. No longer were the delegates gathered with the aim of tweaking trade agreements. A significant number of the men present were now determined to overhaul the new American government as a whole, without a single ballot being cast by the voting public.

~from history.com

05/10/2026

On May 10, 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch tea, which entered the colonies illegally through smuggling, was more expensive the East India tea after the act took effect.

British Prime Minister, Frederick, Lord North, who initiated the legislation, thought it impossible that the colonists would protest cheap tea; he was wrong. Many colonists viewed the act as yet another example of taxation tyranny, precisely because it left an earlier duty on tea entering the colonies in place while removing the duty on tea entering England.

When three tea ships carrying East India Company tea, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to send back the cargo, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the so-called Boston Tea Party with about 60 members of the radically anti-British Sons of Liberty. On December 16, 1773, the Patriots boarded the British ships disguised as Mohawk Indians and dumped the tea chests, valued then at £18,000 (nearly $1 million in today’s money), into the water.

Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, known to colonists as the Intolerable Acts, the following year. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to what they saw as British oppression.

~from history.com

05/10/2026

On May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold led a successful attack on Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, while the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Congress faced the task of conducting a war already in progress. Fighting had begun with the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, and Congress needed to create an official army out of the untrained assemblage of militia laying siege on Boston.

The transformation of these rebels into the Continental Army was assisted by the victory of the Vermont and Massachusetts militia under the joint command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold at the British garrison at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Their major achievement was to confiscate enough British cannon to make the Patriot militias into an army capable of an artillery barrage.

Allen and more than 100 of his Green Mountain Boys had already decided to take the fort when Arnold arrived with formal military commissions from Massachusetts and Connecticut and a militia of his own. The Green Mountain Boys were unwilling to follow anyone but Allen into battle, so Allen and Arnold shared command as the Patriot militia surprised and overwhelmed the 50 Redcoats in the isolated garrison, who were completely unaware of the bloodshed in Massachusetts. The cannon seized at Ticonderoga and the next day at Crown Point, also on Lake Champlain, allowed the new Continental Army under General George Washington to drive the British from Boston the following spring.

Ironically, both Allen and Arnold would eventually be accused of treason against the Patriot cause they had served so well in its earliest and neediest moments. Allen avoided conviction for his attempt to reattach Vermont to the British empire in the unstable days of the new republic. Arnold’s name, however, became synonymous with traitor for his attempt to sell the fort at West Point, New York, to the British in 1780.

~ from history.com

05/09/2026

“THOMPSON’S WAR” – Brunswick Militia attempted the capture of HMS Canceaux and Lieutenant Henry Mowat, on May 9, 1775 in Portland harbor.

By early 1775 relations between the American colonies, especially Massachusetts and England, had deteriorated to the point of open rebellion. While Boston was the chief hotbed of anti-British sentiment, discontent also spread east into the District of Maine. One of the centers of this discontent, was in Brunswick, fanned in a tavern owned and operated by the Thompson family and it’s clan head - Captain James Thompson.

Thompson had been elected commander of the Brunswick militia in 1774 and headed the local enforcement committee for the Continental Association created by the First Continental Congress to boycott all goods from Great Britain. The association attempted to enforce the boycott on 2 March 1775 against a shipload of sail, rope, and rigging for loyalist shipbuilder Captain Samuel Coulson of Portland by demanding the delivery ship leave port.

Coulson requested delay while the English sloop completed needed repairs after its trans-Atlantic voyage. HMS Canceaux was dispatched from Boston while the repairs were in progress; and, following its arrival on March 29, Coulson proceeded to offload his British goods under the protection of the British warship. The battles of Lexington and Concord took place while Canceaux lay at anchor in Casco Bay. When news of the battle reached Brunswick on April 21, the Brunswick militia laid plans to capture Canceaux.

On May 9, 1775, fifty Brunswick militiamen (including many of our Scotch-Irish ancestors) wearing a sprig of spruce in their hats just as their ancestors had during The Battle of the Boyne back in Ireland, arrived in Portland secretly aboard small boats carrying a spruce tree with the lower branches cleared away as a battle ensign. Canceaux was prepared to prevent the small boats from boarding; but Thompson's militia captured the warship's captain, Lieutenant Henry Mowat while he was ashore arranging church services for his crew.

The first lieutenant aboard Canceaux discharged two cannon salutes (gunpowder charges without shot) toward Portland and threatened to shell Portland unless the captain was released. Six hundred militiamen from surrounding communities gathered as Portland residents negotiated to prevent their community from becoming a battleground. Mowat was allowed to return to his ship, but his demand to arrest Thompson was refused, and the assembled militia forced Canceaux to leave port on May 15th.

Disappointed militiamen vented their frustration by looting the homes of Coulson and loyalist Sheriff Tyng before returning to their inland communities. News of Thompson's attempt encouraged Machias, Maine militiamen to capture the British armed schooner Margaretta a month later in the battle of Machias.

Mowat brought Canceaux back to Portland in October to set fires which left Portland's population homeless as winter approached. (more on the ‘Burning of Portland’ as we get nearer to the anniversary date).

The Massachusetts House of Representatives promoted Samuel Thompson to Brigadier of the Cumberland County, Maine militia on 8 February 1776 in recognition of his initiative following the battles of Lexington and Concord; and the spruce trees his men carried provided inspiration for adoption of the Pine Tree Flag as the Massachusetts naval ensign in April 1776.

05/06/2026

May 5, 1775
Ben Franklin returns from Great Britain after having spent much of the previous two decades as a colonial agent in London.
The following day, he was informed he had been chosen to attend the Second Continental Congress as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
In 1757, Ben Franklin became Pennsylvania's representative to the Crown in London. This began a long career of service to the colonies in England.
He would spend 18 of the next 20 years in London as an agent for Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
For a short stint in the early 1760s, he would return to the colonies and serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly again and would be elected the Speaker of the House in 1764.
Franklin returned to London in late 1764 and resumed his career as agent for the colonies.

05/04/2026

Learn about the results of DNA tests regarding ancestry of our founding fathers:

The Shocking Truth About the Founding Fathers' Ancestry DNA Just Got Out!

05/02/2026

This may interest you:
What role did Germans play in the American Revolution—and how might their stories intersect with your own family history? In this lecture, Senior Genealogist Hallie Kirchner will explore the complex experiences of German-speaking people on both sides of the conflict: from the so-called “Hessians” hired by the British to the many German immigrants who supported the Patriot cause. Along the way, we’ll examine how to identify German origins in colonial records, trace Hessian soldiers who remained in North America, and better understand the cultural and political forces that shaped their decisions.