Colonial Boston

Archive.org has an extensive collection of scanned in out-of-copyright books that probably include many written by and about people who lived in Boston at that time.

msza45 said:

I have a few questions I'm struggling with. Any help would be greatly appreciated:

Time period is 1773, Boston:

What is the farthest from the harbor an upper class Boston family could realistically live?

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about a mile, maybe not wuite that far. You should look at the library of congress site for maps from the ers. Boston was a peninsula that was rather small.

How far out would one have to go from Boston to get to a small town?

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Just across the Neck in Roxbury one would be in a small farming town. There still were cultivated fields in Boston in 1773, but the real farms had been broken up.

What was the 'night life' like, if there was one?
Thanks!

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Mount Whoredom was the area. Pretty much anything went. It was immediately North of where Charles Street runs now across from the bottom of the Common and toward Cambridge St. The area is now considered part of Beacon Hill, because the other two hills were removed, dragged down and used as fill for the Back Bay.

Outside Mount Whoredom there was little "nightlife"; although there were legitimate inns where one could get a meal and some drinks. There may also have been some dives along the shore road, but I can't specify anything.

http://www.loc.gov/maps/?q=boston+1775

msza45 said:

Thanks guys.

Another question I've had no luck with is related to the Boston Newsletter. I've read most newsletters were distributed weekly and I'm assuming that's true of the Boston Newsletter. How it have made it out of the city to towns such as Roxbury or farther?

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Boston had a regular newspaper at that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Gazette
It would have been circulated in all of the nearby towns and was also known as the New ENgland Weekly Journal, and that article has a link to the article on The Boston News-Letter.

Johnny Tremain --Esther Forbes.

Not even joking, but have you played the video game Assassin's Creed 3? Its set in part in colonial Boston and I've read that the designers did some pretty intense research in designing the environment. Obviously I wouldnt use this as a main sourse of research, but if you just want to get a feel for the place, to literally run around in it, you might enjoy checking it out.

Here's a link to some maps from about the 1760s and 1770s:

http://drbenjaminchurchjr.blogspot.com/2010/08/dr-churchs-boston-home.html

As for newspaper distribution, I'd assume that there were more places to buy a newspaper in Boston than in Roxbury, but any more than that, I don't know.

msza45 said:

Hey all, a few more question:

How would newsletters such as the Boston Gazette or Boston News-Letter be distributed? Were there subscriptions, were they delivered to one's door, etc? And was the process of getting one in Boston different from a nearby town like Roxbury?

Thanks!

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Some were delivered to doors. Most people would have bought a paper from a retail operation store, tavern, etc., and that would have been true in Roxbury. Some people would have read it while having a drink in a tavern.

You shouldn't have revived an old thread for a new question like that.

I could be wrong, but I think newsboys (in some form) already existed. Im pretty sure there were people who would stand in crowded areas shouting the headlines.

snafu1056 said:

I could be wrong, but I think newsboys (in some form) already existed. Im pretty sure there were people who would stand in crowded areas shouting the headlines.

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There were, but there weren't many crowded places, because there weren't many people around. There probably would have been a newsboy or news stand at the hay market and in Faneuil market. Probably someone standing where there's a newsdealer today.