Traveling Tuesday: Boston - Cradle of Liberty

 

Traveling Tuesday: Boston, the Cradle of Liberty

As most of you know, I’m a native of Baltimore, Maryland, a state that is considered part of the Mid-Atlantic Region. When my husband and I relocated to New Hampshire, we assumed we were simply moving farther up the coast, and life wouldn’t look much different. Boy, were we wrong. New England is a region of its own with a different culture and outlook.

We recently took a cruise out of Boston and made our way to Portland, Maine, the Maritime Provinces, then down the St. Lawrence River to Quebec and Montreal. Over the next several months, I’ll introduce you to each of our stops. First up: Boston.

The third largest city on the East Coast behind New York City and Philadelphia, Boston has a population of more than 675,000 people. The greater metropolitan area has almost five million people. Located about forty miles from Plymouth Rock, where the pilgrims landed in 1620, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula ten years later by Puritan settlers who named the town after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire, England.

The city was the location of several key events prior to and during the American Revolutionary War,

including the well-known Boston Tea party. Constructed in 1742, by 1760 Faneuil Hall had become a regular meeting place for the Sons of Liberty and other patriots who were against British taxation. Speeches were made, petitions were signed to boycott English goods, and plans were devised to revolt.

Boston had a long seafaring history, and after the war, Boston became one of the nation’s busiest ports. Shipping took a hit during the War of 1812 but quickly recovered upon the war’s end. Dozens of small rivers border the city, and it didn’t take long for mills and factories to spring up. The railroad’s arrival in later years, added to the city’s success. In 1852, Boston became the site of the first free library in the US, and the Old Corner Bookstore became a haven for writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Fuller.

Interestingly, a group arose known as the Boston Brahmins (term coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.), a collection of “old Boston families” considered America’s social and cultural elite. Then there were the “have-nots.” Famine and political unrest brought thousands of immigrants to Boston’s shores and by the second half of the 19th century, the city was home to Germans, French, Lebanese, Irish, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews. By 1890, the city had tripled in size through land reclamation filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between the wharves.

The 1900s saw the construction of museums, opera houses, bridges, concert and lecture halls, and Fenway Park, home to the Red Sox. During both world wars, Boston’s Navy yard converted merchant and passenger ships to anti-submarine and troop transport vessels. Camp Devens trained and deployed thousands of soldiers, and Forts Strong and Andrews were manned and upgraded to defend the coast. The city also sent thousands of their own young men to fight, and Massachusetts General Hospital sent teams of doctors and nurses to the front lines.

America is celebrating her 250 birthday this year with events across the nation, but Boston has been celebrating long before now. March 17 is an official public (bank) holiday that commemorates “Evacuation Day,” the day in 1776 when British forces left the city after a year-long siege. Additionally, Patriots Day is state holiday held on the third Monday in April and commemorates the opening battles of the Revolutionary War which occurred in Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. And last but not least, is Bunker Hill Day held on June 17 to commemorate said battle that occurred in 1775.

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Swedish Sunrise (Coming September 15, 2026)

Espionage. Diplomacy. Resistance. Is there any room for love?

Weeks after being accepted into America’s Office of Strategic Services, Birgit Westgard finds herself in Stockholm, Sweden - “Casablanca of the North.” The job is supposed to be easy: typing and filing. Then her handsome boss taps her to be his “plus-one” at social events where they collect intelligence, plant propaganda, and dance the nights away. How much longer can she remain impervious to his charm?

Silas Cronin is one of the lucky ones, and his plane crash lands in neutral Sweden. Bored with cooling his heels in an internment camp, he raises his hand when the government comes looking for someone who can type. Suddenly, he’s in Stockholm, mired in intrigue and subterfuge, and more than a little attracted to his new secretary who wants nothing to do with him. Is she right that wartime is no time for romance?

Pre-order link: https://books2read.com/u/3RRqyv

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston
https://www.nps.gov/articles/women-workers-bny-wwi.htm
https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/boston-history
https://www.britannica.com/place/Boston
https://www.meetboston.com/
https://guides.bpl.org/c.php?g=800717&p=10418847

Photo credits:

Map of Boston: By Thomas Hyde Page - United States Library of Congress's Geography & Map Division under the digital ID g3764b.ct000250. Public Domain.

Faneuil Hall: Pixabay/Ritz Studios

Thomas Crowninshield/Boston Brahmin: Minature painting in Peabody Essex Museum from "The story of George Crowninshield's yacht, Cleopatra's barge: on a voyage of pleasure to the Western islands and the Mediterranean, 1816-1817."  Public Domain

1911 Painting of the British Evacuation: By William James Aylward - https://digitalcollections.nypl.org Public Domain.