“The work the students are doing here is essential to understanding the whole story.

This event is commemorated each year in Boston on March 17 as Evacuation Day. Faced with the overwhelming threat of the cannon, the British boarded ships and sailed away from Boston. The patriot troops kept the British contained in Boston until March 1776, when the patriots fortified Dorchester Heights with cannon sent from Fort Ticonderoga in New York. George Washington set up camp in Cambridge, and Gen. An alarm from Lexington spread throughout eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire and brought thousands of Revolutionary troops to surround the British. The British were then driven back to Boston by the minutemen. The story is that in April 1775, the British seized patriot gunpowder at Lexington and Concord, essentially beginning the war for independence. “We’ve memorialized Lexington and Concord,” said Allison, “but Roxbury is part of the broader story and it’s an essential part of the Revolutionary War story.”

It was the troops in Roxbury who stopped the British from simply walking away. The town closest to the “Boston neck,” the only land route to Boston, was Roxbury. At the time of the war, Boston was located on the Shawmut Peninsula, before massive landfills in the 19th century filled in adjacent waterways. The students are focusing on materials that relate to the patriot army that was encamped in Roxbury. … I have a much broader picture now of this period.” It also gives some texture to the lectures and the texts that we read. For me, it’s a great and rare opportunity. One of Allison’s students, Lauretta Woods, enthuses about her opportunity to do this research: “As an undergraduate,” she said, “I never expected to have access to primary sources. “It gives them a chance to work with primary source materials and find out how much fun it is to be able to discover history on your own.” “It’s a terrific opportunity for the students,” said Allison, who is also a professor and chair of the history department at Suffolk University. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

General Washington’ were recorded with care and skill by Pigeon. The students are volunteers from Robert Allison’s Extension School course HIST-E-1632, “The History of Boston.” Allison’s fledgling historians are looking at documents, including diaries, ledgers, and journals, to try to get a sense of what life was like during the Revolutionary War. In April 2006, Harvard Extension School students are poring over centuries-old documents to advance our knowledge of what has become known as the Siege of Boston. In April 1775, minutemen and patriot troops began pouring into the Boston area to surround the British army and contain it in the city. Extension School student Lauretta Woods takes a close look at notes written in the official commissary ledger for the Massachusetts army as kept by John Pigeon, a lively character who stored Bible stories, poetry, musical scores, and personal letters in the ledger.

Revolutionary war diarly