Author: Mike Messner

First, I think we need to address the elephant in the room that Mike brought up during this episode: Winona Ryder comes third out of four; Katharine Hepburn and Saoirse Ronan are way ahead.

And let’s just pretend June Allyson didn’t happen.

Mary Sherwood is one of those authors who, it appears, was fated to fade into obscurity after dying despite the huge popularity they enjoyed in life. It still happens today; ask anyone under 40 about Erma Bombeck or Kurt Vonnegut.

Fortunately you have us to learn a little bit about her and her work.

Alexander McNair wasn’t especially well-educated, but he became a judge and a governor of a territory and then that same area when it became a state, so he must have had something going on besides high-level friends.

Then again, as governor, he wasn’t able to get a ton of stuff done, and when his term ended he took on a Federal job just for the money. So, for a guy who spent so much time in the “Show-Me State”, he didn’t really have much to show.

As we noted a few days ago, both Payton Randolph and George Washington managed to quell a couple of militia-based riots which would have resulted in the torching of the Royal Governor’s mansion. Both of those riots came from Fredericksburg.

What nobody counted on, however, was that militia from other parts of Virginia had the same idea to march on Williamsburg and wreak a little havoc. They were led by Patrick Henry, who (let’s face it) extorted payment for the missing gunpowder from Lord Dunmore, and then took off for Philadelphia to deliver the money.

Dunmore called him out on it, declaring Henry an outlaw, and the Virginia citizens acted accordingly. I’ve said too much here; listen in to see what they did.

More often than not, items that appear in the Bill of Rights derive directly from actions that the British took at one time or another in the past. Ban guns, will you? Here’s a nice Second Amendment. Ban free speech? Here’s your First Amendment.

And so on.

Today’s edition could be considered a Part Two to the events of April 16, when the Massachusetts Spy had to pack up shop and hightail it out of Boston down the road some forth miles to Worcester specifically so it could keep publishing. On this day, the Spy sprang back to life.

Rachel Walker Revere was Paul Revere’s second wife. When he married her, he’d only been a widower for a few months, so clearly she made a big impression on him, especially since they remained together until her death in 1813 (one year after the portrait in today’s artwork was painted), and he didn’t remarry after that.

Rachel was a very supportive wife to Paul, by most accounts, but she was also willing to give him grief when he deserved it, as you’ll learn in today’s episode.

Wellll….ordered to be destroyed. But it didn’t happen. Oddly, it was also quite susceptible to the foibles of weather, so when the British took South Carolina back five years later, it was assumed that the garrison had been destroyed on purpose, but nobody knows for sure.

Nova Scotia could have been the fourteenth state, except we ruined it for them over the whole fishing rights thing. And then when push came to shove, they decided that rebellion wasn’t for them, and they sent troops down to Boston to help the British there.

Ain’t that a kick in the head!

Payton Randolph was the Speaker of the House of Burgesses during this period in 1775, and while what was said wasn’t recorded, he managed to put down two riots in which Virginians were ready to trash the Royal Governor’s place with the Royal Governor inside of it.

He did it twice.

No question, this man was a patriot who cared deeply about the soul of its people. And if he hadn’t died just a few months later, he would almost certainly have been a name we’d have heard a lot more often in recent years.

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Jonathan Trumbull was one of only two men to serve as governor of a Colony and of a State. (Nicholas Cooke of Rhode Island was the other.) This, to us, gives him a kind of air that perhaps he could be trusted by all parties to act appropriately.

And when push came to shove, Trumbull found himself in the position of having to support the Colony rather than the crown, as you’ll see in today’s episode. And as things further deteriorated, he became more focal about supporting the Colony, since the British no longer appeared to view the Colonists as subjects of the Crown but as a genuine enemy to be crushed. (Which is exactly how many in Parliament felt, so.)

The war was hot in Massachusetts, but it was still cold elsewhere. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t rebellious activity going on, since by this point everyone knew what was going on up north.

It manifested itself in different ways. In Maryland, it appeared that Patriots were straight-up lying to the Royal Governor in order to deprive the British troops of some of their arms and gunpowder stores.

And in North Carolina, the Royal Governor loudly declaimed his disdain for anyone who didn’t agree with him. Unfortunately for him, that included the entire North Carolina Assembly. Their response was to do exactly the opposite of everything he asked.