James DeWolf died the second richest man in America after accumulating a fortune from buying, selling and – in one case – murdering slaves. He was born into two powerful slave-trading families in Rhode Island, the DeWolfs and the Potters. ...

In 1675, William Scant of Braintree, Mass., was brought before the court for breaking a law called the Old Deluder Satan Act: He had refused to educate his children. The court ordered Braintree’s selectmen to find another home for the ...

In the early 1600s, the Anglican Church was under criticism from all manner of dissenters offering a wide variety of opinions on how the church should change. The Puritan beliefs are probably the best-remembered, and the Puritan zeal to change ...

In February 1788, George Washington was staying close to home at Mount Vernon, anxiously awaiting news from New Hampshire. The state’s constitutional convention was to be held on February 13, and his friend John Langdon and his former general John ...

In the spring of 1636, Lucy Downing wrote a letter from England to her older brother, John Winthrop, six years after he had led a group of Puritans to Massachusetts. Lucy and her family wanted to join them, but she ...

Thomas Hancock had two nephews: John, whose outsized signature on the Declaration of Independence is knowna round the world, and Ebenezer - John's younger brother. While they were just boys in Braintree, John and Ebenezer's father died. Four years Ebenezer's ...

By the time she died in 1875, Henriette Desportes was best known as a minister’s wife in Stockbridge, Mass. But behind that staid image was the story of a scandal that helped topple the King of France. Henriette Desportes was ...

Boston’s Rev. Mather Byles was a Tory through and through. His loyalty to England never wavered throughout the American Revolution. What set him apart from others, however, and may explain his ability to remain in Boston unmolested until his death ...

A century ago, Connecticut’s Art Young was a radical political cartoonist, and many of his drawings would be as relevant today as they were then. Young came to political cartooning through a roundabout route. Born in 1866 in Wisconsin and ...

Crystal Eastman wanted to change the world for women and change the way women lived in the world. A suffragette, magazine editor and lawyer, she was accustomed to inspiring her fans and vexing her critics. In November of 1916, she ...