Ben Franklin's World

Ben Franklin's World

A Podcast About Early American History

Episode 234: Richard Bushman, Farms & Farm Families in Early America

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If we want to understand everyday life in early America we need to understand the everyday life of early American farms and farmers. Roughly three-quarters of Americans in British North America and the early United States considered themselves to be farmers. So how did early Americans establish farms and what were the rhythms of their daily lives? Richard Bushman, the Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, … [Read more...]

Episode 233: Gwenn Miller, A History of Russian America

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When we think about colonial American history we think about the colonies of the English, the Dutch, the French, and the Spanish. Rarely do we think about the colonies of the Russians. And yet Russia had colonies in North America. Gwenn Miller, an Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, joins us to investigate a history of Russia’s colonies in North America with details from her book Kodiak Kreol: Communities of Empire … [Read more...]

Episode 232: Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora

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Before the English settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 or the Dutch settled near Albany, New York in 1615, a group of French-speaking, Catholic settlers established a settlement in Nova Scotia in 1605. By 1755, nearly 15,000 Acadians lived in Acadia. Christopher Hodson, an Associate Professor of history at Brigham Young University and the author of The Acadian Diaspora, joins us to investigate the lives of these early North American … [Read more...]

231 Sara Georgini, The Religious Lives of the Adams Family

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Historians use archives to create the histories we love to read, watch, and listen to. So we’re going into one archive to investigate how historians use them and to discover more about the religious lives of the Adams Family. Sara Georgini, Series Editor of The Papers of John Adams, invites us to join her inside the Massachusetts Historical Society so we can take a closer look at the historical details provided by the Adams Papers and the role … [Read more...]

Episode 230: Mitch Kachun, First Martyr of Liberty

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Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, Patrick Carr, and Crispus Attucks. These are the five men who died as a result of the shootings on Boston’s King Street on the night of March 5, 1770. Of these five victims, evidence points to Crispus Attucks falling first, and of all the victims, Crispus Attucks is the name we can recall. Why is that? To help us answer this question and to conclude our 3-episode series on the Boston … [Read more...]

Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment

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Within days of the Boston Massacre, Bostonians politicized the event. They circulated a pamphlet about “the Horrid Massacre” and published images portraying soldiers firing into a well-assembled and peaceful crowd. But why did the Boston Massacre happen? Why did the British government feel it had little choice but to station as many 2,000 soldiers in Boston during peacetime? And what was going on within the larger British Empire that drove … [Read more...]

Episode 228: Eric Hinderaker, The Boston Massacre

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On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered in Boston’s King Street and confronted a sentry and his fellow soldiers in front of the custom house. The confrontation led the soldiers to fire their muskets into the crowd, five civilians died. What happened on the night of March 5, 1770 that led the crowd to gather and the soldiers to discharge their weapons? Eric Hinderaker, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Utah … [Read more...]

Episode 224: Kevin Dawson, Aquatic Culture in Early America

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The Atlantic World has brought many disparate peoples together, which has caused a lot of ideas and cultures to mix. How did the Atlantic World bring so many different peoples and cultures together? How did this large intermixing of people and cultures impact the development of colonial America? Kevin Dawson, an Associate Professor of History at the University of California-Merced and author of Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the … [Read more...]

Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region

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During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Ohio River Valley proved to be a rich agrarian region. Many different Native American peoples prospered from its land both in terms of the the land’s ability to produce a wide variety of crops and its support of a wide variety of small fur-bearing animals for the fur trade. Susan Sleeper-Smith, a Professor of History at Michigan State University and author of Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: … [Read more...]

Episode 221: Rae Katherine Eighmey, The Culinary Adventures of Benjamin Franklin

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Can food help us better understand the people and events of the past? Can we better understand a person like Benjamin Franklin and who he was by the foods he ate? Rae Katherine Eighmey, an award-winning food historian, author, and cook, joins us to explore the culinary tastes and habits of Benjamin Franklin and colonial British Americans with details from her book Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Father’s Culinary … [Read more...]

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