Plymouth County, 1775: Patriots and Tories on the Eve of Revolution
An Excerpt Adapted from My Doctoral Dissertation
[ Readers, in honor of Patriot’s Day — “the Immortal 19th” — here is a paid subscriber-only piece on the outbreak of the Revolution locally. — Ed. ]
1775 dawned amid a tide of recrimination and revolutionary activity in the Towns of Plymouth County. On February 7th, the day after that year’s Town Meeting in Pembroke, the Town played host to an extraordinary gathering of Plymouth County Selectmen. The Selectmen of Pembroke, Duxbury, Scituate, Hanover, Kingston, and Plymouth — among the more ardently Whig1 of the Plymouth County Towns — sent a petition to Gen. Thomas Gage, the military governor of the Bay Province, complaining that Loyalists in Marshfield had been spreading false rumors about the County's Whigs in order to justify the stationing of troops in heavily Loyalist Marshfield.