Creative History

  The Puritans who settled in Boston during the early 17th century built a large wooden structure on Boston Common in around the year 1635 that they called The Granary.   Since there is little arable land surrounding Boston, the Granary was, arguably, the most important building in the city during many of the years prior to the American Revolution.  This large wooden warehouse, which stored mostly flour and corn, was the key to survival for Boston’s residents throughout the long months of the harsh and unforgiving New England winter when coastal shipping and fishing was perilous and very limited. By the year 1713, some seventy years after it had first been built, the same structure still stood in its original spot on Boston Common, but by that time the citizens of Boston--grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the city’s first settlers--had taken to calling the building, not without a slight touch of affection, “The Old Granary”. As the 18th century dawned, and...

  It is April 22, 1721 and the small passenger ship HMS Seahorse arrives from London in Boston harbor. Onboard is a sailor suffering from fever and uncontrollable vomiting.  He is hot to the touch and already his skin has begun to break out in a painful blistering rash.  This sailor is suffering from the dreaded disease of smallpox--the scourge of Colonial America--known to scientists as the virus Variola Major but simply called the Pox by everyone else. Immediately, authorities in Boston ordered the sailor quarantined on Spectacle Island, a small 105 acre speck of land in the harbor that is located four miles from Boston’s city center.  On his deathbed, convulsing in and out of consciousness, this lone sailor is left on the island to die, but already it is too late. The Pox has spread to others onboard the Seahorse, both to passengers from England and to local crew members who take the virus back with them to their residences in Boston.   Before al...