The nearly year-long Siege of Boston began on April 19, 1775, just after the battles at Lexington and Concord. Colonial militiamen surrounded Boston to prevent the British army’s movement, and conflicts ensued for eleven months until the British evacuation in March 1776.

John Hancock (1737–1793) was a leader of the American Revolution and the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, Hancock was a wealthy merchant in colonial America. In the 1760s, he became a supporter of the resistance movement against British rule and an associate of Samuel Adams. In 1764, the Liberty, a sloop owned by Hancock, was seized for allegedly violating the Sugar Act, and Hancock became a widely known figure in the ensuing case. Hancock served as president of the...

Benjamin Franklin (1705–1790) was one of America’s first renaissance men—his career included work as a statesman, scientist, writer, printer, and diplomat. Born in Boston, Franklin eventually settled in Philadelphia. He published Poor Richard’s Almanack for twenty-five years and later wrote an autobiography that is still in print. His inventions, such as the bifocal lens and the Franklin stove, as well as his investigations into the properties of lightning, earned him international recognition. Widely popular in...

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) was the first African American woman writer to be published. She was taken from Africa as a child and enslaved in Boston by the Wheatley family. The Wheatleys recognized her intellect and she soon learned English, Greek, and Latin, and developed her own literary abilities. In 1773 Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published to much acclaim. The Wheatleys manumitted her and she married and had three children, none of whom survived childhood, before succumbing to disease...