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Boston, MA
250 years ago, Boston was besieged, hungry, and desperate – The Boston Globe
The fighting at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had come and gone, and life in the encircled Massachusetts capital was consumed by simple, daily worries about finding enough to eat and scraps of wood, and steeling oneself for brutal fighting that seemed certain to come.
“A lot of people really feared that that would be Boston’s end, that it would end in some fiery conflagration,” said Jonathan Lane, executive director of Revolution 250, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization.
Thousands of people had fled before shots rang out at Lexington Green, and many Loyalists flocked to the town for safety. But after the British sealed off the town completely, those who remained either pledged allegiance to King George III, were neutral, or sympathized with the rebels and had stayed to safeguard their property.
Among the latter was Paul Revere’s teenage son, who remained to protect the family’s North End home.
The siege was harrowing, hungry, and pocked with alternating spells of boredom and horror. Civilians were barred from entering or leaving through a fortified gate that stretched across narrow Boston Neck, near today’s South End intersection of Washington and East Brookline streets.
Looking at Boston today, those day-to-day trials are hard to imagine. But in Lane’s estimation, those days were the most challenging in Boston history.
“The town was in a shambles,” said Peter Drummey, chief historian at the Massachusetts Historical Society. “The poor soldiers were taking anything that wasn’t nailed down.”
The long siege did not end until the British army, startled by the sudden appearance of Continental Army cannon on Dorchester Heights, evacuated Boston in March 1776 and sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with 1,000 refugee Loyalists.
Their exodus put a close to “the last time Boston was under direct attack in its history,” noted John L. Bell, an author and Revolutionary historian from Newton.
Before the town’s liberation, Lane said, “there was very little work and very little income and you couldn’t leave.” There also was hyperinflation that drove up the price of everything and sporadic provisions that could arrive only by ship.
Privation extended to British troops, as well. In one possibly apocryphal story, an officer was said to have shot his horse to feed his soldiers and himself.
“They’re tearing down houses and fences and anything that will burn to feed the fire to keep the army warm,” Lane said.
Little evidence of the siege remains in modern Boston, where streets and lanes that cross-crossed the Colonial peninsula were buried long ago under pavement and development.
Remains of British fortifications have vanished from Boston Neck, for example. So, too, have the Continental Army’s lines near the Eliot Burying Ground close to Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury.
One building that remains from the siege now holds the Union Oyster House, whose first floor had been a dry-goods business owned by Hopestill Capen, a Loyalist. Another vestige is the time-altered outline of some rebel earthworks in East Cambridge.
“It’s hard for us to see the siege in the urban landscape,” Lane said. Still, he added, “it’s one of few Revolutionary stories where communities like Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Brookline, Charlestown, Medford, Somerville, Cambridge are part of the story.”
Those communities are connected to the Continental Army rebels who had encircled Boston from Chelsea to today’s South Boston, trapping the British and their residents inside the town with only the sea as a lifeline.
For Bostonians inside that cordon, their town had taken on a beleaguered, bedraggled appearance. Grass had begun to grow in the streets, shops and warehouses had closed, and most of the town’s Congregational ministers had fled from an occupying force that disdained their religion and its puritanical underpinnings.
“That is what I admire most,” Lane said, “just the fortitude of these people to stand there day after day, not knowing how it will end, necessarily.”
The Reverend Andrew Eliot, one Congregational minister who remained, lamented the damage done to Boston and the large number of his friends and parishioners who had fled.
“Where these scenes will end, God only knows,” Eliot wrote shortly after the siege had begun. “But if I may venture to predict, they will terminate in a total separation of the colonies from the parent country.”
Another Bostonian who stayed, John Andrews, wrote his brother-in-law in Philadelphia that those who had left the town would “forfeit all the effects they leave behind.”
“Its hard to stay coop’d up here … more especially without one’s wife,” Andrews wrote. “But at the same time, [I] would not wish to have her here under the present disagreeable circumstances, though I find an absolute necessity to be here myself, as the soldiery think they have a license to plunder every one’s house and store.”
Andrews also lamented the Bostonian diet under siege.
“Was it not for a trifle of salt provisions that we have, ‘twould be impossible for us to live. Pork and beans one day, and beans and pork another, and fish when we can catch,” he wrote.
Peter Edes, 18, kept track of his 107 days of confinement in a Boston jail. The apprentice son of a Revolutionary printer in Boston, Edes had attracted attention for his rebel sympathies as he watched the British retreat from Concord and the costly assault at Bunker Hill.
On Aug. 15, 1775, he wrote from jail: “Close confin’d, the weather very hot. Died, Capt. Walker, a prisoner taken at Bunker’s Hill,” Edes said. “The place seems to be an emblem of Hell … The worst man-of-war is nothing to be compar’d with this diabolical place.”
During Edes’ time as a prisoner, only 11 of 29 Americans who had been wounded at Bunker Hill and confined near him would survive.
The importance and impact of the siege are not widely known, historians said.
“What would you do in this situation?” asked Bell, the Revolutionary author who writes the “Boston 1775″ blog. “We can still identify with people fighting for liberty and being driven from their homes.”
For Drummey, the Massachusetts Historical Society historian, the siege is an “inflection point” that “is obviously an important event, not only in Boston but for the Revolution.”
When General George Washington and the Continental Army entered Boston after the siege, Drummey said, their improbable victory had lifted hopes among sympathetic Americans and morale among the army.
“People now really thought it was possible that a civilian army could defeat a professional army,” Drummey said. “They thought, we have done this already. We are a going concern.”
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com.
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Born and raised in Southie, Heather Foley has seen her neighborhood morph over the past three decades of scrubbing, renovation, and new construction for higher-income new arrivals.
But even Foley was surprised to discover that her South Boston, where kids once went to the corner to buy milk and cigarettes for parents, has emerged with the city’s second-highest average income, even ahead of Charlestown and Beacon Hill.
Her first thought?: “I gotta start being nicer to my neighbors if that’s the kind of money they’re making.”
What’s a household?
Decades ago, when “Good Will Hunting” was filmed in the neighborhood and Southie was known as a working-class area, there were more kids around and maybe just a single breadwinner in some homes.
Since then, Southie saw more two-earner households, fewer kids, and spiffier rental units where three or four roommates could contribute to a “household.” The changes, along with spillover from the adjacent, pricier Seaport, or South Boston waterfront, are factors in Census data showing more than 40 percent of Southie households earn more than $200,000 a year.
Staying put
Foley, 46, a photo shoot producer, considers herself lucky. She didn’t move out to the South Shore like many neighborhood longtimers. She’s living in a family home on a block with residents — oldtimers and newer arrivals — who aren’t flipping properties for big bucks.
Another blessing, particularly valuable this winter? She has a driveway.
As a kid, she went to church and school at Gate of Heaven, St. Brigid, and St. Peter, and jokes that she’s “so sad I didn’t buy a three-decker with my First Communion money, because I probably could have.”
Waves of gentrification
She remembers the earlier waves of newcomers, when glassy sports bars like Stats Bar & Grille muscled in among longtime restaurants like Amrheins.
But now, even the popular Stats is moving out at the end of the month. The property owner is developing a five-story, mixed-use residential building at the site.
A small silver lining
Foley notes that some of the onetime “newcomers” have been here for three decades — and in some ways, have stabilized the place. Many have raised kids, who, like her son, may return to the neighborhood as young adults (albeit splitting a rented apartment with friends). Stats, the sports bar, says it will also return to the neighborhood’s thriving food scene.
“We have a lot of great restaurants now,” Foley says, “and everyone cleans up after their dog.”
Read: These maps show Boston’s wealthiest and most populous neighborhoods — plus other key trends.
🧩 6 Across: More scarce | 🌧️ 42° Another storm
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Hitting the brakes? After an ambitious state law, Lexington welcomed a wave of new housing. Now, people there are having second thoughts.
Hyde Park fatal bus crash: The driver has been indicted.
Patriots, strippers, and hookahs: A downtown restaurant’s liquor license is in jeopardy after it allegedly hosted Patriots players and guests after their AFC Championship in January. A decision is expected today.
‘Culture of secrecy’: In a scathing report, R.I. authorities accused the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence of decades of “inaction, concealment, and revictimization” in complaints of clergy sexual abuse of hundreds of children.
Centers of suffering, campaigning: Federal immigration facilities have become backdrops for Democratic politicians seeking to fight President Trump’s immigration policies.
‘The best time to remember God’: Amid crackdowns, the Somali community leans into faith during Ramadan.
When is a reno worth it? Here’s how to judge the return on a home investment.
🧸 ‘Ted’ talk: Seth MacFarlane and the “Ted” cast talk Massholes, potty-mouthed teddy bears, and why Boston may have “the worst accent”
🩰 A ‘Black Swan’ premiere: That’s among 30 sparkling arts events happening this spring around New England. Plus, why are more artists being banned from America?
🎥 Quiz: Test yourself with the Globe’s Academy Awards quiz.
⚽ Will $7.8 million stop the World Cup from coming here? Can Foxborough’s insistence on up-front security payments force the world’s soccer governing body to send matches somewhere else this summer?
♯ Teenage dreams: The future rock stars were teenagers when they wrote songs, influenced by David Bowie and Stevie Wonder, about a fictional nightclub. A half-century later, Squeeze has reworked and is releasing those songs.
💻 Death by chatbot? A new lawsuit alleges Google’s chatbot sent a man on missions to find an android body it could inhabit. When that failed, it set a suicide countdown clock for him. (WSJ)
🍕 And a red cup, please: Fans are tracking down the few Pizza Hut Classic red-roofed restaurants that remain in the 6,200-store chain. (NYT)
Thanks for reading Starting Point.
This newsletter was edited by Heather Ciras and produced by Ryan Orlecki.
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Dave Beard can be reached at dave.beard@gmail.com. Follow him on X @dabeard.
Boston, MA
Each mile is for her miracle: This Granby mom is running the Boston Marathon with her daughter in mind
Boston Marathon
“With every mile I run, I will be thinking of her strength, her transplant journey, and the families who are walking similar paths right now.”
Brianna Poehler
In our “Why I’m Running” series, Boston Marathon athletes share what’s inspiring them to make the 26.2-mile trek from Hopkinton to Boston. Looking for more race day content? Sign up for Boston.com’s pop-up Boston Marathon newsletter.
Name: Brianna Poehler
City/State: Granby, Mass.
I am running the 2026 Boston Marathon with Miles for Miracles in support of Boston Children’s Hospital. The Boston Marathon is deeply personal to me and my family.
My daughter is a liver transplant survivor, and at just 11 months old, she received a life-saving liver transplant at Boston Children’s Hospital.
What could have been the most devastating chapter of our lives became a story of hope, resilience, and extraordinary care because of the BCH team.
When our daughter was so small and so sick, the doctors, nurses, and staff at Boston Children’s carried us through the unimaginable.
They combined world-class medical expertise with compassion that went far beyond treatment plans and hospital rooms. They cared for our daughter as if she were their own. They supported us as anxious, exhausted parents. They gave us answers when we had questions, and reassurance when we were overwhelmed.
Most importantly, they gave our daughter a second chance at life.
Today, she is thriving because of that gift. Every milestone she reaches is a reminder of the miracle she received and the team that made it possible. Running the Boston Marathon is my way of honoring that gift and saying thank you in the most meaningful way I can.
The marathon is a test of endurance, determination, and heart — qualities I saw in my daughter during her fight and in the Boston Children’s team every single day.
With every mile I run, I will be thinking of her strength, her transplant journey, and the families who are walking similar paths right now.
By running with Miles for Miracles, I hope to raise funds that will support groundbreaking research, life-saving treatments, and compassionate care for children like my daughter. This race is more than 26.2 miles — it is a celebration of survival, gratitude, and hope.
Editor’s note: This entry may have been lightly edited for clarity or grammar.
Charlotte Hornets (31-31, ninth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Boston Celtics (41-20, second in the Eastern Conference)
Boston; Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. EST
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Celtics -6.5; over/under is 214.5
BOTTOM LINE: Charlotte is looking to keep its five-game win streak alive when the Hornets take on Boston.
The Celtics are 27-13 against Eastern Conference opponents. Boston is sixth in the NBA with 46.2 rebounds led by Nikola Vucevic averaging 8.8.
The Hornets are 19-21 in conference matchups. Charlotte is 7-8 when it turns the ball over less than its opponents and averages 15.0 turnovers per game.
The Celtics average 15.5 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.7 more made shots on average than the 12.8 per game the Hornets allow. The Hornets average 16.0 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.1 more made shots on average than the 13.9 per game the Celtics allow.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jaylen Brown is averaging 29 points, 7.1 rebounds and five assists for the Celtics. Payton Pritchard is averaging 17 points and 5.8 assists over the past 10 games.
Kon Knueppel is averaging 19.2 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists for the Hornets. Brandon Miller is averaging 22.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists over the past 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Celtics: 8-2, averaging 109.4 points, 50.7 rebounds, 27.1 assists, 6.1 steals and 6.4 blocks per game while shooting 45.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 98.5 points per game.
Hornets: 7-3, averaging 117.3 points, 47.8 rebounds, 27.4 assists, 8.5 steals and 4.2 blocks per game while shooting 45.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 106.2 points.
INJURIES: Celtics: Jayson Tatum: out (achilles), Neemias Queta: day to day (rest).
Hornets: Coby White: day to day (injury management).
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
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