Stay ConnectedThis is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history.
Copyright: © Liz Covart 2024
On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere rode to Lexington, Massachusetts to spread the alarm that the Regulars were marching. Revere made several important rides between 1774 and 1775, including one in September 1774 that brought the Suffolk Resolves to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
So why is it that we remember Paul Revere’s ride to Lexington and not any of his other rides?
Why is it that we remember Paul Revere on the night of April 18, 1775 and nothing about his life either before or after that famous ride?
Why is it that Paul Revere seems to ride quickly into history and then just as quickly out of it?
In this episode we speak with four scholars to explore Paul Revere’s ride through history.
This episode originally posted as Episode 130.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/271
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How do you uncover the life of an enslaved person who left no paper trail?
What can the everyday life of an enslaved person tell us about slavery, how it was practiced, and how some enslaved people made the transition from slavery to freedom?
We explore the life of Charity Folks, an enslaved woman from Maryland who gained her freedom in the late-18th century. Our guide through Charity’s life is Jessica Millward, an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine and author of Finding Charity’s Folk.
This episode originally posted as Episode 089.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/270
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 070: Jennifer Morgan, How Historians Research
🎧 Episode 083: Jared Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston
🎧 Episode 084: Zara Anishanslin, How Historians Read Historical Sources
🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, Price For Their Pound of Flesh
🎧 Episode 212: Erica Dunbar, Research Biography Episode 220: Margaret Ellen Newell, New 🎧 England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery
REQUEST A TOPIC
📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com
WHEN YOU'RE READY
👩💻 Join the BFW Listener Community
LISTEN 🎧
💚 Spotify
CONNECT
👩💻 Liz on LinkedIn
SAY THANKS
💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What was everyday life like for average men and women in early America?
Listeners ask this question more than any other question and today we continue to try to answer it.
Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, author of One Colonial Woman's World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit, joins us to explore the life of an average woman who lived in early New England.
This episode originally posted as Episode 032.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/269 Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What in the first 40 years of his life made Benjamin Franklin the genius he became?
Benjamin Franklin serves as a great window on to the early American past because as a man of “variety” he pursued many interests: literature, poetry, science, business, philosophy, philanthropy, and politics.
But one aspect of Franklin’s life has gone largely unstudied: his childhood and early life.
Nick Bunker, author of Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity, joins us to explore Benjamin Franklin’s early life and how family, childhood, and youthful experiences shaped him as a scientist and diplomat.
This episode originally posted as Episode 207.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/268
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How did the people of early America experience and feel about winter?
Thomas Wickman, an Associate Professor of History and American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and author of Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural Winter in the Early American Northeast, joins us to investigate how Native Americans and early Americans experienced and felt about winter during the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/267
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How did early Americans educate their children? How and when did Americans create a formal system of public education?
You sent me these questions for Episode 200: Everyday Life in Early America. You also said you wanted to know more about how early American boys and girls learned the trades they would practice later in life.
Johann Neem, a Professor of History at Western Washington University and author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, joins us to further explore how early Americans educated their children and how early American children learned the trades they would practice later in life.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/266
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On July 1, 1790, Congress passed “An Act for Establishing the temporary and permanent Seat of the Government of the United States.” This act formalized a plan to move the capital of the United States from New York City to Philadelphia, for a period of 10 years, and then from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., where the United States government would make its permanent home.
What buildings did Congress have erected to house the government?
Lindsay Chervinsky works for the White House Historical Association as the White House Historian and she joins us to explore the history of one of the earliest buildings in Washington D.C., the White House.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/265
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Treaty of Paris 1783 ended the American War for Independence, but it did not bring peace to North America. After 1783, warfare and violence continued between Americans and Native Americans. So how did the early United States attempt to create peace for itsnew nation?
Michael Oberg, a Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York-Geneseo and the author of Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, joins us to investigate how the United States worked with the Haudenosaunee or Six Nations peoples to create peace through the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/264
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Did you know that imagination once played a key role in the way Americans understood and practiced medicine?
Sari Altschuler, an Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern University and author of The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States, joins us to investigate the ways early American doctors used imagination in their practice and learning of medicine.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/263
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
History is an important tool when it comes to understanding American law.
History is what the justices of the United States Supreme Court use when they want to ascertain what the framers meant when they drafted the Constitution of 1787 and its first ten amendments in 1789. History is also the tool we use when we want to know how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments have changed over time.
Sarah Seo, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, Fourth Amendment expert, and the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, joins us to investigate how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has changed over time and how that change has impacted the way the Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable search and seizures.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/262 Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
Listen!
Helpful Links
*Books purchased through the links on this post will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
