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Battle of Gloucester (1775)

1775 in the Province of Massachusetts Bay1775 in the Thirteen ColoniesBattles of the American Revolutionary War in MassachusettsBattles of the Boston campaignConflicts in 1775
Events in Essex County, MassachusettsGloucester, MassachusettsNaval battles of the American Revolutionary WarNaval battles of the American Revolutionary War involving the United States
BostonCapeAnn1775
BostonCapeAnn1775

The Battle of Gloucester was a skirmish fought early in the American Revolutionary War at Gloucester, Massachusetts on August 8 or 9, 1775. Royal Navy Captain John Linzee, commanding the sloop-of-war HMS Falcon, spotted two schooners that were returning from the West Indies. After capturing one schooner, Linzee chased the second one into Gloucester Harbor, where it was grounded. The townspeople called out their militia, captured British seamen sent to seize the grounded schooner, and recovered the captured ship as well. The skirmish was one of a series of actions that prompted a retaliatory expedition by Royal Navy Captain Henry Mowat in October 1775. The major event of his cruise, the Burning of Falmouth, was cited by the Second Continental Congress when it established the Continental Navy.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Battle of Gloucester (1775) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Battle of Gloucester (1775)
Fort Square, Gloucester

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N 42.606422222222 ° E -70.663719444444 °
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Fort Square
01930 Gloucester
Massachusetts, United States
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Sargent House Museum
Sargent House Museum

The Sargent House Museum is a historic house museum located at 49 Middle Street, Gloucester, Massachusetts. The museum is open on weekends from Memorial day to Columbus day, and offers guided tours of the historic home, a small gift shop, and rotating exhibits in its exhibit space. The Sargent House was built in 1782 for the feminist writer and philosopher Judith Sargent Murray and her first husband, John Stevens, a merchant in the West Indies trade. Judith's second husband, John Murray, the founder of the first Universalist Church in America, also lived in the house. The home is considered high Georgian because of its symmetrical floor plan, and includes Georgian details in its quoins, windows, cornices, and columns. The central stairway is an unusually fine example of the skill of 18th-century woodworkers. It has an undercut spiral newel, two types of spiral balusters on each step, and a long arched window enclosed by Ionic columns at the landing. This stair was almost purchased by the MET Museum in NY around 1915 for installation their "period rooms." This spurred the former families and friends of the House to preserve it as a museum. The Museum houses a small but exquisite collection of American decorative arts and furniture. It displays sculpture by Hiram Powers and one of the finest collections of family portraits in the United States by major American artists like Christian Gullager, Thomas Sully, James Frothingham, and Alvan Fisher. It has landscape prints and a painting by Fitz Henry Lane. The Museum owns several Thomas Sheraton pieces of furniture, as well as furniture made in major American furniture centers like Boston, Salem, Newburyport and New Orleans. Artifacts from the life of Judith Sargent Murray such as her dictionary and first edition "The Gleaner" (1798) are also exhibited. The house has a collection of original works by the painter John Singer Sargent, a descendant of the Sargent family.

Gloucester Lyceum
Gloucester Lyceum

The Gloucester Lyceum (1830-1872) of Gloucester, Massachusetts, was an association for "the improvement of its members in useful knowledge, and the advancement of popular education." It incorporated in 1831.From the 1830s through at least the 1860s, the Lyceum arranged lectures from notables such as: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., "the two Everetts, Choate, Sumner, Rantoul, Winthrop, Colfax, Greely, ... Parker, Curtis, Phillips, Bayard Taylor, Dr. Holland, Chapin, Starr King, Hillard, ... Beecher, Giles, Gough, Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, Burlingame, ... Alger, Whipple, Murdoch, Vanderhoff, Bancroft, and Dana." From 1830, "meetings were held in Union Hall ... until 1844 when the Murray Institute was used for one season prior to the occupancy of the Town Hall."In 1854 "the Lyceum opened its library on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and evenings, with 1,400 volumes. It was located in the eastern parlor of the residence of F. G. Low on what was then the corner of Spring and Duncan Streets." Patrons could use the library for $1 per year; the fee was waived for those unable to afford it. In 1863 the library moved to Front Street; the building burned down in 1864. Thereafter it occupied rooms on Middle Street (in the Baptist church), and later on Front Street (in the Babson block). Much of the funding for the library came from "Samuel E. Sawyer, a Boston merchant, but a native of Gloucester."The Lyceum became the Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library under a new charter in 1872.