Diffusion's Blog of the Week, Volume 1, Number 1

We begin this weekly series with the blog that I modeled "A More General Diffusion of Knowledge" after, J.L. Bell's "Boston 1775."

Boston 1775

History, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts.

J.L. Bell is a historian based out of Boston, Massachusetts who specializes in the history of the city and state in the American Revolution period. He has served as a consultant for an episode of History Detectives, contributed to a display at the Minute Man National Historic Park, is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and a Member of the American Antiquarian Society. Also, he has written many papers on events in that time frame as well as engaged in long term research in a book about the Boston Massacre. 

"Boston 1775" was begun in 2006. It currently is found on Blogger.com at  http://boston1775.blogspot.com/. In addition he has a Twitter feed and Facebook page for the blog to build up his social media presence. As a reader who has been visiting his site since at least 2011, I am impressed with his daily posting on the blog. That is pretty remarkable for any blogger. This are not throw away postings either. Bell provides solid historical analysis with each post.

Bell is also an associate editor and writer for the Journal of the American Revolution. He has written several outstanding articles for the Journal and been published in its annual volumes. Bell has also given many lectures at various events in the Boston area. 

I find his website to be very informative. Whenever I am doing work on this period I almost always visit his site to check my information against his as well as search for what he has turned up. I think his research is top notch and I have never found an error. In fact, when I began to question the accuracy of a John Adams quote that had nothing to support it other then Adams' story itself, I asked J.L. Bell what he thought and he agreed that this quote seemed to be another one of John Adams' famous fictional stories which over time have been turned into cited fact by many historians. 

 

I like the layout of the website and purposely patterned the basic layout of my own blog to emulate his although I have additional features in mine for educational purposes. His "About" section which serves as an index to his articles is very useful. I envy it immensely. His site is built on a custom template created by Todd Dominey's web design shop. I really need to pay him a business call one day down the road. 

As a American Revolution scholar, I highly recommend visiting J.L.'s blog. I use it in my own teaching content for students as well as my own research. There are just not that many really good blogs about the Revolution and next to none that are of the quality of "Boston 1775." If I were to rank this with stars, it would without a doubt be a solid 5 out of 5 stars! However, I leave his famous sideburns to you, the reader, for your own opinion!