Multiple Celebrations, Multiple Personalities

Today we remember the aftermath of one of the worst snowball fights in history. It happened 339 years ago in Boston, when a crowd of Bostonians started throwing snowballs and insults at troops billeted in the city. It escalated into gunfire, and ended with three deaths and eight wounded people—two of whom died later.

It soon took on the dramatic name of the Boston Massacre, and is now recognized as the first skirmish of the American War of Independence. Most people acknowledged the first victim was Crispus Attucks, variously described as a sailor and an escaped slave. Less well known was a teenaged apprentice named Samuel Maverick, who was the roommate of a young lad who would grow up to be the dentist to George Washington. John Greenwood remembered his roomie’s death in his memoirs, which he wrote forty years later in New York City:

I remember what is called the "Boston Massacre," when the British troops fired upon the inhabitants and killed seven of them, one of whom was my father's apprentice, a lad eighteen years of age, named Samuel Maverick. I was his bedfellow, and after his death I used to go to bed in the dark on purpose to see his spirit, for I was so fond of him, and he of me, that I was sure it would not hurt me. The people of New England at that time pretty generally believed in hobgoblins and spirits, that is, the children at least did.

On a completely different note, it is also Multiple Personalities Day. We're still trying to figure out how to yoke these two celebrations together. Any assistance you can offer would be welcome. It's beyond us.