The Boston Massacre: A Family History

“Historical accuracy and human understanding require coming down from the high ground and seeing people in all their complexity. Serena Zabin’s rich and highly enjoyable book does just that.”—Kathleen DuVal, Wall Street Journal

A dramatic, untold “people’s history” of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution.

The story of the Boston Massacre—when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death—is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: this pivotal event in colonial America arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.

Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs, and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution.

Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.

This character-rich narrative history explores the forgotten relationships at the heart of the conflict:

• Untold History: Discover the overlooked story of the thousands of women and children who traveled with the British army, living and working alongside the soldiers in colonial America.
• Social History: Go beyond the battlefield to a world of shared neighborhoods, traded goods, and even baptisms that connected Bostonians and soldiers before the shots rang out.
• A People’s History: Witness how the breakdown of personal, human-level relationships—neighbor to neighbor—fueled the political rage that sparked a revolution.
• Deeply Researched: Based on meticulous original source material that brings the forgotten world of 1770s Boston to vivid, surprising life.