Database: Old Meeting House

The bells in this church rang out in the hours leading up to the Boston Massacre, as crowds were gathering to taunt the soldiers in front of the State House. In Boston at the time, church bells were rung when there was a fire, so people ran into the streets to see what was happening. That swelled the crowd, making tensions between the people and the British soldiers that much worse. It ended, of course, with the soldiers firing into the crowd, killing 5 people.

And this concludes our lesson on how church bells could be used to incite riots in Colonial America.