Blog 2- Shelby Setzer

So last week I was having trouble finding credible primary sources. Finally I had a breakthrough. The two sources I found are diaries. One diary is from one Samuel Cooper, a pastor who was involved in the Revolution, by preaching as well as being a part of the deliberations about the future of this country. The second source is from General George Washington. This source has been most revealing and helpful.

The diary of Samuel Cooper, written in 1775-1776, contains a lot of information that does not pertain to the Revolution, such as "I slept at ___, din'd with ___." But among all of this information that does not particularly matter, there are a few nuggets of information that can confirm the idea that important meetings took place in taverns. For example, Samuel Cooper says, "They din'd by Invitation of the Congress at Coolidg's Tavern... They formed a Convention immediately after dinner..." (Cooper 309). Samuel goes on to explain the role that these pastors played in the Revolution. He notes that this Convention voted to supply the Army (the Continental Army) with Chaplains. What is really interesting is that this pastor meet up with George Washington, at a tavern. There they had a meeting with George Washington, the Committee of Continental Congress (Cooper 337).

The diary of George Washington has been a lot more revealing than Samuel Cooper. This is probably because this main was at the center of all of this. This part of his diary is important to my paper because it shows the significance of taverns after the revolution was won. It shows the ground work of the nation. As an interesting side note, there was a benefit concert held at the City Tavern. The concert included classical music to be performed for the delegates of the Convention (Washington 299). I suppose it was naive of me to think that benefit concerts were a modern day thing, but it is so interesting to find out that there were benefit concerts in 1787!