Edward O'Daniel, James Denison, Ed Hannigan, a question

Just an early sort of union, probably dating back to "guild" days. There are college alumni groups who stick together over the years. It's man's nature to congregate people of similar interests. Another word for smugglers and ship owners would be merchants and leaders of commerce. The sometimes friction between business people and government is a tradition that extends even to our current days. I have no strong feelings about Free Masons or any of the other you mentioned.

's tunnels, I was caught by the name of one of the owners of a house with a large tunnel leading into its basement. His name was Captain Hooch. Now the Merriam Webster dictionary credits the word Hooch to the Tlingit tribe of West Coast Indians and has an earliest usage date of 1896 or 7. I'm wondering if the word doesn't go back a hundred years older and to a well known character in Boston. Should you have access to David McCullough's book on the Revolution, there are quite a number of entries there referring to the activities in Boston, particularly smuggling, and even piracy during the pre-Revolutionary period. The Old North Church wasn't just used to signal which way the British had gone and by what means, apparently it was used to signal which pier to off-load contraband at while the Customs officers were busy with another ship and its cargo.

The subterranean tunnels allowed some Bostonians to evade the restrictions on assembly, and movement. Additionally membership in the Free Masons gave a perfectly legitimate cover to the meetings of key men in the organization of the Revolution.

Rob