Harbottle Dorr was a Boston shopkeeper and a member of the Sons of Liberty. From 1765 to 1776, he collected newspapers, scrawled comments in the margins, and thoroughly indexed their contents, calling it a political history of his time. The result is a curious collection of sources: newspapers from the run-up to revolution, cataloged and organized by a Patriot pack rat with a quirky name. They have recently been digitized by the Massachusetts Historical Society ().
This assignment asks you to identify a question that interests you about the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 70s, and to chase your curiosity through Dorrs newspapers. You are encouraged to rummage through his indexseeing the colonial press through his eyesto spark a question you might not previously have thought of, as well as to locate the newspaper issues that can shed light on your question. In a 34-page (double-spaced) essay, introduce your question and explain how the evidence you encountered in the newspapers helps to answer it.