BFW Revisited: British-Occupied Philadelphia, 1777–1778

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In September 1777, just fourteen months after declaring independence, Philadelphia fell to the British Army. For nearly nine months, the new nation's capital was occupied territory. But what did that actually mean for the people who lived there? Not the generals, not the Congress: ordinary Philadelphians who had to decide whether to flee or stay, share their homes with British officers, watch their fences get chopped up for firewood, and figure out which neighbors to trust when it was all over. In this episode, Aaron Sullivan, a professor of History at Rider University, George Boudreau, a public historian and Executive Director of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion Museum in Germantown, PA, and historical interpreter Kalela Williams, now the Director of the Virginia Center for the Book, take us inside occupied Philadelphia. Together, they reveal how a city that was never fully committed to independence experienced nine months of British rule, and what the occupation cost everyone who lived through it: Quaker women negotiating with soldiers at their back gates, merchants whose fortunes rose on British hard currency while their neighbors went hungry, and Black Philadelphians who looked at the upheaval and asked whether it might open a door to freedom. Plus: the most extravagant party thrown in eighteenth-century America, staged while the city's almshouses overflowed. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/332RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 050: Betsy Ross & the Making of America🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 333: Life in Occupied Yorktown🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's Wife🎧 Episode 437: Civilian Life in America's Occupied CitiesSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do you get when you take two childhood friends with the passion for unexplored history and a whole lot of booze?
0:05.6	You get us, Queens podcast.
0:07.6	And here at Queens, we are spilling the tea on all kinds of women from history.
0:11.6	From New Orleans voodoo queen, Marie Levo to Marie Antoinette, and everything in between.
0:17.7	Each queen is paired with a cocktail recipe that will totally get you in the mood to hear
0:21.5	the fun, dramatic, and juicy stories of fascinating women from history. Listen wherever you get your
0:27.0	podcasts. Cheers. You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Ben Franklin's World is a production
0:35.2	of Cleo Digital Media. And support for this episode comes from the Massachusetts Historical Society,
0:41.1	the first historical society founded in the United States in 1791.
0:53.2	Hello and welcome to Ben Franklin's World Revisited, a series of classic episodes that bring fresh perspective to our latest episodes and had deeper connections to our understanding of early American history.
1:05.3	And I'm your host, Liz Covart.
1:08.4	In episode 437, we took a wide view of what the American War for Independence looked and felt
1:14.2	like for people who weren't on the battlefields.
1:16.8	We traced how ordinary women and men in cities across the new United States experienced
1:21.9	the war through shortages, soldiers, shifting loyalties, and the constant uncertainty of not knowing which side was going to be
1:29.3	in charge of their lives the next week, the next month, or even the next year.
1:34.1	Philadelphia came up more than once in our conversation, and for good reason. In September 1777,
1:40.2	just 14 months after the Second Continental Congress declared independence in that very city,
1:45.7	the British Army marched into Philadelphia and occupied it. For nearly nine months,
1:51.0	Philadelphians lived under the authority of the British crown that they had just very publicly rejected.
1:56.6	Now, some Philadelphians welcomed the British occupation, Many endured it, and some didn't survive it.
2:02.8	Most, however, fell somewhere in between, in a complicated middle of people who weren't revolutionaries, weren't loyalists.
	...

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