General Court votes to send representatives to the First Continental Congress.

Meeting behind locked doors in the Salem Court House, the House of Representatives votes to send John and Samuel Adams, James Bowdoin, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine to Philadelphia by a margin of 117 to 12. The measure describes the purpose of the Congress as “to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures to be by them recommended to all the colonies, for the recovery and establishment of their just rights and liberties, civil and religious.” Suppporters of the measure are subsequently referred to as the Glorious 117.