Letter from Hannah Winthrop (baptized 1727- 1790), in Andover, Mass., to Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814), 17 August 1775, describing her dismay that General Gage had forced Boston residents to leave their homes without allowing them to take any possessions. She writes of the "Villainy" of the British army, who promised that Boston "should be the last place that would suffer harm" in return for protecting the troops on their return from Concord, but instead "[lay] a whole town in ashes."