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This proposal seeks funding to complete a book entitled Occupying Boston: An Intimate History of the Boston Massacre, that uncovers the extensive personal interactions between troops (with their families) and townspeople of both sexes and the close, if fraught, relationships that developed between them. When soldiers shot townsmen in March of 1770, what became known as the Boston Massacre was only one of many small incidents that arose between neighbors who knew each other all too well. The spin Revere and his allies put on the Boston Massacre, rather than the shooting itself, gave the incident its iconic place in the road to the American Revolution. Occupying Boston demonstrates that the immediate result of the shooting was not to solidify political differences so much as it was to hasten the breakdowns of the social world that locals and regiments had created. Only after the final regiment left Boston in 1772 did those who remained begin to draw the line between patriot and loyalist.