This is the second in a series.

Today we live in a world of instant communication and social media; 250 years ago some things were different, others the same.

While communication at the time was slow, using riders on horseback traveling winding dirt roads that were little more than paths, the colonists had developed a system of sharing information known as Committees of Correspondence. These groups would write letters and send them to friends who would copy and distribute them and share the information.

This is the way the news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 reached the rest of the colonies.