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John and Samuel Adams, both key players, did not come from wealth or property. John's father was a farmer, as was his grandfather, and so back for generations. What the Adams cousins wanted, I think, was the right to rise in society and not to have that right taken away. Others in the Massachusetts legislature were also interested in securing and opening up the frontier, something the British weren't that keen about (and neither were the Native Americans, for that matter). There were any number of men who fought in the American Revolution who agreed with these causes.
I've done genealogical research for over 25 years, and have studied Revolutionary War documents and legal papers of the period. In my family, at least, the one fellow who was a rich merchant did NOT side with the rebels, but instead was a Loyalist who tried to recruit others into a Loyalist regiment in the Hudson River Valley; he was in several skermishes and battles, and at the end of the war fled to Canada. Everyone else in my family who was involved in the Revolution were not well to do, but rather working class or farmers--the Adams cousins (my direct ancestor was their aunt) being the most prosperous of the lot.
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