The time setting of this story is a few years before the American Revolution began. Hawthorne provides a hint as to the fate of Major Molineux in the first paragraph of the story. Here he states that uprisings are beginning to occur in the colonies.
" The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II., two were imprisoned by a popular insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson' inclines to believe, was driven from the province by the whizzing of a musket-ball; a fourth, in the opinion of the same historian, was hastened to his grave by continual bickerings withthe House of Representatives; and the remaining two, as well as their successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway. The inferior members of the court party, in times of high political excitement, led scarcely a more desirable life. These remarks may serve as a preface to the following adventures, which chanced upon a summer night, not far from a hundred years ago. The reader, in order to avoid a long and dry detail of colonial affairs, is requested to dispense with an account of the train of circumstances that had caused much temporary inflammation of the popular mind."
The buildup leading to the American Revolution is an important theme of the story. Without this knowledge the story would be quite puzzling indeed. As the story begins, Robin crosses the ferry, and enters the town. He goes to various people inquiring about the location of Major Molineux, his uncle. The reaction he gets is very disturbing, sometimes it is anger, and sometimes laughter, but nobody seems willing to help Robin out. Robin of course is unaware of the hostility that the citizens of the town have toward Major Molineux, since the major is an extension of the British rule in the colonies.
The town was located in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. One description of the town given by the narrator is the following,
"He now became entangled in a succession of crooked and narrow streets, which crossed each other, and meandered at no great distance from the water-side. The smell of tar was obvious to his nostrils, the masts of vessels pierced the moonlight above the tops of the buildings, and the numerous signs, which Robin paused to read, informed him that he was near the centre of business. But the streets were empty, the shops were closed, and lights were visible only in the second stories of a few dwelling-houses."
One important piece of information given in this paragraph is the smell of tar being present. Later in the story, Robin sees Major Molineux tared and feathered. Are we to assume that is why there is a smell of tar in the air. Maybe this means the taring and feathering had already happened before Robin arrived.
Another description of the town was given later
"And first he threw his eyes along the street. It was of more respectable appearance than most of those into which he had wandered, and the moon, creating, like the imaginative power, a beautiful strangeness in familiar objects, gave something of romance to a scene that might not have possessed it in the light of day. The irregular and often quaint architecture of the houses, some of whose roofs were broken into numerous little peaks, while others ascended, steep and narrow, into a single point, and others again were square; the pure snow-white of some of their complexions, the aged darkness of others, and the thousand sparklings, reflected from bright substances in the walls of many;"