Posts Tagged ‘lexington’
Learning about the Jacob Whittemore House, 18 & 23 May (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The family that lived in that house during the battle wasn’t wealthy and suffered various misfortunes, which contributed to their memories not becoming part of the traditional narrative of how the Revolutionary War began.
The Mass Humanities Foundation provided the Friends of Minute Man with funds to hire Polly Kienle as a ...
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The Soldier Who Died in Buckman Tavern (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Except that last night Don Hagist kindly left a comment on yesterday’s posting to report that a British army muster roll says grenadier Bateman died on 21 April—two days before that deposition.
Now I believe the most likely explanation is that the muster roll is in error, based on information ...
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The Mysterious Prisoner of Ephraim Flint (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
To follow up yesterday’s deposition from Pvt. John Bateman of His Majesty’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, here’s another guest-blogger essay from Richard C. Wiggin.Ephraim Flint “shouldered his musket” on April 19, 1775, “and as one of the results, captured a British Soldier at Lexington, and took him home with him, where he worked some time on the farm of his captor peacefully.” So we are told, at least, by Flint family lore.
The origin of the lore is somewhat obscure, and whatever details might once have filled out the story have long since been lost. The story survives ...
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Pvt. John Bateman Testifies and Declares (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
In the aftermath of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress set out to collect testimony about who fired first in that fight, and about any other arguable examples of British army misbehavior. Here’s the text of one of the depositions that magistrates set down:
Lincoln, April 23d, 1775.
I, John Bateman, belonging to the fifty-second regiment, commanded by Colonel [Valentine] Jones, on Wednesday morning, on the nineteenth day of April instant, was in ...
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“Calling out, ‘King Hancock forever’!” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
During the whole of the march from Lexington the Rebels kept an incessant irregular fire from all points at the Column, which was the more galling as our flanking parties, which at first were placed at sufficient distances to cover the march of it, were at last, from the different obstructions they occasionally met with, obliged to keep almost close to it.
Our men had very few opportunities of getting good shots at the ...
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The Young British Fifer (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Besides Luther Blanchard, there’s another story of a wounded fifer on 19 Apr 1775, this one on the British side. But I’ve been unsuccessful in nailing down the details.Abram English Brown wrote Beneath Old Roof Trees in 1896 based on historical accounts, family traditions, and some fictionalization—but it’s hard to know how much of each. Setting the scene as a yearly reunion of Revolutionary War veterans in Lexington, Brown quoted a “Lieutenant Munroe” about a “little fifer”:
“He was a bright little fellow, and had piped away for [Maj. John] Pitcairn as well as he could, in coming down ...
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The Aftermath (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Later on the morning of April nineteenth. Captain [John] Parker reassembled his Lexington minutemen, to march toward Concord. Some of the wounded, now bandaged, formed in awkward but determined lines. Among them was Jedediah Munroe, the old man who had fallen on the Common before he could shoot and who had brought along the old Scotch claymore as an extra weapon. William Diamond beat his drum again. The little company marched off toward Concord, the beat of the drum and the thin music of the fife echoing briefly after ...
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New Book Profiles the Embattled Farmers of Lincoln (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Lincoln is right between Lexington and Concord, and Lincoln militiamen were in the middle of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. But does the town get named in the battle? No! (Well, the battle’s name is plenty long already, and if we let Lincoln in, then Menotomy will want to be represented, too.)The Lincoln Historical Society has just published Embattled Farmers, a comprehensive study of Lincoln’s Revolutionary War soldiers researched and written by local historian and reenactor Richard C. Wiggin.
Yesterday’s Boston Globe reported on Rick’s work:
In his research, Wiggin uncovered 55 new war heroes. ...
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The Myth of Jonas Davenport (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
I lived near Lexington. My house stood on the road. I joined the minute-men when I heard of the comin’ of the British troops, and left my wife and two children home, under the care of my father, then about sixty. I told ’em to keep as quiet as possible and they would be safe.
Well, as I said, I joined the minute-men, and, when the rascals retreated from Concord, followed ...
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The Patriots Day Season Has Begun (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
But only one. Also yesterday was the Merriam’s Corner Exercise in Concord and the Liberty Pole Capping in Bedford—the first a commemoration of another part of 19 Apr 1775, the second a more modern local tradition but honored nonetheless. Today at 2:00 Lexington folks practice for their reenactment of the skirmish on ...
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Cuts at National Historical Park This Summer (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The terms of the sequestration require the National Park System to cut 5 percent, or $134 million, from its overall budget. Because each park receives its own budget, each park must cut 5 percent of its spending. This requirement is especially hard-hitting because the cuts are coming half-way through the year after the parks have already spent part of their yearly budget. Additionally, the cuts are coming ...
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“Rum and Revolution” in Lexington, 8 Feb. (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Bell and Young portray taverngoers Abijah Toddy and Tobias Tripp:
Between musical selections sung and played on period instruments, they bring to life the manners and mannerisms of the age with actual 18th century jokes and more than a few little known truths about how rum and helped to start the Revolution. ...
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Tea-Burning in Lexington, 15 Dec. (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The first announcement actually comes from half a day’s ride out of town:
The Lexington Historical Society invites you to attend the first-ever re-enactment of a little known but critical event in town history: The Burning of the Tea. This free event, open to the public, takes place on Saturday, December ...
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The Return of “Parker’s Revenge” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
In recent years, archeologists have uncovered several musket balls, a shoe buckle, a knife, and other Colonial-era artifacts on land that is part of the Hanscom Air Force Base property. And at a ceremony last month, Hanscom officials officially loaned eight of the items to the neighboring Minute Man National Historical Park, which plans to create a display for its visitors. . . .
Part of the Hanscom property extends near ...
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Time for Reporting the Revolutionary War (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Reporting the Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News was conceived and assembled by Todd Andrlik of the Rag Linen site. It traces how America’s move to independence was reported at the time in American and English newspapers. Every section shows some actual eighteenth-century news reports alongside a historian’s analysis of the event.
I wrote two sections. The first is on the “Powder Alarm” of September 1774, which signaled the de ...
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Revolution Round Table in Lexington, 22 Oct. (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The organizers state:
The mission of the Round Table is to help keep the spirit of the American Revolution alive and to better understand its values, ideals and legacy. . . . we will be using Professor Fischer’s exciting narrative to look behind conventional wisdom about what the ride was really about, and to discuss what Revere’s ride means to Americans today....
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Lexington Is Turning 300 (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Among this month’s kick-off activities, two thousand Lexington citizens (out of 31,000) gathered for a collective snapshot of the community today. Benn Craig took the photograph of that gathering above for Wicked Local.
The official town photo is a composite of several images by Joanne Rath, published in a regional edition of yesterday’s Boston Globe. On this Globe webpage you can see that photograph, and enlarge and pan across it to see individual faces. ...
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Chasing Venus with Andrea Wulf, 29-30 May (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The next evening at 7:00, Wulf will speak at the Arnold Arboretum—an appropriate locale since her previous books include Brother Gardeners and Founding Gardeners, about horticulture in the eighteenth century. This talk will cost $10 for Massachusetts Historical Society and Arnold Arboretum members or fellows, $20 for others, ...
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Looking at Lexington in 1775 (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Fuhrer writes:
Gross’s study, grounded as it is in local evidence, has withstood the test of time with few revisions. However, Concord had a partner in rebellion on 19 April. As the oft-repeated phrase “Lexington and Concord” suggests, the two towns have been fused in popular memory, and so the ...
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New Book on New England Meetinghouses (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The publisher’s copy says:
Built primarily for public religious exercises, New England’s wood-frame meetinghouses nevertheless were closely wedded to the social and cultural fabric of the neighborhood and fulfilled multiple secular purposes for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the only municipal building in the community, these structures provided locations for town and parish meetings. They also hosted criminal trials, public punishments and executions, and political and religious protests, and on occasion ...
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Ebenezer Stiles: “What sound is that”? (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Then there’s a break, and Stiles restarts his story with two iconic militiamen who would reappear in many other authors’ and artists’ portrayals of the day. It appears that Stiles was so carried away by the pathos of the scene he described that he lost his metre at the end of the second stanza.
Part Second
What sound is that said a ploughman ...
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Ebenezer Stiles’s Story of “Revear’s ride” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Stiles’s manuscript entered the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which published the opening in its Proceedings in 1878. Esther Forbes printed the first two stanzas in Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, and David Hackett ...
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Links for the Patriots’ Day Season in 2012 (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
BattleRoad.org’s listings extend to the end of the month. They include the battle demonstrations and encampments inside Minute Man National Historical Park on 14-19 April. I prefer visiting those over the venerable dawn skirmish on Lexington common because they’re (a) not at dawn, and (b) spread ...
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Pauline Maier Talks Ratification in Lexington, 30 Mar. (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
On 10 Dec 1787, the town of Lexington had a meeting to respond to the call for a convention to respond to the proposed new federal structure for the U.S. of A. The upshot:
The Town then made choice of Benjamin Brown Esqr. to represent them in the State Convention to be held at the State House in Boston on the Second Wednesday of January next to give ...
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The California Gold Rush