Massachusetts

Bedford Flag
Boston
Bunker Hill Monument
The John Cabot House
Cambridge
Concord
Dorchester Heights
Lexington
Menotomy
Minute Man National Historical Park
The Old Burying Ground
The Parting Ways Archeological Site
Quincy
Royall (Isaac) House
Russell (Jason) House
Salem and Salem Bridge
Somerville
The Springfield Armory National Historic Site
Stockbridge

Politically and economically, Massachusetts dominated the movement that led to the American Revolution. In and around Boston are many sites associated with the men and events of the decisive years 1763 to 1775. After the day of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the final evacuation of Boston by the British on 17 March 1776, Massachusetts was left outside the theater of military operations.

The following pages do not deal with the surviving landmarks of Massachusetts's cultural history and the many places such as Old Deerfield, Plymouth, and Salem where there is much for the visitor to see today. Massachusetts would warrant more pages in this guide if the author had included all major landmarks of the colonial era and all structures of outstanding architectural importance. They were not included because a wealth of literature already exists on historical landmarks in New England in general and the Boston area in particular.

To an extent greater than in almost any other of the original colonies, widespread urban development has obliterated eighteenth-century villages of historic importance and interest in Massachusetts. They are virtually unrecognizable in the Boston area. However, the tourist trade in Massachusetts is long established, and the solid scholarship of regional historians of an older generation is reflected in the material distributed to visitors. Information centers are maintained at a variety of locations, particularly in the Boston area. In addition, a number of websites exist that are very helpful in disseminating information on landmarks. Walking tours are set up in many areas. The Massachusetts Office of Tourism provides a helpful travel booklet, "Massachusetts Getaway Guide," that is obtainable through their informative website, www.massvacation.com. Phone: (617) 973-8500.

Two other agencies with statewide responsibilities are the Massachusetts Historical Commission, 220 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, Mass. 02125; website: www.sec.state.ma.us; phone: (617) 727-8470; and the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 02215; website: www.masshist.org; phone: (617) 536-1608.

Adams Family Homes

Adams Family Homes. Seequincy.

Arlington (Old Menotomy)

Arlington (Old Menotomy). Seerussell (jason) house.

Bedford Flag

Bedford Flag, Bedford. An early militia flag, traditionally associated with the fight at Old North Bridge in Concord and sometimes claimed to be America's oldest surviving flag (it dates to the early eighteenth century), is displayed in the Bedford Free Public Library on 7 Mudge Way just off Great Road in Bedford. Phone: (781) 275-9440. Individuals are able to view the 27? by 29? flag by contacting the librarian and leaving a driver's license or some other manner of deposit in exchange for a magnetic key to the special room in which the flag is stored. Only five people maximum may be in the room at any time.

Boston

Boston and vicinity. This is where it all started. Two centuries later, Boston retains in the midst of its commercial bustle a delightful vestige of colonial color and historical allure. Landmarks have been respected in the sustained period of economic prosperity (the traditional archenemy of historic preservation) and the recent epidemic of skyscraper building. The Old North End district still carries an Italian flair, although the neighborhood is becoming more and more homogenized as time goes on. At the other pole from this Little Italy, where Boston still throbs with human vitality, is the loneliness of Dorchester Heights. Cambridge, the address for venerable Harvard College, offers another sharp contrast.

The waterfront in and around Boston has been altered beyond recognition. The site of the Boston Tea Party is high, dry, and far from the beaten tourist track. The famous Necks of Boston and Charlestown, the Back Bay, and the old shoreline of Cambridge have long since been obliterated. Dorchester Heights is discernible for those who know where to look—a slight elevation rising above South Boston's masonry and showing a fringe of trees discernible from the expressway leading north into Boston (see separate article on dorchester heights).

Tourism having long been one of Boston's best-organized civic activities, and many outstanding guides to historic landmarks being locally available, this article is restricted to the places of outstanding importance, particularly those that tend to be neglected. "The Freedom Trail" guides the casual tourist to major landmarks from an information center on the Common, and offers free literature, but as an educated British journalist commented, "Take a comprehensive guidebook, for you are left almost entirely to your own devices…." However, in deference to that remark, the Freedom Trail Foundation serves as an excellent resource. Website: www.thefreedomtrail.org; phone: (617) 357-8300.

Overlapping in part with the Freedom Trail is the Black Heritage Trail. Black slaves were first brought to Boston in 1638, and by the time of the Revolution there were several hundred slaves and free blacks living in the city and its environs. This mile and a half trail passes fifteen sites, including the Boston Massacre Site, the Old Granary Burying Ground, and the home of Revolutionary veteran George Middleton, leader of the all-black company called "The Bucks of America" who may have served at Bunker Hill. Walking tour maps and guides are avaliable at the African Meeting House, 8 Smith Court, the oldest extant African American church. The Meeting House is open year-round from Monday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Guided tours are available from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend. Phone: (617) 742-5415.

Below in alphabetical order are the chief historic landmarks of Revolutionary War Boston, some of them merely sites on the sidewalk or in the street, others structures of great architectural interest and importance:

Beacon Hill derives its name from the beacon erected in 1635, a few years after Boston was settled from Charlestown. A new beacon erected in 1768 was blown down in 1789. The next year a tall monument was erected to commemorate the location of the primitive signal (never used for its intended purpose of warning of invasion), which had long been shown on plans of the town. This monument was taken down in 1811 when Beacon and Copp's Hills were graded to provide fill for the Mill Pond, Beacon Hill being lowered 110 feet by this operation. The Beacon Hill Historic District, north of the Common (Beacon Street) and east of the Charles River embankment, is a National Historic Landmark of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

Boston Common is the same plot of some 50 acres purchased by the original settlers in 1634 from the first white inhabitant, William Blackstone. It is the oldest public park in the country, still owned by all the people of Boston, as it was more than three centuries ago. The Common originally fronted on Back Bay, and the British expedition to Lexington and Concord left in boats from the southwest tip of the Common, now the junction of Charles and Boylston Streets.

Boston Massacre Site is marked by a circle of paving stones in State Street at its intersection with Congress Street, just east of the Old State House. Here on 5 March 1770 a British guard of some ten regulars opened fire on a crowd of about sixty men. Three citizens were killed on the spot and two were mortally wounded. John Adams and Josiah Quincy defended the regulars, five of whom were acquitted and two convicted of manslaughter but not seriously punished. The Patriots did all they could to exploit the "massacre" as propaganda, most famously in Paul Revere's dramatic engraving. All five victims were buried together in the Granary Burying Ground (see below) just to the right of the entrance. In 1888 the citizens of Boston erected the Crispus Attucks Monument on the Boston Commons facing Tremont Street to commemorate the former slave who fell to a British bullet during the massacre. The monument has a copy of Revere's famous engraving with Attucks in the foreground. It is worth noting that most recreations of this illustration make Attucks white.

Boston Tea Party Site, marked by a plaque on the Sheraton Building on Atlantic Avenue northeast of Congress Street, was Griffin's Wharf, where, on 16 December 1773, a band of colonists boarded three tea ships and threw £10,000 worth of tea into the water. The British reacted by invoking punitive action, the Intolerable Acts, one of which closed the port of Boston. This led the Patriots to call the first Continental Congress to consider united resistance by all the colonies.

Castle William was on Castle Island, now the tip of a peninsula in South Boston. Castle Island (so called because it looked like a castle to Governor John Winthrop and his exploring party) was fortified in the early 1630s. Castle William never performed the role for which it was best suited, defending the entrance to Boston's inner harbor, but it was a refuge for British authorities during the troubled period leading to the Revolution. The British soldiers were withdrawn here after the Boston Massacre. Before this, town authorities defied the Quartering Act by refusing to provide troop quarters in Boston so long as the barracks on Castle Island were empty, but the British finally succeeded in getting accommodations for most of their garrison in the town. The Sixty-fourth Regiment ended up being posted on the island, leaving from here on its expedition to Salem and Salem Bridge. When the Patriots occupied the island after the British evacuated Boston, they renamed it Fort Independence. Paul Revere was in command of the post in 1778 to 1779 as a lieutenant colonel of militia, being relieved after the disastrous Penobscot Expedition in 1779 (see fort george under Maine). A new fort built in 1801 (where Edgar Allan Poe served as a soldier in 1827) was abandoned in 1880, eventually becoming part of Marine Park. Guided tours of the castle are available on weekends in June through August, from noon to 3:30 p.m. The site is at the end of Gardner Way, South Boston.

Copp's Hill was one of Boston's original three hills (the others being Beacon Hill and Fort Hill). It was the site of a windmill as early as 1632 and a burial ground from 1659. During the Battle of Bunker Hill the British bombarded Charlestown from here, setting the fires that virtually destroyed the old town. An earthwork was hastily thrown up near the southwest corner of the cemetery for the battery, and another was dug to the rear for the supporting infantry. Traces remained until 1807, when Copp's Hill was cut down several feet to get dirt for filling in Mill Pond. Many ancient slate tombstones, including those of Cotton Mather and Edward Hartt, builder of the U.S.S. Constitution, remain on the hilltop, which is reached by climbing Hull Street from Old North Church. Through the large buildings that mask most of the view you can see parts of Charlestown, including the Bunker Hill Monument.

Copp's Hill Burying Ground, Hull and Snowhill Streets. Just uphill from the Old North Church, Copp's Hill has been a cemetery since 1659, making it second in age only to King's Chapel, founded in 1630. General Burgoyne commanded the British artillery from the cemetery during the bombardment of Charlestown, 17 June 1775. British soldiers practiced their shooting by aiming at the tombstone of Captain Daniel Malcom with its bold inscription, "A true Son of Liberty." Among the many veterans of the Revolution buried here is Prince Hall, founder of the African Masonic Lodge in 1787, which is the oldest black organization in the United States.

Faneuil Hall, Faneuil Hall Square, was first built in 1742 with a long room above the marketplace to be used for public meetings. It remains vital to Boston as a museum, marketplace, and meeting hall. Little could the designer have forecast what momentous debates would take place in the structure whose primary purpose had been to provide Boston with a central market. The original building had been destroyed, except for the walls, by a fire in January 1761, and dedication of the new hall coincided with the beginning of the break with Britain. A town meeting here on 2 November 1772 adopted Sam Adams's motion to appoint "a committee of correspondence … to state the rights of the Colonists … as men, as Christians, and as Subjects; and to communicate the same to the several towns and to the world." History has few examples of "committee effort" leading to more dramatic action than the Committees of Correspondence created throughout the colonies to follow this lead by Boston. When the British garrison was established in Boston in 1768 some troops were permitted to use Faneuil Hall as temporary quarters (the rest camping temporarily on the Common). During the siege of Boston (April 1775 to March 1776) British officers and Loyalist ladies presented amateur theatricals in the hall. In 1805 to 1806 the building was tripled in size by increasing its three bays to seven and adding a third story. Architect Charles Bullfinch preserved the general appearance of the exterior but moved to the east end of the building the large cupola with its famous grasshopper weather vane. The fourth floor, lighted by dormers, is the armory of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, a militia unit organized in 1638 and the country's oldest surviving military formation. Faneuil Hall is still a thriving market on the building's first floor. In the attic is a collection of items dating from colonial days, and in the great hall on the second floor, often used as a city government meeting place, is a collection of paintings including copies of portraits whose originals are in safer quarters at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Reconstructed in 1898 to 1899 with modern materials replacing wood to the extent possible, this National Historic Landmark, is owned and administered by the city.

Fort Hill Square, off Oliver Street, is the vestige of Corn Hill, where one of Boston's first fortifications was erected in the early 1630s. At the foot of the hill was South Battery, called the Sconce. The colonial fort was abandoned long before the Revolution, but was occupied by a regiment of regulars when the British garrison was established in 1768. The Royal Welch Fusiliers manned the position in 1774. After the British evacuation, Fort Hill was strengthened by the Americans, but in 1779 its heavy guns were moved to the Hudson Highlands. In 1797 the fort was leveled and the hill converted into a mall. Later the hill was graded to provide fill for the new dock area (1869–1872).

Franklin's Birthplace is indicated by a marker at 17 Milk Street, nearly opposite Old South Meeting House (see below). The location was controversial for a short time after it was revealed that Franklin once stated that he was born in his father's small house at the southwest corner of Hanover and Union Streets. However, further evidence convinced scholars that Franklin was mistaken.

Granary Burying Ground, Tremont Street at the head of Bromfield Street and adjoining the Common, has many old graves, including those of the Boston Massacre victims, Peter Faneuil, the parents of Benjamin Franklin (marked by a conspicuous monument), and three signers of the Declaration of Independence: John Hancock, Sam Adams, and Robert Treat Paine. The grave of James Otis is at eyeball level through the fence from the Tremont Street sidewalk.

Green Dragon Tavern site, on Blackstone Street just east of Marshall Street, is indicated by a marker. This is famous as the meeting place of the Caucus Club, which dominated Boston politics perhaps fifty years before the Revolution and reached the height of its influence as the break with England approached. An early leader was Deacon John Adams, whose son Sam took over to become the leading politician of Revolutionary Boston. The Green Dragon has therefore been called the "Headquarters of the Revolution."

King's Chapel and Burying Ground, School and Tremont Streets, is a short distance northeast of the Common and in the heart of old Boston. Virtually unaltered since its construction in 1749 to 1754, this "superb example of the work of Peter Harrison" (the judgment of the National Survey) is well preserved and in good condition. The architect intended that the blocky structure be topped by a lofty spire in the style of London's churches of the period. But the spire was never built, and it is most unfortunate that some courageous architectural historian has not prevailed on Boston to do Harrison the courtesy of adding this badly needed feature. Perhaps the neglect is intentional; perhaps Boston wants this squat stone structure to remain ugly. Built to serve British officers, it was highly unpopular in Puritan Boston as its first Anglican church. Because of continued antiroyalist sentiment even after the Revolution, it was long called Stone Chapel rather than King's Chapel. In 1789 it became the first avowedly Unitarian church in the United States, and it is active today as one of 1,100 churches and fellowships of that faith in America. The massive walls of Quincy granite were erected around an earlier wooden structure which was used until the time came to take it apart and pass the pieces through the arched windows of the new structure. In the courtyard and to the left as you enter is the interesting monument erected in 1917 to the memory of the Chevalier de St. Sauveur, killed by a Boston mob in 1778 when he attempted to interfere with their pilfering of a bakery established by the French fleet. Three or four French sailors also were killed about this time in riots against the French in Charlestown. Admiral d'Estaing managed to conceal his feelings, and the Massachusetts House of Delegates passed a resolution to erect a monument over young St. Sauveur's grave. In 1917 they finally got around to it. The twenty-four-line inscription starts in English and then has sixteen lines in French, prepared by d'Estaing. The chevalier's grave is believed to be in the crypt of the chapel.

The burying ground of about half an acre adjoining the chapel is maintained by Boston's Parks and Recreation Department. Established in 1630, according to the marker, its graves include those of Mayflower passenger Mary Chilton (who died in 1679) and William Dawes, Jr. (1745–1799), the little-publicized messenger who rode from Boston the same night as Paul Revere to warn the countryside that the British were headed for Lexington and Concord. Visiting hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Phone: (617) 523-1749.

Liberty Tree site is on Washington at Essex Street, near the end of Boylston Street (the latter being the southern edge of the Common). The elm was already about 120 years old in 1765 when it became the country's first Liberty Tree and inspired the fashion of such symbols throughout the colonies. British troops cut it down for firewood in 1775.

Old North Church, 193 Salem Street, has architectural and historical distinctions that make it one of the country's most important landmarks. The lantern signal from its belfry, "One, if by land, and two, if by sea," as the historically garbled poem by Longfellow put it, was arranged by Paul Revere on the eve of his historic ride to Lexington. Built in 1723, topped by a 191-foot wooden steeple in 1740, it has survived fires and hurricanes (the last one in 1954 blowing down the second tower of 1806). The interior, carefully and thoroughly restored in 1912 to 1914, is of particular importance in the history of American church design. Among the one thousand or more persons buried in thirty-eight tombs under the church is Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines, who figured prominently in the events at Lexington and Concord and was mortally wounded while leading the final assault on Bunker Hill. Paul Revere as a young boy assisted in organizing a guild to ring the church's famous peal of eight bells, cast in 1744 and still used. General Thomas Gage, who occupied pew 62, not far from pew 54 of Paul Revere's son, is said to have watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from the steeple (and he logically would also have visited the British battery nearby on Copp's Hill). The setting of Old North Church is unfortunately crowded on three sides, but this is relieved somewhat by Paul Revere Mall (established 1933) to the southeast. An attractive walled garden easily overlooked on the northeast side of the church and a terraced approach to the back give the handsome brick structure some breathing space and fire protection. Old North Church is owned and administered by the Corporation of Christ Church in the City of Boston. It is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Episcopalian services are given on Sundays at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Phone: (617) 523-6676.

Old North Square survives only as a vestigial plot opposite the Paul Revere House (see below). An asphalt-paved area of about a third of an acre is marked by a plaque erected in 1946: "Here in North Square lived Paul Revere and his wife," the visitor is informed. "Here lived Major Pitcairn of the soldiery occupying Boston in 1775…." At the time of the Revolution the square was near the waterfront.

Old South Meeting House, Milk and Washington Streets, shares with the Old State House and Faneuil Hall the fame of being a place of public assembly in the tumultuous days leading to the Revolution. Large for its day, Old South was built in 1729 to 1730 and then called Third Church (serving Boston's third body of Congregationalists). It was shortly thereafter named Old South to distinguish it from another body of Congregationalists calling themselves "New South Church." During the British occupation a cavalry riding school was operated in Old South, most of its interior furnishings and the parsonage having been used by the soldiers for firewood. In 1783 the congregation restored the interior much as it had been. A century later the structure was saved by public sentiment from demolition. Since that time it has been owned and administered by the Old South Association, which turned it into a museum and headquarters for its organization. The slave poet Phillis Wheatley belonged to this church during the Revolutionary period. On the wall is a copy of Washington's will ordering freedom for his slaves. The Old South Meeting House is utilized for public debates, panel discussions, and events with colonial and Revolutionary themes, including reenactments. Every December it stages a dramatization of the debate that led to the Boston Tea Party. Phone: (617) 482-6439.

Old State House (Second Boston Town House), Washington and State Streets, has been called "the scene of proceedings of greater moment than those at any other building in the Thirteen Colonies" (Colonials and Patriots, p. 109). Here James Otis delivered his famous speech in 1761 challenging the legality of writs of assistance. The walls are those built originally in 1712 to 1713, having survived the fire of 1747 that destroyed the rest of the structure. Unfortunate internal changes were made first in 1830 and perpetuated when the building was rescued in 1882 and rededicated, so only the exterior appearance survives from its important period 1766 to 1776. Towering office buildings have destroyed the setting, and the basement has become the entrance and exit of a subway station, but the Old State House with its large lion and unicorn figures has genuine colonial allure. The building is owned by the city, with custody vested in the Bostonian Society, and serves as the Society's museum. Website: www.bostonhistory.org. Relics displayed include works of Paul Revere and tea from the Boston Tea Party. It is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Phone: (617) 720-1713.

Paul Revere House, 19 North Street, is a rare example of Stuart-era architecture in America and is Boston's only surviving building of the seventeenth century. The original portion was built soon after the Boston fire of 1676 on the site of the Increase Mather Parsonage. When Paul Revere took possession almost a century later, the simple two-and-a-half-story frame house with an end chimney probably had been enlarged to three full stories. After his death in 1818 it degenerated into a tenement and store, being considerably altered but miraculously spared from destruction. In 1908 it was carefully restored. Well maintained and open to the public, the house is important not only for its association with the famous Patriot and craftsman but also as a rare specimen of a seventeenth-century urban home. Website: www.paulreverehouse.org. Phone: (617) 523-2338.

Bunker Hill Monument

Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, Greater Boston. The battle of Bunker Hill has been well nigh overwhelmed by the history of the Bunker Hill Monument Association. In 1825 this organization owned 18 acres of the battlefield, but in 1834 it sold most of this land to raise funds for building a huge monument. Now a 221-foot obelisk stands in a 4-acre rectangle of worn grass where there might have been a properly conceived historic park and some much-needed relief in the urban monotony of modern Boston. In giving less than a full page to this landmark, the National Survey comments: "The monument itself possesses considerable interest as an example of early historical monumentation" (Colonials and Patriots, p. 93). Unfortunately, "the monument is much in need of rehabilitation and development, particularly in regard to its interpretation of the battle story" (ibid.).

The cornerstone was laid on 17 June 1825, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, with Daniel Webster delivering the oration in the presence of the Marquis de Lafayette. Construction of the dressed granite obelisk was not completed until 1843. By 1919 the Association was no longer able to cope with administration of the monument, so the task was assumed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, delegated to the Metropolitan District Commission. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1962 it and is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at no charge. The top of the obelisk is reachable by climbing 294 steps (no elevator). Renovations of the monument and the entire site are currently in progress. Phone: (617) 242-5641. A primitive museum and a statue of Colonel William Prescott are current features. Monument Park is approached from the southwest by rather steep streets that preserve some feeling of the slope up which the British attacked.

The original topography having been altered tremendously by landfills, the grading of hills, and high-density urbanization, landmarks of the battle are gone except for Breed's Hill. The granite obelisk marks the approximate center of the American redoubt that repulsed two attacks before falling to the third. Moulton's Point, where the British landed unopposed at about 1 p.m. to make their first attack along the low ground northeast of Breed's Hill, has been extended to form the United States Navy Yard (where the U.S.S. Constitution, "Old Ironsides," is exhibited). But the portion of old Charlestown generally southwest of Monument Square has many interesting structures surviving from the period right after the Revolution. (The old town was almost totally destroyed in the British bombardment of 1775.) The picturesque Old Burying Ground on Phipps Street has more than one hundred graves dating from before 1700.

The oldest building is the General Joseph Warren Tavern, 105 Main Street, in the Thompson Triangle Development. Nearby are the Benjamin Thompson House (started in 1777), and others of a few years later.

The John Cabot House

The John Cabot House, 117 Cabot Street, in Beverly, was owned by a Revolutionary War privateer. It is the headquarters of the Beverly Historical Society and displays a number of military and maritime items. Open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Phone: (978) 922-1186.

Cambridge

Cambridge, Charles River (Greater Boston). The township, now almost entirely built over, originally contained several separate villages. Newton and Lexington were detached in 1691 and 1713; Brighton and Arlington (originally Menotomy) were detached in 1837 and 1867. When the site was selected in 1630 for defensive works protecting the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the plan was for the settlement here to become the capital. Boston won out because of its geographical advantages for commerce as well as for protection from the Indians. First known simply as the New Towne, Cambridge was named in 1638 for Cambridge, England. Harvard College was founded at Cambridge in 1636, and the town quickly became an important intellectual center. The first printing press in British North America was set up here in 1639. (Boston had none until 1676.) Many of the leaders in the Revolution were educated at Harvard.

One of the most important surviving landmarks of the Revolution near Cambridge is the Old Powder House at Somerville, the town that adjoins Cambridge to the north but is sometimes referred to erroneously as being part of Cambridge. While the British raid on the powder house was taking place on 1 September 1774 another detachment marched from Boston and confiscated two field pieces recently procured by the Cambridge militia. John Richard Alden points out in his General Gage in America (p. 213) that Governor Gage had every legal right to take this property "but the brief march of the regulars aroused the whole colony." Men flew to arms on the assumption that similar raids would follow, and thousands of aroused citizens gathered in Cambridge. Mob violence was directed against Crown officials, and three more members of the council, including Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver, were frightened into resigning. Gage was sufficiently alarmed to start fortifying Boston Neck and restrict his regulars to the city.

The only surviving earthwork of the 10-mile string built in Cambridge and Charlestown for the Boston siege of 1775 to 1776 is a three-gun battery in what is now called Fort Washington Park. Buried deep in a commercial area behind the northwest corner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the site was originally on the riverbank. The semicircular earthwork with three embrasures has been rebuilt and three cannon emplaced. (They date from after the Revolution.) About an acre of grass is enclosed by an attractive metal fence of cannon and halbert posts and vertical bars. The site is near the tracks of the Boston and Albany Railroad on Waverley Street just northeast of the corner of Chestnut Street. (The latter crosses Brookline Street a few blocks northwest of Waverly and runs between Massachusetts Avenue and the Essex Street Bridge. From Harvard Bridge the site is reached by driving through MIT on Massachusetts Avenue, crossing the railroad, and turning left on Albany Street, then left on Waverley to the park.)

Washington's headquarters during the siege of Boston was the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House (Longfellow National Historic Site), 105 Brattle Street. A fine Georgian house built by Major John Vassall in 1759, it is a well-preserved two-story frame structure on a large fenced lot. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived here for forty-five years (1837–1882), and the house was conscientiously preserved by the Longfellow House Trust until it transferred responsibility to the National Park Service, which has managed the house since 1974. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and a National Historic Site in 1972. As of 2005 the house is closed to the public except for tours by appointment. Phone: (617) 876-491.

The tour group Lively Lore guides visitors through Harvard Square and offers a "lively" look at where Washington took command of the Continental army and where most of his troops camped. The site of the Washington Elm, under which Washington took command of the Continental army on 3 July 1775, is marked in the north end of the Common. Christ Church, on Garden Street opposite the George Washington Memorial Gateway, faces the Common. Designed and built by Peter Harrison in 1759 to 1761, it was taken over by the Patriots for barracks. Martha Washington, who joined her husband in December 1775, had it returned to its proper use. Burgoyne's Convention army was in Cambridge briefly after its final defeat at Saratoga in October 1777. A Patriot mob enraged by the fact that funeral services for a young British officer were held in the church so heavily damaged the building that services were not resumed until 1790. The organ loft is the finest original feature in the well-restored National Historic Landmark. Plaques mark Washington's pew and one of the bullet holes said to date from the period of his army's encampment.

Massachusetts Hall on the Harvard campus was completed in 1720. The oldest surviving building of the college founded almost a century earlier, it was originally a dormitory with thirty-two chambers and small private studies for its sixty-four occupants. As quarters for 640 soldiers during the siege of Boston, it lost much of the interior woodwork and hardware. Wadsworth House (1726) was used temporarily by Washington after his arrival in Cambridge in 1775. Just inside the Widener Library (1913) are two panoramic models depicting in great detail the original and the modern appearance of Harvard and Cambridge. The phone number for Lively Lore is (617) 354-3344. The Cambridge Historical Society, located at 159 Brattle Street, is very helpful in offering information on Revolutionary War landmarks. Phone: (617) 547-4252. Another good Cambridge source is the state-sponsored Cambridge Historical Commission. Phone: (617) 349-4683.

Charlestown

Charlestown. Seebunker hill monument.

Concord

Concord and vicinity, Concord County. One of the first two settlements in Massachusetts back from the coast (Dedham being the other), Concord was incorporated as a township in 1635. A county convention here in August 1774 recommended calling for a provincial congress. When Governor Thomas Gage issued instructions for the General Court to meet in his new capital in Salem but then withdrew his summons because the Patriots had gained control of the lower house, the delegates adjourned to Concord in October 1774. Having already proposed (in June) that a continental congress be held, they meanwhile established a revolutionary government in Concord. During the winter of 1774 to 1775 they started forming an armed force and accumulating military stores. London authorities ordered Gage to take positive action to reassert royal authority, suggesting that he arrest the leaders of the illegal congress in Concord. Adjournment of the latter was scheduled for 15 April 1775, the day after Gage got his instructions, but the British commander in chief had already made plans to destroy the Rebel supplies known to be in the Concord area.

This therefore became the objective of the forces sent out from Boston on 19 April. The numerous historical sites associated with the Battle of Lexington and Concord are exhibited at Minute Man National Historical Park, located off Exit 30b on Interstate 95. Phone: (978) 369-6993.

The Barrett Farm turned out to be the ultimate objective of the British on the fateful day. Although Colonel James Barrett's farmhouse is among the surviving landmarks, it tends to be neglected in summaries of historic sites in the Concord area. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, today it is one of the few remaining farms in Cambridge. The upkeep of privately owned historical sites is always a challenge, and efforts are underway to help fund a much-needed overhaul of the farm. The two-story frame house is standing about 30 feet from Barrett's Mill Road in a setting little altered by the passage of two centuries. Behind it is the ridge where some of the stores were hidden, and in front of it is the bottomland, still being farmed, where other matériel was plowed under. The site is about 2 miles east of the North Bridge Visitors Center, reached by following Barnes Mill Road, which turns into Barrett's Mill Road on crossing Lowell Road. (The latter runs southeast to Concord.) It may be reached also from the traffic circle on Mass. 2A about 3 miles northwest of Concord.

Retracing the Battle Road from Barrett's Farm, one comes to the well-preserved area around North Bridge. Colonel Barrett's militia made its first contact with the enemy just east of Concord village around 7 a.m. Barrett had just returned from supervising the work of hiding or removing the stores around his farm, and the sixty-five-year-old Patriot leader decided to withdraw his troops across North Bridge to mass on Punkatasset Hill and wait there for reinforcements. The North Bridge Visitors Center provides taped narratives, slide shows, and exhibits that sketch in the history of what happened here and how this action relates to the entire day's operations. An overlook in the gardens of a post-Revolutionary mansion provides a view of picturesque Concord River and the area of the reconstructed North Bridge. Near the bridge stands the Old Manse, or the Reverend William Emerson House. Built in 1770 by the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was the home from 1842 to 1846 of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose description in Mosses from an Old Manse gave it the former name. The Emerson family watched from an upper window while the militia confronted British troops around North Bridge in 1775.

Modern Concord has half the population of today's Lexington, and considerably more small-town charm. The village green has been cut down to the dimensions of a dividing strip on a thruway; it is an island of grass with a large monument in the center and the Colonial Inn facing one end. At the opposite end and across Main Street (Mass. 2A) is Wright's Tavern. Meeting the criteria for registration as a National Historic Landmark, the two-story frame house with a double-hipped (or monitor) roof and red clapboard siding was built in 1747. In 1751 Amos Wright took over its management as a tavern, hence the present name. Situated in the center of the village between the public meetinghouse and the militia training ground, Wright's Tavern played an important role in events leading to the Revolution. Here the militia assembled on 19 April when the courthouse bell sounded the alarm, and British officers soon arrived to establish their command post and take refreshments. Now owned by the Society of the First Parish, Wright's Tavern serves as church office space and is the home for the Wright Tavern Center for Spiritual Renewal. Classes, seminars and spiritual discussion groups are regularly scheduled. Phone: (973) 369-9602.

The First Parish Meeting House (1901) is on the site of the building in which John Hancock presided over the three hundred delegates to the Provincial Congress in October 1774.

On the ridge across Lexington Road (Mass. 2A) is the Old Hill Burying Ground, with slate headstones and brick tombs from 1677. The most famous of the elaborate inscriptions is on the grave of the African-born slave John Jack, who died in 1773. It reads, in part: "Though born in a land of slavery, he was born free. Though he lived in a land of liberty, he lived a slave."

This ridge played a role in the fighting at Concord. To the northeast is the swath of broad meadow along which the Patriots moved in defilade between North Bridge and Meriam's Corner, where they gave the retreating British the first taste of what was to be continued over the next 16 miles to Boston. From Meriam's Corner (on Mass. 2A, Battle Road) the visitor should detour a few hundred yards north, passing the Meriam House on the right, to look back over this great meadow through which the militia made their envelopment.

The business center of Concord today covers the old mill dam and pond that were the distinctive topographical features of the colonial village. Behind Wright's Tavern is a slight depression left after the area was filled.

Antiquarian House on Lexington Road is a museum with fourteen period rooms from 1685 to 1870 and exhibits pertaining to the Revolution. The Concord Antiquarian Society (1886) operates the museum and has offices and its library here. (Chamber of Commerce, Concord, Mass. 01742.)

Dorchester Heights

Dorchester Heights, South Boston. The significance of this National Historic Site has been so lost that not even the name is preserved on street maps. The original shoreline of Dorchester Neck has been bloated beyond recognition, particularly in the South Bay area. The historic heights now show on city maps as Telegraph Hill in Thomas Park.

The place is interesting and important because its surprise occupation and fortification by Washington's troops on the night of 4 to 5 March 1776 was quickly followed by the British evacuation of Boston (17 March). They had long planned to get out, and the occupation of Dorchester Heights merely accelerated the British departure; yet this detracts nothing from the brilliance of Washington's military achievement. It would not have been possible without Knox's "Noble Train of Artillery" hauled to the Boston lines from Fort Ticonderoga, New York. Nor could it have been achieved without the exceptionally good staff work and leadership that followed. The problem was not only to occupy the heights overnight without being opposed by British troops, but also to get heavy guns in position and fortified during the same night. The ground was still frozen, which meant that digging would be slow, and Rufus Putnam is credited with the plan of using precut heavy timbers for rapid construction of fortifications above ground. A refinement of this novel concept was to take up barrels that could be filled with earth, not only to be emplaced so as to make the works look stronger than they actually were, but also to be rolled down on the British assault troops should they appear. Another problem solved by the planners was collecting enough gunpowder, most of which came from European sources.

The British detected activity on the hill at about 10 p.m. but took no action. When the works became visible the next morning General Howe is said to have commented that the Rebels had done more in one night than his troops could have done in months. His estimate of the number of Americans engaged was ten times the actual number. A proposed counterattack was called off shortly before it was scheduled to start on the evening of 5 March. Washington tried to extend his position about half a mile north to Nook's Hill, but British artillery quickly made this ground untenable.

Dorchester Peninsula had four hills, only two of which were occupied in the operation we have been considering. Called the Twin Hills on some contemporary maps, they were Forster Hill, later designated Telegraph Hill, and Signal Tree Hill, to the southeast. What was generally called Nook's Hill was officially Dorchester Hill. Farthest to the northeast was Bush Tree Hill, which did not figure in Washington's strategy.

A white marble monument was dedicated in 1902 on the 126th anniversary of the British evacuation. A steeple in the style of a colonial meetinghouse tops a tower, the total elevation being 115 feet above Telegraph Hill. The roughly oval park, with high retaining walls on the north, west, and south sides, is named for General John Thomas, who commanded the operation on Dorchester Heights. Already past his fiftieth birthday, the distinguished-looking Thomas, grandson of an early settler, had started his military service in 1746 as a surgeon and had risen to command of a regiment in Amherst's advance along Lake Champlain to Montreal in 1760. His promotion to major general was dated 6 March 1776. About two weeks later he left Roxbury, reaching Quebec to take command of the Patriot forces in this vicinity. During the subsequent retreat up the St. Lawrence he came down with smallpox and died at Sorel (2 June 1776).

Tall residential buildings mask most of the view from Thomas Park, but the north-south streets provide restricted vistas that give some idea of the place's strategic importance in 1776. In 1951 it was designated the Dorchester Heights National Historic Site by an agreement between the secretary of the interior and the mayor of Boston. The somewhat neglected monument and park, once under the jurisdiction of Boston's Department of Parks, is now run by the National Park Service. The grounds are open free to the public year-round.

Visible from along a several-mile stretch of the Southeast Expressway into Boston, the site can be reached by taking Telegraph Street due east from Dorchester Street at Eighth Street in South Boston. Expressway Exit 16 is the one for Dorchester Street.

Lexington

Lexington, Lexington County. A modern building of colonial style houses the visitors' center operated by the Lexington Chamber of Commerce. Half a block east of Lexington Green, it is open year-round and a visit should begin here for those who need to have their knowledge of history refreshed. (See minute man national historical park, below.)

Lexington Green and nearby Buckman Tavern have been preserved since the Revolution as historic sites. At the southwest corner of the green is the Revolutionary Monument erected in 1799 to honor the eight minutemen killed here on the historic morning of 19 April 1775. To the rear is a tomb containing the remains of these men. The site of the old belfry, a landmark of the skirmish, is marked by a boulder. Another inscribed boulder indicates one flank of Captain John Parker's line of minutemen.

Buckman Tavern, on Hancock Street opposite the east side of the green, was the place where Parker's men assembled in the cold morning hours of the fateful day before making their stand. Built about 1690, with some structural changes made before 1775, the two-story white clapboard building remains virtually unaltered since the latter date. Its walls bear marks left by British musket balls.

The Hancock-Clarke House, 35 Hancock Street, sheltered John Hancock and Sam Adams when Paul Revere clattered up at midnight to warn that the British were coming. The provincial government had been established in Concord during the winter of 1774 to 1775, and these two Patriot leaders had been living in the house for almost a month. Hancock wanted to fall out with the Lexington militia, but when Revere got back to the house after being captured on his way to Concord he accompanied Hancock and Adams on their way out of town before returning to watch the shooting on the green. The house was built by the grandfather of John Hancock, and the latter spent seven years here as a boy. The earlier part dates from 1698, the more modern portion from 1734. In 1896 it was moved across the road to its present location. Among the historical treasures on display are the pistols of Major John Pitcairn, commander of the British advance guard engaged on Lexington Green. They were carried into the American lines in the saddle holsters of Pitcairn's horse during the action at Fiske Hill, where Pitcairn was thrown from his horse. General Israel Putnam used them during the Revolution.

Munroe Tavern, 1332 Massachusetts Avenue, was Lord Percy's command post while his forces were deployed in the area to cover the withdrawal of the British from Concord through Lexington. It served also as an aid station during this brief period. The clapboarded structure is southeast of the high ground on which Percy's two cannon were positioned astride the road from Lexington. Although the neighborhood is built up, large trees have survived around the tavern, and its tactical importance in this covering force action remains apparent. The older part of the building dates from 1695. An ell added a few years before the Revolution was removed later.

The three historic houses are administered by the Lexington Historical Society, and they schedule tours at varying times, so it is important to call ahead. Phone: (781) 862-2480.

The Old Burying Ground, beyond the green and near the Unitarian Church, has the grave of Captain John Parker. A reproduction of the Old Belfry is off Clarke Street, south of the green. The original stood here until 1668, when it was moved to the green, where it survived until 1909.

Menotomy

Menotomy. Detached from Cambridge after the Revolution, this village evolved into the crowded Boston suburb of Arlington. See russell (jason) house.

Minute Man National Historical Park

Minute Man National Historical Park, Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord counties. Phone: (978) 369-6993. Many landmarks of the running battle that started the American Revolution on 19 April 1775 have long been cherished historic sites in the relatively unspoiled New England countryside west of metropolitan Boston. Since the early 1990s these have been integrated into a 970-acre national historical park. Visitor information centers of various types, museums, interpretive displays, and signs have been established.

The North Bridge Visitors Center, located near the North Bridge that arched the flood just outside Concord village, has exhibits and a sound-slide program that will bolster one's previous knowledge of what happened here to touch off the shot heard round the world. It houses the famous Hancock Cannon, which may have been one of the cannons stolen from the British in September 1774.

The Minute Man Visitors' Center has informational services and literature, and features a multimedia theatric presentation, The Road To Revolution, which plays every thirty minutes.

The Battle Road unit of the park is the location of the Battle Road Trail, a 5-mile trail that connects the area's history with markers along the way. Hartwell Tavern is on the trail and is staffed as a living history center from May through October.

In a few hours on the ground you will learn more about the fighting at Lexington and Concord than you could by hours of reading, thanks primarily to the excellent orientation programs and special exhibits mentioned above. Landmarks of the momentous day are not restricted to the actions at Lexington and Concord, but they are best preserved in this area. Major sites are covered in the separate articles on lexington and concord. Moving back toward Boston over the routes of Paul Revere and William Dawes (who spread the alarm) and over the routes of British advance and retreat, you are in the built-up area of Greater Boston. The colonial topography is buried under streets and modern construction. The village of Menotomy has been renamed Arlington in becoming a suburb of modern Boston, but most other geographical names survive. (Mistic had changed to Medford by 1775.)

Shorelines of 1775 have long since disappeared, eliminating Boston Neck, over which Dawes rode, and Charlestown Neck, over which Revere rode and the British retreated. British embarkation and debarkation points for their movement across Back Bay from Boston Commons to Phips' Point are high and dry. Today's Massachusetts Avenue through Arlington and the northern half of Cambridge follows the colonial road along which the British moved out and back. At Somerville village they feinted as if going toward Boston Neck, then headed for Charlestown Neck.

An exceptionally good guide is Battle Road, by Maurice R. Cullen, Jr., with numerous sketch maps and other drawings by Howard L. Rich. The fifty-page paperback is available at the park's information centers.

The Old Burying Ground

The Old Burying Ground in Framingham (near Buckminster Square) contains the grave of Peter Salem, who received his freedom when he joined the Continental army. Salem is credited with shooting Major John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Salem's tombstone sits off by itself in an isolated corner, a segregated graveyard of one.

The Parting Ways Archeological Site

The Parting Ways Archeological Site, Plymouth, investigates the site of a small community of black Continental soldiers led by Cato Howe. A small museum displays the dig's findings. The site is on Plympton Road just off Mass. 80. Call for an appointment, (617) 746-6028.

Quincy

Quincy, Norfolk County. The Adams National Historical Park, the John Adams Birthplace, and the John Quincy Adams Birthplace are National Historic Landmarks. Phone: (617) 770-1175. The first, featuring the Adams Mansion, is a memorial to the family that produced two presidents of the United States, the minister to Great Britain during the Civil War, and two distinguished historians. All resided at various times in what they called simply the Old House, now the Adams Mansion. The oldest part was built in 1731 by Major Leonard Vassall. John Adams bought it in 1787. During his presidency he added the large gabled ell and upstairs study. His son, grandson, and two great-grandsons made other additions. In 1946 the Adams Memorial Society donated the house and about five surrounding acres to the federal government.

About a mile south are the other Adams houses, which the Adams Memorial Society also donated to the federal government (National Park Service) in the mid-1970s. Neither of the typical saltboxes is architecturally significant, but both are historically important for their associations with the distinguished family.

The association of the Adamses with the three houses mentioned above is pertinent. The John Adams Birthplace, 133 Franklin Street, is the original homestead where John Adams was born and raised. In 1764 he married and moved into the adjoining house, now known as the John Quincy Adams Birthplace, 141 Franklin Street. Here Abigail and their son remained until after the Revolution, when they joined John Adams in Europe (1783–1788). After this they lived in the Old House, which is now called the Adams Mansion, bought in September 1787 before their return to the United States from England. John Quincy Adams bought both birthplaces from his father in 1803, living in his own birthplace house from 1805 to 1807.

John Adams retired from the presidency in 1801 and spent the rest of his years in the Old House, living to see his son elected president in 1826, on the fourth of July. By some strange numerology this was the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and his last words are said to have been "Thomas Jefferson still survives." But by even stranger coincidence, Jefferson had died a few hours earlier at Monticello.

John Quincy Adams and his son Charles Francis (1807–1886) made the Old House their summer home. The latter's sons Henry (1838–1918) and Brooks (1848–1927) spent many of their summers there. The visitors center for the Adams National Historic Park is located in Quincy and features some interpretive material in addition to a gift shop. A trolley leaves from there and takes passengers for the forty-five-minute tour of the Adams's houses and a one-hour tour of the Old House. Phone: (617) 770-1175.

Royall (Isaac) House

Royall (Isaac) House, Medford. Architecturally this is one of America's finest and most interesting colonial houses. It is on the site of a house built about 1637 by Governor John Winthrop. Isaac Royall, a wealthy merchant of Antigua, and his son, a Loyalist who fled the country in 1775, made the extensive modifications of an older brick house that resulted in the handsome three-story structure. Their work dates from the periods 1733 to 1737 and 1747 to 1750; the original house with which they started was built around 1692.

Historically the Royall House is interesting for its association with several famous officers of the Revolution who used it during the siege of Boston. Colonel John Stark occupied the house while his regiment was camped in Medford before the Battle of Bunker Hill. General Washington was a frequent visitor after his arrival to take command of the Continental army.

In 1908 the Royall House Association acquired the property, which has been expertly restored. Outbuildings include brick slave quarters, built before 1737, and probably the only such structures still standing in Massachusetts. Among the historic objects displayed is a tea chest from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, one of the two or three surviving. The Royall House is open to the public for touring from 1 May to 1 October. For details write Royall House Association, 15 George Street, Medford, Mass. 02155.

Russell (Jason) House

Russell (Jason) House, 7 Jason Street, Arlington. The present town of 54,000 was the village of Menotomy in 1775. The traffic is bad today between Boston and Lexington, but on 19 April 1775 it was even more dangerous. Past the home of the fifty-eight-year-old Jason Russell clattered Paul Revere and William Dawes in their midnight rides to warn that the British were coming. The lame Russell escorted his family to safety and then returned to set up a barricade of shingles behind his gate, from which position he proposed to shoot the retreating British. The latter were pretty well fed up with this sort of thing by the time they got to Menotomy. Further, their flank security detachments were able to work effectively in the flat plain here, and the militia were not alert to this new development in their running fight. A body of Essex militia, flushed by British patrols moving to clear the flanks of the main column, headed for Russell's house. Russell fell dead in his doorway and eleven militiamen were killed in the house, but eight held out successfully in the basement.

The gray clapboard house of about 1680 was occupied by Russell's descendants until 1890. Turned around and moved back from the road, it was saved in 1923 by the Arlington Historical Society, carefully restored, and made into a house museum. Four rooms are furnished, two in the seventeenth- and the others in the eighteenth-century style. The Arlington Historical Society is located at 11 Academy Street, Arlington; phone: (703) 892-4204.

Salem and Salem Bridge

Salem and Salem Bridge, Essex County. The "shot heard round the world" might well have been fired here several weeks before Lexington and Concord, but the crisis was averted in an episode remembered primarily for its humorous aspect (if remembered at all). General Gage ordered an expedition from Boston to destroy nineteen brass cannon that were being fitted with carriages at Captain Robert Foster's forge near the North River Bridge. (This is what actually was going on there. Gage sent out the expedition on orders from London, where the authorities had information that cannon had been shipped to Salem from Europe.)

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Leslie sailed with two hundred men of his Sixty-fourth Foot from Castle William to Marblehead Bay. About 2 p.m. on Sunday, 26 February 1775, the regulars started a 5-mile march to Salem. Colonel Timothy Pickering was alerted by a horseman, called his men out of church, and sent forty minutemen to remove the cannon from the forge. The British arrived on the scene to find the militia and a large crowd of hostile citizens on the far bank. A heroic Patriot knocked the bottom out of the only boat the British were able to secure, and the draw of the bridge leading to the forge had been opened. A Loyalist minister and the militia captain came up with an ingenious suggestion that would enable Leslie to carry out his orders without bloodshed: the British troops would be allowed to cross the bridge if they would then withdraw peacefully. The cannon had been hauled away; so Leslie went along with the plan and then retraced his route to Boston.

The affair is generally known by the name of Salem Bridge, but the cannon were hidden in the Salem "North Fields." The latter have long been covered by North Salem, all colonial structures being obliterated in the process. The present bridge carries North Street (Mass. 114) over railroad tracks and several industrial streets in a rundown section of Salem before crossing the tidal inlet of Salem Harbor that is North River. A bronze marker on the present bridge indicates the general location of the original structure. It is a site best visited by map.

Salem was settled in 1626 as a commercial venture, partly agricultural and partly as a wintering place for fishermen. After 1670 it was an important port, and Salem privateers were active in the Colonial Wars as well as the Revolution. When General Gage was appointed governor of the province in 1774 and instructed to put an end to the civil disorder that had been growing at an alarming rate, he tried to establish a new capital at Salem. Here the General Assembly met on 17 June of that year, protesting the move of their seat from Boston and locking the door against Gage's order to dissolve. In the complex political maneuvering that followed, the Patriot faction won out over the royal governor's efforts to establish a loyal body of legislators in Salem, and seated its own partisans in the lower house on 5 October 1774, the date set by Gage for the General Court to convene there. After waiting two days for the governor to arrive and open the session, which Gage refused to do, the Patriots adjourned to Concord and formed a revolutionary government.

Today Salem is a city where many historic sites have been preserved, although most of these are associated with the history of the city before and after the Revolution. The Salem Maritime Historic Site includes the house built in 1762 for Elias Hasket Derby and Derby Wharf. The Pioneers' Village in Forest River Park is a reproduction of a Puritan settlement. The House of Seven Gables (1668) at 54 Turner Street and the Witch House (1642) at 310 1/2 Essex Street are famous landmarks. The Peabody Museum, 161 Essex Street, has important collections including ship models and relics of the colonial and Revolutionary periods. Essex Institute (founded 1848) at 132 Essex Street has one of America's most important historical libraries and museums of the colonial and federal periods, including more than four hundred portraits. The Institute has four historic houses that are open to the public, two of these, near the museum, having been built long before the Revolution. The museum is open to the public year-round. Phone: (978) 744-3390.

Somerville

Somerville (formerly part of Charlestown), Greater Boston area. The Old Powder House still stands in a park just south of the busy traffic rotary at Broadway, College Avenue, and Powder House Boulevard, southeast of Tufts University. Here on Quarry Hill a stone windmill was built about 1703. In 1747 this was sold to become a gunpowder magazine for the colony, serving this purpose during the period 1756 to 1822. As signs of open rebellion in the countryside became increasingly evident, Governor Thomas Gage sent regulars from Boston to seize the 250 half-barrels of powder at Somerville (then Charlestown). While one detachment marched to Cambridge to confiscate two cannons there, another of about 250 troops went by boat from Boston's Long Wharf to Charlestown. The operations started at dawn on 1 September 1774 and were quickly performed, without incident. But the countryside was aroused, with results described in the section on cambridge.

The Old Powder House is a cylindrical tower about 30 feet tall with a beehive-shaped top. The blue stone walls are 2 feet thick, with the inner structure of brick. The tower stands on a rock outcropping in a small park known as Nathan Tufts Park.

Winter Hill and Prospect Hill survive only in placenames, whereas Ploughed Hill and Cobble Hill have not left even this trace.

The Springfield Armory National Historic Site

The Springfield Armory National Historic Site, operated by the National Park Service, contains the world's largest firearms collection, including many weapons from the Revolutionary War. The armory, the first gun manufactory in North America, opened in 1794 and ceased production in 1968. It is open year-round from Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and is located on impressive grounds on Federal Street in Springfield. Phone: (413)734-8551.

Stockbridge

Stockbridge, Berkshire County. The Reverend John Sergeant in 1734 began his missionary work among the Housatonic tribe of the Mahican confederacy near where the village of Stockbridge was established about the same year. Several bands of the tribe were collected on a tract reserved for their use by the colonial government, and they became known as Stockbridge Indians. Many joined the British army in the Seven Years' War, which proved to be a disaster; their town suffered from raids that reduced the population to only two hundred. Yet they offered to form a company of minutemen when the Revolution started; the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted in March 1775, and the Stockbridge thus became the first Indians to enlist on either side in this war. They took part in several actions on the northern frontier, including the Battle of Bennington. Their elderly chief, Nimham, and seventeen warriors were killed in action on 31 August 1778 near Van Cortlandt Mansion, New York (see this heading under new york city: the bronx).

Several landmarks of the Revolution may be seen in the little town. The latter does not include descendants of the Stockbridge Indians, who abandoned their village during the period 1785 to 1787 and moved to a new Stockbridge in Madison County, New York. (Here their number grew to 300 by 1796, but in 1833 they moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, whence they scattered.)

The home built in 1739 by John Sergeant, Mission House, is a museum on 19 Main Street. The museum and gift shop are open from Memorial Day to Columbus Day and guided house and garden tours are available. Phone: (413) 298-3239. A mile west is a large mound with an obelisk inscribed: "The Ancient Burial Place of the Stockbridge Indians, Friends of our Fathers." The site of the Indian mission is marked by the Field Chime Tower (1878), and the Stockbridge Library museum has tribal artifacts.