10 Things About Pre-Revolutionary Boston
A note in lieu of the Grains & Sugar Weekly
No grain or sugar this week. I’m chaperoning a school trip to walk the Freedom Trail with my daughter and a busload of kiddos for America’s 250th.
Instead I thought I’d share ten things worth knowing about Boston, the freedom trail, and our Revolutionary roots.
1. Boston Common is the oldest public park in America
Established in 1634. The Puritans bought 44 acres from William Blackstone, the Anglican minister who was already living there.
British troops camped on it during the 1775 occupation of Boston.
2. Boston was the third-largest settlement in the colonies, but it was a town, not a city
By 1770 the population was around 16,000. Boston was governed by town meeting, not by a mayor or council.
In 1774 Parliament banned town meetings as part of the Intolerable Acts.
3. “No taxation without representation” was first said inside Faneuil Hall
Bostonians gathered at Faneuil Hall in 1764 to protest the Sugar Act. The doctrine that became the rallying cry of the Revolution was articulated there ten years before the war started.
James Otis Jr. rededicated Faneuil Hall to “the Cause of Liberty” in 1763. Subsequent meetings there protested the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Redcoat occupation, and the Tea Act.
4. There is a copper grasshopper on top of Faneuil Hall, and it has been there since 1742
It was made by Boston coppersmith Shem Drowne. It is 80 feet above the ground and weighs about 38 pounds.
During the Revolution, the Sons of Liberty reportedly used it to test strangers. The question was, “What sits atop Faneuil Hall?” Anyone who didn’t know the answer was suspected of being a British spy.
There is a small time capsule inside the grasshopper’s belly. The first message placed inside, in 1761, read “Food for the Grasshopper.”
5. Old South Meeting House was the largest building in colonial Boston
It could hold roughly 5,000 people. On December 16, 1773, that is approximately how many showed up to the meeting that preceded the Boston Tea Party. About a third of the town’s population.
After the meeting broke, somewhere between 60 and 150 men, faces darkened with soot and lampblack, walked to Griffin’s Wharf and dumped 92,000 pounds of British East India Company tea into the harbor.
Eyewitness accounts describe the men working in near silence and damaging nothing else on the three ships. One participant later said they swept the decks before they left.
6. Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, is the oldest existing public school in the United States
Five signers of the Declaration of Independence attended: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, William Hooper, and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin enrolled but did not graduate.
There is a statue of Franklin on the original site today.
7. John Adams defended the British soldiers from the Boston Massacre
On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd outside the Old State House. Five colonists died. One was Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Wampanoag descent, often cited as the first American killed in the Revolution.
John Adams, future second President, took the soldiers’ legal defense. Six were acquitted. Two were convicted of manslaughter and branded on the thumb.
Adams later said taking the case was “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life.”
8. Paul Revere’s house was already 90 years old when he bought it
It was built around 1680 and is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston. Revere owned it from 1770 to 1800. It is also the only home that is an official Freedom Trail site.
Revere did not ride alone on the night of April 18, 1775. William Dawes rode the southern route. Samuel Prescott joined them en route and was the only one of the three to actually reach Concord. Revere was captured by a British patrol outside Lexington.
9. The lanterns at Old North Church were hung by the church sexton, Robert Newman
Old North Church was built in 1723 and is the oldest church building in Boston. The steeple is 191 feet tall.
On the night of April 18, 1775, Newman climbed the steeple and held two lanterns for less than a minute. The signal was meant for riders waiting across the river in Charlestown, not for Revere himself, who had already crossed.
Newman was 23 years old. His mother’s house was being used to billet British officers at the time.
10. The Freedom Trail was created in 1951
It was conceived by Bill Schofield, a columnist at the Boston Herald-Traveler. Mayor John B. Hynes supported the project. A line was painted on the sidewalk to connect 16 historic sites across 2.5 miles, from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monument.
Roughly 4 million people walk it each year. There is no admission fee.
Go to Boston. Walk the trail. Bring the family!
Back next week
Regular Grains and Sugar Weekly back on Friday.
Jake