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Published: October 15th 2013
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Granary Burial Grounds, Boston Mark did the advance work for our trip and found a great bed and breakfast just a block off Massachusetts Avenue, and about three blocks from the closest subway stop. Fare on the subway is relatively cheap -- $2.50 a ride, Or you can buy a multi-day pass for $11.00. Just use your debit or credit card in the automated ticket machine and you're off and running.
I struck up conversation with a woman who had left her companions to look at the subway map. Turns out she and her friends are all history teachers from Denmark, and she was a teacher at the school our second exchange student attended. Small world! Like us, the boarded the Green Line train to Boston Common.
The Massachusetts State House, with its impressive gold dome, looks over the sprawling Boston Common; a large park that was originally a grazing area for Bostonians' cattle and goats. Now it hosts a small carousel, ice rink, playground equipment and plenty of park benches. The closest thing to livestock that we saw were grey squirrels and leashed dogs.
The Freedom Trail starts here, indicated by a two-brick wide stripe that bisects the sidewalk.
Just
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Granary Burial Grounds, Boston a block away is the Granary Burying Ground, the final resting spot for early Bostonians and some you might even remember from history class: Benjamin Franklin's parents, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock and Chrispus Attucks, a black slave whom many believe was the first person killed by the British Redcoats in the Boston Massacre. The majority of headstones here are thin slabs carved with the usual style of the deceased name, birth date and date of death. Many have what we might today find a bit gruesome; a skull and angel wings at the top of the stone. Others might have a poem such as:
Stop here my friends and cast an eye,
As you are now so once was I.
As I am now so you must be,
Prepare for death and follow me.
From the Granary it is a short walk -- about a block -- to the King's Chapel and burying ground, then past the first school in Boston, with its statue of Ben Franklin. Did you know he was a high school dropout?
The 2.5 mile tour winds through narrow cobbled streets past the Old
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Beacon Hill, Noston Corner Bookstore, Old South Meeting House, Old State House and Boston Massacre site, all nestled in the shadows of modern Boston skyscrapers. Near Faneuil Hall Market place is the relatively new New England Holocaust Memorial, inspired by a group of Holocaust survivors who found new lives in the Boston area. The six glass towers rise perhaps 30 feet. Etched in the glass, in an incredibly small font, are millions of six- or seven-digit numbers -- the identification numbers of those interred at six camps.
It's maybe a quarter-mile more to Paul Revere's house. Here, in a two bedroom home, they raised 11 children. The architecture is nothing special and was considered out of date when the family moved in. It would probably be considered a starter home by today's standards. However, the idea that we were walking on floorboards and stairs where a great patriot had lived was an intriguing thought.
The Old North Church, where a lamp in the belfry was lit on a dark April night and set Revere on his famous ride, is four or five blocks away on a bit of a hill. Up the hill a few blocks is Copp's Burial Ground with
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New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston more graves from the Revolutionary era. We hiked down to Causeway Street and bypassed the bridge that would take us to the USS Constitution and Bunker Hill, fearing they might be federal sites and closed due to the government shutdown.
After lunch, we took the subway back to Boston Common, then walked up the slope to the State House and over to Beacon Hill. The African-American National Historic Trail starts, interestingly, at the corner of Charles and Joy. It is a shorter walking tour that meanders through the hills. Abolitionists' private homes, the African Meeting House and Underground Railroad "depots" from the 1700s through late 1800s are sprinkled through the neighborhood. The narrow, and often steep, tree-lined streets make it a highly sought-after area of Federal mansions and row houses.
I figure we walked between nine and ten miles today, including the walk back to the Commons after dinner in the little Italy neighborhood of the North End.
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