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The Redcoats are coming!
British fife and drum band at HarborfestThis year became a very strange one for me travel wise. After my nearly year long voyage of discovery, I was pretty burned out. I still had no desire to go anywhere, and can’t afford it in any case. This was a new situation for me, and one I hope never becomes too comfortable.
Thankfully, I didn’t need to go very far to find something worthwhile this year. One of the truisms of travel is that people will fly thousands of miles to discover something they would completely ignore at home; This year I finally made up for that a bit. Every year the week leading up to July 4
th, Boston hosts a huge festival called
Harborfest celebrating American Independence and the city’s rather outsized role in it. Despite living here for decades, I’ve never been.
The day began at
Kings Chapel. One of the oldest churches in Boston, it was founded by Edmund Andros, the first royal governor of Massachusetts, as the first Anglican church in the colony. After the Revolution the congregation split away and became one of the first Unitarian churches.
The church hosted a group of historic reenactors that told stories of Boston not found
Kings Chapel
Inside the first Anglican church in Boston school history books. Those almost always depict Boston as neatly divided between the populace on one side and the British government on the other. The reality was much messier; many citizens wanted to remain loyal to the crown. Battles between the camps could become violent and very personal.
Consider, for example, the experience of John Mien, the publisher of the city’s primary loyalist newspaper, the
Boston Chronicle. He feuded intensely with Benjamin Edes, publisher of the pro-independence
Boston Gazette. The men fought each other in the street, and both took to carrying pistols for protection. In 1769, an angry mob sacked the Boston Chronicle office, and Mein fled to England soon afterward. To add insult to injury, he was then
sued by John Hancock on behalf of unpaid suppliers and sent into bankruptcy.
We also heard the story that every historic guide loves; that of
Paul Revere and Joseph Warren. They were close friends. After Warren died at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Revere resolved to give his friend a proper burial. He spent days going through the war dead, looking in their mouths. Like most silversmiths of the era, Revere made silver filings. He went through the bodies until he found the one with a filling
Kings Chapel Burying Ground
One of the oldest cemeteries in the United States he had made for Warren less than a year earlier, and knew he had found his friend. Guides love this story because it marks the birth of forensics, now popularized by shows like NCIS.
After the presentation, we got a tour of the cemetery.
Kings Chapel Burial Ground was founded in 1630, making it the oldest in Boston (and one of the oldest in the United States). It predates the church by almost 60 years. When Boston became a royal colony in 1686, the governor insisted that it have a church from the official Church of England. Since most colonists had emigrated partly to escape that church, none would sell the needed land. The governor responded by
seizing part of the largest city owned parcel available, the cemetery.
Our first story about the cemetery was that the gravestones have no relation to who is buried under them. In the early days, people were buried wherever they would fit. In the early 1800s, city workers rearranged the headstones into rows with paths between them. This became the source of a ghost story, since the spirits of the dead no longer know where to rest!
Many notable people are buried here. Way in the back, we saw the gravestone of
William Dawes
The midnight rider who actually reached Concord on April 18, 1775 one
Frederic Tudor. In the late '1700s, New Englanders cut ice from ponds every winter to keep food cold so it wouldn’t spoil. Tudor got the idea to pack that ice in straw and send it southward on fast ships. He ultimately made a lot of money shipping New England ice to southern colonies. Our guide didn’t know whether residents put any of that ice in tea 😊
We also found the marker for
William Dawes, an important Revolutionary figure robbed of his fame by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Few school kids realize that when the lanterns appeared at Old North Church, multiple riders set out from Boston. Their goal was to warn others, who would then carry the message further, a relay through the country side. William Dawes, not Paul Revere, actually made it to Concord; Revere was caught by the British just west of Lexington. As historians have lamented for over a century now, the truth doesn’t sound great in rhyme, so Longfellow gave the credit to Revere alone.
The path latter passed an enormous gravestone that looked more like a tomb, the marker for
John Winthrop. He was first governor of Massachusetts Bay colony, back when it was effectively
Samuel Adams
Firebrand, governor, beer namesake a Puritan theocracy.
Our tour ended at a metal cage over a deep shaft next to the church, where rumbling noises emanated. The guide stated with a straight face that this shaft represents a portal to hell, where the living can hear the screams of the damned. He then admitted it’s actually a ventilation shaft for the Green Line subway. As anyone who has experienced a train breakdown can attest, those two concepts are more similar than many want to admit!
After the tour, I heard marching music. That is not surprising in Boston this time of year. Old City Hall, which is located next to the church, hosted a series of fife-and-drum groups during the festival. The current group was a little different to most, however. Two centuries ago they would have risked being pelted with rotten fruit (or worse) since they were dressed in red and flew the Union Jack. These days, of course, we have different opinions of our cousins across the pond and they received a warm welcome. Many in the group were actually expats living in the US. They played very well.
After Kings Chapel Burying Ground filled up, the city opened
Smallpox grave
Memorial to five siblings who died of smallpox before age four another cemetery nearby called the
Granary Burying Ground. It was located next to an actual granary at the time. This was the main city cemetery during the decades surrounding the Revolutionary War and contains many notable figures. Like Kings Chapel, the ghosts of this cemetery also have no idea where to rest; the graves were moved in the early 1800s to form rows.
Many people see it on a guided tour with a costumed guide. At this time of year a few are always hanging out near the entrance offering their services. Like all tourist hotspots, the more touts the worse the tour, so I would book something like this in advance. For what it’s worth, a guide is worth it mainly for the show, the signboards were adequate for the history. To find the
important graves, just look for the huge groups of people : )
The cemetery holds the gravestones of many important Revolutionary leaders. A tall obelisk on the left marked
John Hancock, the chairman of the Second Continental Congress who famously signed the Declaration of Independence in letters so large King George wouldn’t need his glasses to read them. A squat pillar near the back was the gravestone
of
Paul Revere.
Sam Adams, firebrand orator, former governor, and beer namesake, got a plaque in the front right. Adams, incidentally, really did own a
malting business supplying local breweries; it went bankrupt in less than five years.
The crowds revealed a few lesser known sites. One gravestone featured a single winged deaths head over three tombstones, with five names between them. It memorializes five siblings who died of smallpox within two years of each other. The oldest lived to age four.
A single gravestone marked the five victims of the
Boston Massacre, members of an unruly mob killed by British troops. The event did much to push the city toward open rebellion, not least due to its role in propaganda (“Bloody Butchery” one
famous newspaper headline read the following morning). The list of names included
Crispus Attucks, now widely publicized as one of the first African American patriots.
Lastly, there was a gravestone of
Mary Goose, the wife of wealthy merchant Isaac Goose. In popular legend, the bedtime stories she told her grandkids became the inspiration for Mother Goose. This legend has only
two problems: 1. She died before grandkids appeared, and Isaac remarried. 2. The book that made those stories famous was written by
Middleex County Volunteers
The best fife and drum group in Massachusetts Thomas Fleet, the husband of the youngest daughter by Isaac’s second wife, Elisabeth Goose. Elizabeth is also buried in the Granary Burying Ground, but has no gravestone.
After the cemetery I heard more marching music, so I headed back to old City Hall. The performers this time were the
Middlesex County Volunteers, one of the area’s most famous fife and drum groups. They have played military music festivals around the world and routinely appear with the Boston Pops. Needless to say, they were very good and drew a huge crowd. I would probably appreciate the performance more if I knew the music history.
With time to kill before the next event, I wandered into Government Center. The way there passed the
Parker House Hotel. Opened in 1855, it is the oldest continuously operating hotel in the United States. A trivia note tour guides love is that Ho Chi Minh, Malcom X, and Emeril Lagasse all worked here (at different times) before they became famous. This was also the place Boston Crème Pie was first served.
Soon afterward, the sidewalk contained a very peculiar plaque, which mentions the Old North Church and how the view of it from this spot was preserved
Blackstone block
Boston's oldest commercial neighborhood during urban renewal. Sure enough, looking up the street revealed the church in the distance framed by modern buildings. Given Boston politics, I’m sure the plaque’s real purpose was to allow the two officials mentioned on it to pat themselves on the back.
I then entered the vast brick plaza of Government Center. It was built in the late 1950s as a huge urban renewal project on the site of the city’s then red light district.
I M Pei, who was not yet famous, designed the overall layout. The plaza was dominated by the huge brutal glory of City Hall, one of the best realized
Brutalist buildings in existence. Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell designed it in 1962. Architects and art historians
love it for its iconic status. Everyone else considers it a vast confusing concrete tomb. In fact, a poll of international travelers in 2008 rated it the
ugliest building in the world.
From there I crossed into the
Blackstone Block, located just north of Faneuil Hall. A tight knot of alleyways and brick buildings, it has existed in its current layout since the middle 1700s, making it the oldest commercial neighborhood in Boston. Squeezing through its tight alleys revealed a central park with sign boards describing its history.
Disco Inferno
Funk tribute band at Harborfest These days the block is best known as the home of the
Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in the United States; and the
Bell in Hand Tavern, where the Sons of Liberty met to plan revolution. While the buildings still look atmospheric, most modern visitors are apparently focused on consuming huge amounts of beer.
Tonight’s main event was a concert held on the plaza. The opening acts were two manufactured pop groups trying to build an audience. As expected, they were young and good looking, and that was the only memorable thing about them. The singing was generic, the songs were interchangeable radio fodder, and some of the teenagers in the crowd screamed. If they quickly fade back to obscurity, I won’t feel any loss.
Thankfully, they quickly made room for the main event. For the rest of the night, the stage belonged to
Disco Inferno, one of the Boston area’s best disco and funk tribute bands. The members lived through the era and love it, and this clearly showed in their performance. They played all the classics, including (of course), their namesake. Unlike some funk tributes, this group clearly recognized they were a nostalgia trip and acted accordingly.
Their incredible energy
Party crowd
Dancers of all ages love this groove spilled into the audience. I’ve rarely seen a crowd this diverse, drawing people from across the area. Our backgrounds didn’t matter, just a love of a good groove. Naval units have a big presence at Harborfest this year, and many sailors were at the concert. When some went out to dance, it broke the ice. Soon dozens of people from young kids to veterans in their seventies covered the stage front. Oh what a night!
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Harborfest
Thank you for an entertaining, informative, historical tour Ezra. What a wonderful service historical re-enactors do...bringing the past to life so history is imparted with passion and relevance...even bringing the stories of gravestones to life. Paul Revere idolised in verse because William Dawes did not rhyme...Ho Chi Minh in Boston...never would have imagined that.