tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post6828215383364701283..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: Where Was Paul Revere's "North Church"?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-22820313352477373892007-06-08T20:20:00.000-05:002007-06-08T20:20:00.000-05:00There's a map of Boston from 1769, within a year o...There's a map of Boston from 1769, within a year of the Remick/Revere skyline print, that labels the Old North Meeting-House and situates it at that place in the peninsula, with no other place of worship nearby. Given the importance of churchgoing in that society, there's <I>no</I> chance that a major place of worship in the town would have gone unrecorded. <BR/><BR/>Some of the early arguments against Frothingham's theory did say that the Old North Meeting-House steeple was too short and too far down the hill to be even seen from Charlestown. Donna La Rue told me that can't be true because there are reports of people watching Charlestown burn on 17 June 1775 (part of the Battle of Bunker Hill) from the Old North Meeting-House roof or steeple. <BR/><BR/>At least according to <A HREF="http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/images/enan_0001_0001_0_img0042.jpg" REL="nofollow">a period print</A>, however, that conflagration was huge, with flames and smoke high in the air. Abigail and John Quincy Adams recalled seeing the destruction from Braintree, meaning they saw the smoke rising. So how much did the people on the meeting-house roof see?<BR/><BR/>Were folks on Old North Meeting-House able to see the spot on the opposite shore where Richard Devens and his Charlestown colleagues stood? Because they would have had to for the lantern signals to work. I'm not sure of the answer, or any way to test it, now that the building's gone and the shoreline has changed. <BR/><BR/>In any event, even if all three steeples in the North End were visible from Charlestown, Revere would have chosen the tallest as long as he could find inside men to hang the lanterns.<BR/><BR/>And in the 1870s two families claimed to descend from such men: John Pulling and Robert Newman, as this <A HREF="http://books.google.com/books?id=ieIypI-z2ioC&pg=PA109" REL="nofollow">page from the 1877 <I>New England Historical & Genealogical Register</I></A> shows. Both those men and those family traditions involve lanterns in Christ Church/Old North Church, not Old North Meeting-House. Also, that <I>Register</I> article cites someone growing up in Boston after the Revolution who recalled being told that the lanterns hung in Old North Church. <BR/><BR/>Even after Frothingham wrote, so far as I can tell, no one came forward to claim that an ancestor had hung lanterns in Old North Meeting-House, or that they'd been told that the lanterns had hung in that building before the British army tore it down. <BR/><BR/>Ironically, like a lot of other Patriot preparation that night, the signal from Old North Church turned out to have <A HREF="http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/04/who-got-message-from-old-north-church.html" REL="nofollow">virtually no effect at all</A> on the major events that followed.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-82294539661838448992007-06-08T18:23:00.000-05:002007-06-08T18:23:00.000-05:00I was being an internet junkie earlier this week a...I was being an internet junkie earlier this week and following one of your links (possibly to The City Record etc.), found myself reading a very similar article (sans picture).<BR/><BR/>Their arguement was that the Old North meeting house had NO steeple at all & was situated behind the hill so as to not be exposed to a Charlestown view. <BR/><BR/>Not like this is even an important issue to counter Frothingham's arguement, but how do you know the smaller steeple in the picture was related to the meeting house and not another church lost to time?NJDavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12780039409170446937noreply@blogger.com