Finding Your Way Around in April

Here are a couple of events coming up in April that offer opportunities to improve one’s knowledge of greater Boston in space and time.

On Saturday, 5 April, local historian Charles Bahne will lead a walking tour of Revolutionary Cambridge for the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. The course description says:

Cambridge was the focus of both military and political activity at the dawn of the American Revolution. Redcoats marched through the town on their way to Lexington and Concord; two months later, generals met in Harvard Square to plan for the Battle of Bunker Hill. Here George Washington formed the Continental Army, won his first victory, and dealt with his first traitor. This tour will view surviving sites of the Revolutionary War in Harvard Square, Harvard Yard, and Brattle Street, and will discuss events that occurred elsewhere in Cambridge between 1774 and 1778.

This class on the move costs $46. Registrants should meet in the courtyard at 42 Brattle Street (home at different times to William Brattle and Thomas Mifflin) at 10:00 A.M. on Saturday and be prepared to move around for the next two hours. In case of extreme weather, call the Cambridge Center at 617-547-6789 for information and a rain date.

On Thursday, 17 April, the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Public History Track will host an event titled “Making the Atlas of Boston History—a forthcoming historical atlas of Boston.” This book will be “only the second historical atlas about a U.S. city, and the only such atlas authored primarily by historians.” Find out more about the project at its website.

The speakers will be:

• Nancy S. Seasholes, Director and Editor, Atlas of Boston History
• Susan Wilson, House Historian, Omni Parker House, Boston
• Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Professor of American Urban History (emeritus), Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

That talk is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. in Room 11B of the Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston. It is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.