“Red Horse Tavern” Reenactment in Sudbury, 1 Nov.

On Saturday, 1 November, Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury will host the annual “Battle of the Red Horse Tavern” reenactment. This event isn’t designed to recreate any specific fight in the Revolutionary War. Rather, it offers a chance to explore a typical skirmish scenario.

The host organization, the Sudbury Company of Militia and Minute, offers a program for this year’s event:

Start the day by listening to colonial music, talking with re-enactors, visiting sutlers, observing cannon firing demonstrations and more. Then watch as the Colonial and British armies battle for control of the Red Horse Tavern.

Eighteenth-century taverns were important in the Colonies as a place to hear the news and other current events, engage in commerce, conduct militia drills and provide respite for weary travelers. The Red Horse Tavern sitting along the Boston Post Road, the major east-west route to and from Boston and New York, was crucial in that anyone or anything travelling into or out of Boston to/from the west would have to pass by its door. Whichever side controlled the Tavern could control the flow of supplies, troops and information.

The Redcoats are determined to wrest control, no matter the cost, while the Colonists will do all they can to stop them and send them back to Boston.

Who will control the tavern? Come and find out.

11:45 A.M.-12:45 P.M.: Cannon demonstration, fyfe & drum music, 18th century fashion show, sutlers, mix-n-mingle with the re-enactors

1:00 P.M.: Formation & inspection of troops

1:15 P.M.: Battle of the Red Horse Tavern – near grist mill

2:30 P.M.: Battle of the Red Horse Tavern II – south field

Of course, in real life, rural Massachusetts wasn’t contested territory after 19 Apr 1775. The only British army to traverse that countryside was the Convention Army of P.O.W.’s after Gen. John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga. But there were plenty of skirmishes over taverns, crossroads, and other key points elsewhere in the young U.S. of A.