Revolutionary Events on Saturday, 23 Oct.

Here are two outdoor Revolutionary events happening in New England tomorrow.

At Minute Man National Historical Park’s Hartwell Tavern site in Lincoln, two knowledgeable volunteers will lead a walking tour of a crucial corner along the Battle Road back from Concord:

Elm Brook Hill (formerly known as “Bloody Angle”) was the site of a violent ambush against the British column on the afternoon of April 19, 1775. Edmund Foster, a volunteer from Reading, Massachusetts (portrayed by Park Volunteer Ed Hurley, shown above), will lead a tour to this battle site where he fought in 1775. Learn about this action from the words of one who was there! Ed will also be accompanied by local historian and author Don Hafner of the Lincoln Minute Men.

That tour will happen twice, at noon and 1:15 P.M. The walk is less than a half mile along a hard-packed dirt surface.

It looks like Frank Coburn was the first author to apply to label “Bloody Angle” to this area and the fight that took place there. In his 1912 The Battle of April 19, 1775, he used the phrase first without capital letters, then with them. But he was borrowing the term from parts of the Gettysburg and Spotsylvania battlefields during the Civil War.

Coburn’s coinage of “Parker’s Revenge” for the skirmish at a site on the Lexington border has been vindicated by archeological evidence, so it will probably stick, even though nobody used that label before him. So he can afford to lose “Bloody Angle.”

Up in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, the Association for Rollinsford Culture & History is hosting a “Colonial Market Fair and Militia Muster” at the Col. Paul Wentworth House. This event will includes artisans in eighteenth-century attire demonstrating such crafts as joinery, coopering, lacemaking, and blacksmithing. A militia unit will perform musket firings and military drills, explain their equipment, and raise a Liberty Pole and flag.

That gathering will happen from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. with cannon firings at 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00. Admission is $5 for adults, free for children.

For folks from outside the region or staying inside, American History TV is broadcasting two lectures recorded in 2019 on C-SPAN2:

• “American Military in the Revolutionary War” by Baylor University Professor Julie Anne Sweet, looking at the equipment and capabilities of the Continental Army, militia troops, and Crown forces.
• “Continental Army” by William Woods University Professor Craig Bruce Smith, describing how the American force differed from the British in demographics, organization, and officer selection.

Those two lectures will be shown back to back starting at 8:00 A.M., 11:00 A.M., 8:00 P.M., and 11:00 P.M. And one can watch them anytime on the web.