“Revolutionary War Refugees on Tory Row,” 20 Mar.

This is Evacuation Day in Suffolk County, celebrating when the British military left Boston in 1776.

In commemoration of the Continental Army’s first successful campaign under Gen. George Washington, I’ll deliver an online lecture for the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and the Friends of Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters.

Sunday, 20 March, 2:00 P.M.
Revolutionary War Refugees on Tory Row
register through this page

Our description:

Like all armed conflicts, the start of the Revolutionary War produced a flood of refugees seeking safety. Loyalist families moved into Boston for the protection of the redcoats. Patriot families fled the besieged capital. The Battle of Bunker Hill destroyed most of Charlestown, leaving more people desperate for homes and livelihoods. Tracking the changes in one wealthy Cambridge neighborhood away from the battles shows the impact of war on ordinary women, children, and men.

As I’ve developed this talk, I realized that I should move beyond the 1774–1776 years I usually cover to discuss when thousands of homeless men, women, and children streamed slowly along the road from Watertown into Cambridge.

Hannah Winthrop, wife of a Harvard College professor, described those people rather uncharitably:

To be sure the sight was truly Astonishing, I never had the least Idea, that the Creation producd such a Sordid Set of Creatures in human Figure—poor dirty emaciated men, great numbers of women, who seemd to be the beasts of burthen, having a bushel basket on their back, by which they were bent double, the contents seemd to be Pots & kettles, various sorts of Furniture, children peeping thro gridirons & other utensils. Some very young Infants who were born on the road, the women barefoot, cloathd in dirty raggs

Such Effluvia filld the air while they were passing, had they not been smoaking all the time, I should have been apprehensive of being Contaminated by them.

Winthrop was so hostile because those refugees were the British and German-speaking soldiers captured at Saratoga, along with their families. They were to be housed around Boston before being sent back to Europe. At least that was the initial plan for what became known as the Convention Army.

When I alighted on the topic of war refugees for this year’s Evacuation Day lecture, I had no idea how loudly it would resonate with current events. Or to be more exact, since war has never stopped sending families fleeing somewhere in the world, how loudly this topic resonates with the current news.

We plan to record this talk and make it available through the sponsoring organizations later this spring.