“Bell led a small band of the historically curious through Lexington…”

Early on Friday morning, I got a text alerting me that I was on the front page of the Boston Globe’s Metro section.

The photo by Josh Reynolds above appeared alongside an article by Brian MacQuarrie, long in the works, about hard-core history fans attracted to Massachusetts by its Revolutionary past.

The story begins:

As the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution unfolds, hundreds of history buffs from around the country will descend on Boston this weekend for a busy, immersive gathering where the present will focus on the past.

They’re coming for History Camp Boston — amateurs and academics, neophytes and experts — to partake of a smorgasbord of 50 diverse presentations, from an early American sex scandal to a deadly Lawrence mill collapse, on a day-long menu of simultaneous presentations Saturday at Suffolk University Law School.

History Camp Boston took place yesterday, organized by The Pursuit of History. I spoke about Henry Knox and attended sessions on the British army, battlefield archeology, digital recreations of historic landscapes, researching Revolutionary veterans, and more. This History Camp was the biggest yet, and it still sold out.

To report this story, MacQuarrie was embedded in this spring’s Pursuit of History Weekend on “The Outbreak of War.” He reported:

Earlier this year, Bell led a small band of the historically curious through Lexington, Concord, and along the trail of the bloody British retreat to Boston following the “shot heard ‘round the world.”

At one stop in Lexington, they trudged up Belfry Hill to view a replica of the bell tower that warned the town’s militia of the British advance on April 19, 1775.

They did it in the rain. Cheerfully. Stepping carefully. And listening to sound bites of local history connected with the start of the Revolutionary War.

Months later, the article appeared during the Pursuit of History Weekend on “The Siege & Liberation of Boston.” Which also sold out all its slots.

So I guess one additional piece of news to take away from this story is that you want to join the crowd intensively exploring Revolutionary events through the Pursuit of History offerings, you should sign up early.