Getting #Alarmed! at Buckman Tavern

The Lexington Historical Society is hosting a field trip for the History List through Buckman Tavern. Executive Director Erica Dumont and Collections Manager Stacey Fraser will discuss the building and some of the society’s prized objects, such as the drum that William Diamond beat to summon the town militia to the nearby common on 19 Apr 1775.

Dumont and Fraser will also take the group through the museum’s exhibit “#Alarmed: 18th-Century Social Media,” explaining how it was designed and researched. Mass Humanities, which provided some of the funding for the exhibit, explains the concept behind it:

Networks. Posting. Sharing. Memes. These may sound like buzzwords describing 21st-century social media, but all had their equivalents in the 18th century, some with the same names. In a time of candlelight and horse drawn carriages, there were many sophisticated communications networks in place. Lexington Historical Society’s new exhibit #Alarmed!: 18th-Century Social Media explores how news went viral 250 years ago, and lets visitors imagine how colonials might have made use of our modern media tools to kick start a revolution. Located on the second floor of the tavern, the exhibit contains nearly a dozen interactive activities.

The exhibit team included Fraser, past executive director Susan Bennett, local author and filmmaker Rick Beyer, designer Lauren Kennedy, and young carpenter Pierce Warburton. I came aboard in the middle of the project and added some Boston 1775 touches to the displays.

This special tour is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 10 February, from 11:00 A.M. to about 1:00 P.M. It can accommodate only twenty people, registered in advance, with a waitlist. The History List asks that people not sign up unless they’re sure they can attend so as not to take slots from others. The event is free, though attendees are encouraged to make donations to and consider becoming members of the Lexington Historical Society.

The “#Alarmed” exhibit is scheduled to remain part of the Buckman Tavern’s offerings through 2019 for regular paying guests.

William Diamond Jr. Fife & Drum Muster, 5-6 May

Tonight and tomorrow, 6 May, will be the William Diamond Junior Fife & Drum Corps’s annual muster.

On Friday at 7:00 P.M., “three of the nation’s top fife & drum corps—and some special guests” will perform on the Lexington common, site of the skirmish between the town militiamen and British soldiers on 19 Apr 1775. The host group takes its name from the teen-aged drummer on duty with the Lexington militia on that crucial day.

On Saturday starting at noon and running to 5:00 P.M., there will be a brief parade of fife & drum ensembles ending at the Minute Man National Historical Park’s visitor center on Route 2A. Thirty units from all over the Northeast are scheduled to perform over the course of the afternoon. There will also be colonial craftspeople displaying their wares and demonstrating eighteenth-century camp skills. And there will be booths with refreshments, souvenirs, and musical recordings to buy.

These events are all free, and will take place rain or shine.

Viewing the “Shot Heard” Exhibit at the Concord Museum

Last week I took in the Concord Museum’s new “Shot Heard Round the World” exhibit about the events of 18-19 Apr 1775. It was quite an impressive gathering of artifacts related to one historic day.

This is definitely a military-based show. I counted six powder horns (one pierced by a musket ball), five swords, and four muskets, versus two looking-glasses and one clockface. Some of the items are already famous, such as one of the lanterns said to have hung in the Old North Church and William Diamond’s drum.

Other objects I’d never seen before in person or photograph. For instance, John Hancock’s letter to members of the Committee of Supplies in west Cambridge shows Patriot leaders discussing the likelihood of British troops heading to Concord before they went to bed on the 18th.

A shovel sheathed in iron is labeled as probably one of the fortification-building tools the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had collected in Concord. I wondered, had James Brewer taken this shovel from deacon Richard Boynton’s forge inside Boston? (I guess I haven’t told that story on Boston 1775 yet.)

There aren’t many portraits in this exhibit, but one familiar face on the walls was the watercolor painting of Maj. John Pitcairn that I discussed earlier this year. Its label offers a new theory of its origin, and I’m curious about the evidence behind that.

It was striking how many artifacts in this show come from local historical societies, and different historical societies. New England was built with lots of separate towns, and they have their separate treasures, many loaned for this show. Thus, from Arlington (formerly Menotomy) come not just the Royal Artillery cartridge pouch discussed back here but also a panel from little Joel Adams’s door and part of the meetinghouse silverware that some British soldiers carried into Boston.

Another element of the exhibit I liked was the use of stripes on the wall to show relative size of the British and American forces in action. You can see those in the background of the photo above, from Donna Seger’s report on visiting Concord on Patriots Day. (The foreground shows the gun flints found in two lines in Concord’s training field, where militia troops lined up before moving against the regulars at the North Bridge.)

If you go to the Concord Museum for this exhibit, don’t miss two other Revolution-related rooms: the “Last Muster” photographs of aged veterans and the portion of the “Why Concord?” exhibit downstairs that deals with the shift to independence.

The Aftermath

From William Diamond’s Drum, by Arthur Bernon Tourtellot:

Later on the morning of April nineteenth. Captain [John] Parker reassembled his Lexington minutemen, to march toward Concord. Some of the wounded, now bandaged, formed in awkward but determined lines. Among them was Jedediah Munroe, the old man who had fallen on the Common before he could shoot and who had brought along the old Scotch claymore as an extra weapon. William Diamond beat his drum again. The little company marched off toward Concord, the beat of the drum and the thin music of the fife echoing briefly after them. And this was perhaps Lexington’s saddest and most triumphant moment of the whole day—the sun now high in the sky, the smell of British gunpowder still in the air, their dead brothers lying on the Common behind, and the company of minutemen, knowing now what they faced, marching off to meet the enemy again.

(Photograph from Joanne Rath’s coverage of the reenactment at Lexington yesterday for the Boston Globe. Pictured are Quinn, Peter, and Joleen Ricci of Bedford.)