Category: 19th Century
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Juneteenth: A Reflection
On Friday, June 19, we mark 155 years since Union General Gordon Granger announced General Order Number 3 (proclaimed on June 19, 1865), which informed the people of Texas that the institution of slavery had ended and that previously enslaved people were free. It had taken considerable time for this information to reach Texas (the…
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99% Sure | Ep 2: Interpreting Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride”
Welcome to Episode 2 of “99% Sure”, a video series where we take a deeper dive into the history, people, and events that made Old North the legendary historic site you know and love. Tune in every other week as Old North’s Education Manager and intrepid public historian T.J. Todd explores some of our most…
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The Shaw Memorial: A Reflection of Black Struggle
The Messenger series features scholarly articles exploring how Old North and our region fit into a greater historical perspective while celebrating the academic work of a variety of voices from students to casual history buffs to published authors and leading academicians. The Shaw Memorial: A Reflection of Black Struggle In 2016, Massachusetts unveiled a redesigned driver’s license,…
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The Amistad Case and the Power of Collective Action, Part 3 of 3
This article is the third in a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 2 first. Ultimately, the most compelling part of the story, though, lies in the strength found in community and how everyone can have a role to play in fighting for a cause. The story of the Amistad is not one of…
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The Amistad Case and the Power of Collective Action, Part 2 of 3
This article is the second in a three-part series. Start with Part 1 here. The odds were even more stacked against the Amistad rebels in the Supreme Court: five of the nine justices, including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (of the infamous Dred Scott decision), were southerners. Even Justice Joseph Story, from Massachusetts, had earlier…
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The Amistad Case and the Power of Collective Action, Part 1 of 3
This article is the first in a three-part series. In the early morning of July 2nd, 1839, off the shore of Cuba aboard a Spanish schooner called La Amistad, a group of illegally kidnapped and enslaved Africans managed to free themselves from their chains and fight back in an attempt to re-secure their freedom. Their…
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Longfellow, Anglo-Saxons, and Paul Revere
Twenty-two years before he wrote “Paul Revere’s Ride,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned an article for the July 1838 issue of The North American Review. [i] Nothing would indicate that this piece was particularly special: the index simply lists a review of several publications pertaining to Anglo-Saxon literature, a dictionary included; most items were five or more years old; the…
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Set in Stone: The Making of a Memorial
On October 20, 1878, North Enders awoke to a neighborhood full of familiar, unchanging edifices in an ever-changing neighborhood. One such structure was the Old North Church, its tall brick tower and white steeple only altered by the Great Gale of 1804. Shem Drowne’s golden weathervane still swung in the harbor breeze, and the ranks…
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The People in the Pews: The Sounding Board
Many visitors chuckle upon seeing the contents of pew 49, pointing to the large 1980s soundboard and mixer that runs the church’s “modern” audio system and proclaiming “Look! The original colonial speakers!” Ironically, these visitors need only look up to find that they are nearly directly below the church’s real audio system: the sounding board. Appearing to…
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The People in the Pews: Lynde Walters, Jr.
Q. How is the Old North Church tied to the production of newspapers in the 19th century?A. Through a man named Lynde Walters, Jr., who attended Old North and owned pew #45. (His father, Lynde Sr., also attended the church and served as a junior warden in 1804.) So who was Lynde Jr.? Like many upstanding…