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Paul Revere Memorial Association

The Paul Revere Memorial Association actively preserves and interprets two of Boston's oldest homes. We provide our increasingly diverse audience with remarkable educational experiences based on historical issues and social history themes relevant to our site, our neighborhood, and Boston from the 17th through the early 20th century. Today the Association is an American Association of Museums accredited museum with a full range of operations and programs. Our properties are key sites along Boston's Freedom Trail, private cooperative sites in the Boston National Historical Park, and members of the Boston House Museum Alliance. We fulfill our mission by offering educational programs for all ages - walking tours, concerts, living history presentations, lectures, school programs and much, much more. We maintain an important collection of Revere-made objects, household artifacts, items commemorating the midnight ride, and items related to Revere's life and work.

https://www.paulreverehouse.org/landingpages/today.html

The Governor, the Sheriff, and the Sawyer: a New Hampshire Perspective on the Coming of the Revolution

Tue, Dec 10, 2024

Join the Paul Revere House for the final event in their 2024 Lowell Lecture Series. This three-part series focuses on the lesser-known express assignments Paul Revere completed. Speakers will share the importance of his courier work as part of a communications system that involved complex overlapping networks of leaders of all stations. The series will also explore the very practical aspects of long-distance horse journeys and the local colonial politics in key communities Revere interacted with.

Paul Revere made multiple rides to New Hampshire to pass messages between Patriot groups. The conventional narrative of the American Revolution emphasizes the role of extra-legal events in Massachusetts such as the Boston Tea Party and Stamp Act riots. Yet, extra-legal actions were not exclusive to Massachusetts—New Hampshire had a long tradition of protest, especially when connected to timber. Laws passed by Parliament in 1708 and 1722 that claimed pine trees for the masts needed for the Royal Navy, among other items contributed to growing discontent with colonial rule, reflected in a series of demonstrations and riots through the 1700s. By late 1774, New Hampshire colonists were seizing Royal munitions.

Peter Flood, author of the 2014 Revere House Gazette article, "A Week in December – Paul Revere’s Secret Mission to New Hampshire, will join the discussion.

Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Milton Historical Society/Suffolk Resolves House (Milton, MA), Carpenters’ Hall (Philadelphia, PA), Fraunces Tavern Museum (New York, NY), and the Portsmouth Athenaeum (Portsmouth, NH), with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org or visit paulreverehouse.org.

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Revere’s Other Rides: Perspectives on his Patriot Messenger Missions

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Paul Revere Memorial Association
The Narragansett Pacer: The Finest Riding Horse in 18th-Century New England

Tue, Oct 8, 2024

Join the Paul Revere House for the second event in their 2024 Lowell Lecture Series. This three-part series focuses on the lesser-known express assignments Paul Revere completed. Speakers will share the importance of his courier work as part of a communications system that involved complex overlapping networks of leaders of all stations. The series will also explore the very practical aspects of long-distance horse journeys and the local colonial politics in key communities Revere interacted with.

Horses first appeared in New England in 1629, when Francis Higginson shipped approximately 25 mares and stallions from Leicestershire, England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Horses were central to survival in terms of work, travel, communication, and leisure. However, for New Englanders, horses were also a staple exportation commodity, and by the mid-eighteenth century New England led the way in shipping horses to the sugar colonies. Amongst the diverse types of horses that were raised in New England, the Narragansett Pacer was exceptional in many ways. The Pacer’s easy gait made it suitable for both long-distance travel and racing. The Pacer was the first “truly” American breed of horse, and it was in high demand all around the Atlantic World. However, from such promising beginnings, the Pacer was extinct by the next century. The talk will examine how the Narragansett Pacer emerged in Rhode Island in the 17th century, what made it so special as riding horse, how the breed is connected to well-known people including Paul Revere and George Washington, and how it has been memorialized in literature and art.

Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Milton Historical Society/Suffolk Resolves House (Milton, MA), Carpenters’ Hall (Philadelphia, PA), Fraunces Tavern Museum (New York, NY), and the Portsmouth Athenaeum (Portsmouth, NH), with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org or visit paulreverehouse.org.

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Revere’s Other Rides: Perspectives on his Patriot Messenger Missions

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Paul Revere Memorial Association
The Massachusetts Revolution of 1774

Tue, Sep 10, 2024

Join the Paul Revere House for the first event in their 2024 Lowell Lecture Series. This three-part series focuses on the lesser-known express assignments Paul Revere completed. Speakers will share the importance of his courier work as part of a communications system that involved complex overlapping networks of leaders of all stations. The series will also explore the very practical aspects of long-distance horse journeys and the local colonial politics in key communities Revere interacted with.

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament not only shut down the port of Boston but also revoked the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which guaranteed the people considerable say in their government. Their sacred rights withdrawn, the people rose up as a body and rebelled. They forced all crown-appointed officers to resign. Everywhere except Boston, where British troops were stationed, they shut down county courts, which administered British authority, executive as well as judicial, on the local level. To fill the vacuum, they formed a Provincial Congress that levied taxes, gathered arms, and raised an army. When British soldiers marched on Lexington and Concord the following spring, they were trying to take back a province they had just lost. That’s when other colonies joined in, broadening the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 into the American Revolution of 1775.

Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Milton Historical Society/Suffolk Resolves House (Milton, MA), Carpenters’ Hall (Philadelphia, PA), Fraunces Tavern Museum (New York, NY), and the Portsmouth Athenaeum (Portsmouth, NH), with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org or visit paulreverehouse.org.

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Revere’s Other Rides: Perspectives on his Patriot Messenger Missions

Partner:

Paul Revere Memorial Association
When Boston Was Closed: Ordinary Bostonians and the Intolerable Acts

Tue, Jul 2, 2024

On June 1, 1774, British officials shut down the port of Boston as punishment for the dumping of East India Company tea six months earlier. Overnight, ship traffic stopped and the wharves fell silent.

In this lecture, Joseph M. Adelman discusses how Bostonians lost access to goods and work that they relied on and explore how working people coped with the economic fallout.

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Paul Revere Memorial Association
The “New” Catholics Come to Town

Tue, Oct 24, 2023

Join Paul Revere House for the third lecture of the Paul Revere House's 2023 Lowell Lecture Series. This 3-part series From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End examines how shifts in religious traditions impacted cultural expression, demographics, political affiliations and economic status in the North End.

The key speaker is Stephen Puleo, Author and Historian. When thousands of immigrants from Southern Italy flocked to the North End in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their Catholic religious practices shocked the Irish diocesan hierarchy.

Stephen Puleo will discuss what this reveals about why this group left Italy, how they viewed religion, and how their presence shaped the North End. Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Old North Illuminated, and the North End Historical Society, with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org or visit paulreverehouse.org

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From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End

Partner:

Paul Revere Memorial Association
"Old England in New England: Contradictions in the History of Boston's Old North Church"

Tue, Oct 10, 2023

Join Paul Revere House for the second lecture of the Paul Revere House's 2023 Lowell Lecture Series. This 3-part series From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End examines how shifts in religious traditions impacted cultural expression, demographics, political affiliations and economic status in the North End.

The key speaker is Prof. Jaimie D. Crumley, Assistant Professor, Gender Studies Division and Ethnic Studies Division, University of Utah. This lecture explores the Church of England's interventions in the Puritan North End with Old North's founding in 1723.

Prof. Crumley will also discuss the previously less well-known role of people of color in the Old North Church community during its early days. Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Old North Illuminated, and the North End Historical Society, with funding from the Lowell Institute.

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From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End

Partner:

Paul Revere Memorial Association
"Puritans" and Others in 17th-Century Boston

Tue, Sep 26, 2023

Join Paul Revere House for the first lecture of the Paul Revere House's 2023 Lowell Lecture Series. This 3-part series From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End examines how shifts in religious traditions impacted cultural expression, demographics, political affiliations and economic status in the North End.

The key speaker is Professor David Hall, Bartlett Professor of New England Church History Emeritus at Harvard Divinity School.

Professor Hall shows how the diaries of people such as Samuel Sewall and Cotton Mather along with the notebooks of John Hull, help us understand how early Boston functioned. These sources illuminate how puritans led their lives and how others disputed or agreed with them as some groups, such as merchants, were more attuned to England than to any local heritage.

Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Old North Illuminated, and the North End Historical Society, with funding from the Lowell Institute.

Forum Network

From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End

Partner:

Paul Revere Memorial Association
Slavery and Smallpox Inoculation

Tue, Oct 25, 2022

The African Atlantic history of smallpox inoculation is a rich, yet oft-overlooked story. This lecture contextualizes the more familiar history of Onesimus and Cotton Mather in early eighteenth-century Boston within the broader history of Africans performing smallpox inoculations in West Africa, Jamaica, and Saint Domingue (Haiti) in the Revolutionary Era of the late eighteenth century.

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Beyond the 13: The American Revolutionary Era Outside the Emerging United States

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Paul Revere Memorial Association
To Begin the World Over Again: Revolutionary Rights

Tue, Sep 27, 2022

Thomas Paine’s call to revolution reverberated throughout the Atlantic world in 1776. Intended to rally more than America’s founding fathers, the entreaty was carried to the Netherlands where Patriot militias rose up in 1787 to reclaim their rights, was echoed in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, ignited insurrections against slavery throughout the Caribbean, and emboldened Black Loyalist settlers in Sierra Leone to claim their right to property and self-government. This lecture will explore how these reverberations of American claims to their revolutionary rights influence our understanding of liberty and equality from the eighteenth century to the present. Watch live [on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/events/842536866924047/) or return here for the published archival video.

Forum Network

Beyond the 13: The American Revolutionary Era Outside the Emerging United States

Partner:

Paul Revere Memorial Association
The Other Fourth of July

Tue, Oct 11, 2022

On July 4, 1779, French forces captured the British Caribbean colony of Grenada. They would occupy that island, as well as the neighboring islands of St. Vincent and Dominica, until the 1783 Treaty of Paris. This talk explores what the American Revolution meant to British colonial subjects in these lesser-studied parts of the Americas. Indigenous, enslaved, and free people seized the opportunity to ally with Great Britain’s chief rival, France, and many used this moment of disruption to seek freedom, sovereignty, or autonomy.

Forum Network

Beyond the 13: The American Revolutionary Era Outside the Emerging United States

Partner:

Paul Revere Memorial Association

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