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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 Legacy of Pauline Agassiz Shaw

Tue, Oct 12, 2021

Learn how Boston social reformer Pauline Agassiz Shaw (1841-1917) used her wealth to pay for a vast number of philanthropic efforts including: financing the first public kindergartens in America, lobbying for both prison reform and world peace, participating in the woman suffrage movement and founding day nurseries and neighborhood houses (including the North Bennet Street School). The 2021 Lowell Lecture Series presented by the Paul Revere Memorial Association will be a biographical series based on influential individuals with North End connections. By highlighting moments in the lives of Thomas Hutchinson, Prince Hall, and Pauline Agassiz Shaw, this lecture series examines their impact on the North End and beyond. This series covers distinct centuries of change in the North End to provide a more inclusive and comprehensive historical narrative.

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Who Was Prince Hall? An Introduction to an Extraordinary Man

Tue, Sep 28, 2021

Manuel R. Pires, Chairman of African Lodge No. 459, Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, introduces Prince Hall as an historical figure, with an emphasis on his achievements and contributions. Hall was an abolitionist and leader in the free black community in Boston. He founded Prince Hall Freemasonry and lobbied for education rights for African American children. Pires makes the case that Prince Hall is an unsung Patriot and forgotten Founding Father who should receive his long overdue recognition.

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Whitemanism and the West: the Missouri Compromise to the Dred Scott Decision

Tue, Sep 10, 2019

Presented by the Paul Revere Memorial Association at Old South Meeting House. Lecture by Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University. Image: [Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.](http://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701sm.gct00482/?sp=25&r=-0.128,-0.048,1.236,0.804,0)

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Tyranny Unmasked: The Townshend Acts in Britain, Ireland, and America

Wed, Sep 26, 2018

The Townsend Acts marked a new radical phase in the crisis that eventually destroyed Britain's empire. When Parliament enacted the law in 1767, it seemed as though the imperial stresses at the end of the Seven Years' War could be contained. Just over a year later, occupied Boston was the toast of radical patriots throughout George III's dominions, and observers began to wonder whether Britain's days as an imperial power were numbered. University of New Hampshire Professor of History Eliga Gould tells the fascinating story of this transformation - as it appeared to Bostonians and from the standpoint of people on the far shores of the Atlantic. One of four lectures in the series "Lead, Glass, Paper, Tea: The Townshend Acts, Colonial Unrest, and the Occupation of Boston, 1768." Part of the Lowell Lecture Series presented by the Paul Revere Memorial Association at Old South Meeting House. Image: Presentation Slide

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Paul Revere's Sons of Liberty Bowl: An American Icon

Wed, Sep 12, 2018

American patriot Paul Revere is wrapped in the swirling mixture of myth and poetry through which history often descends, but as a craftsman he left behind more tangible traces as well. Gerald W. R. Ward, Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Emeritus, at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, relates the story behind Revere's most iconic creation, the Sons of Liberty Bowl, crafted in 1768 to commemorate the "Glorious 92" legislators who bravely opposed King and Parliament's imposition of the Townshend Acts and other untenable legislation. One of four lectures in the series "Lead, Glass, Paper, Tea: The Townshend Acts, Colonial Unrest, and the Occupation of Boston, 1768." Part of the Lowell Lecture Series presented by the Paul Revere Memorial Association at Old South Meeting House.

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Charles Townshend, John Hancock, and the Boston Madeira Party

Wed, Sep 5, 2018

On June 10, 1768, the King's Commissioners of Customs seized John Hancock's sloop Liberty and its smuggled cargo of Madeira wine. Already agitated by the imposition of the hated Townshend Duties, Bostonians took to the streets. William Fowler, Jr., Distinguished Professor of History, Northeastern University, describes how the Commissioners, fearing for their lives, fled to the safety of Castle William, while John Adams argued his case in defense of Hancock and Liberty at the Old State House. One of four lectures in the series "Lead, Glass, Paper, Tea: The Townshend Acts, Colonial Unrest, and the Occupation of Boston, 1768." Part of the Lowell Lecture Series presented by the Paul Revere Memorial Association at Old South Meeting House.

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Agitate! Agitate! Collect!: Artifacts of Women's Dissent

Tue, Sep 19, 2017

In 1917, New York State women won the right to vote, an event that would help bring on passage of a federal woman’s suffrage amendment in 1920. As the United States prepares to celebrate this centennial, Ashley Hopkins-Benton, Senior Historian and Curator of Social History New York State Museum in Albany, NY, will show how her museum has been exploring artifacts of the fight for women’s rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while simultaneously collecting materials from the Women’s March, and other 2017 protests.

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The History of Protest in Boston Neighborhoods

Tue, Sep 12, 2017

New York Streets, the West End, Villa Victoria, Tent City, Stop the Highway: “Progress” vs. Community Control in Boston’s Neighborhoods Many of the national trends, public and governmental policies, and institutional practices that have shaped Boston’s physical geographies have roots in structural racism – a network of factors that perpetuate racial inequality and result in intergenerational wealth gaps, and highly segregated neighborhoods. Restrictive community covenants, redlining, urban renewal, divestment, and the placement of highways and mass transit have influenced where Bostonians live, and largely determine access to Boston’s amenities. However, Bostonians are resilient – communities’ acts of network building, activism, and resistance to imposed development in favor of neighborhood control have also shaped the geography of the City in a significant way. Giordana Mecagni, Head of Special Collections and University Archivist at Northeastern University will illustrate the effect of community protest on Boston’s geography, as seen through examples collected by Boston’s many archival collections, including Northeastern University’s Archives and Special Collections.

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Revolutionary Resistance: Paul Revere and Isaiah Thomas

Tue, Sep 5, 2017

**Collecting Dissent: Museum Collections on the History of Protest from the Revolutionary Era to the Present** The largest collection of prints and works on paper by Paul Revere is held at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Several of these prints helped fuel the American Revolution with their imagery of dissent. Much of the Revere collection was assembled in the early twentieth century by AAS librarian and president Clarence S. Brigham (1877-1963), whose Paul Revere’s Engravings (1954; 1969) remains the most significant book on the subject. Nan Wolverton, Director of Fellowships and Director of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture will look at the early collecting practices of Isaiah Thomas, patriot printer and friend of Revere, whose personal library of books, pamphlets, and newspapers became the foundation of the American Antiquarian Society’s archive when Thomas established it in 1812. Thomas’ efforts to collect a complete printed record of the past included cheap broadsides, many of which focus on Revolutionary Era dissent and will be considered alongside Revere’s works on paper.

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From Hills to Islands: Ancient Adaptations to the Inundation of Boston

Tue, Sep 27, 2016

From Hills to Islands: Ancient Adaptations to the Inundation of Boston. Some 6,000 years ago, Boston was well inland from the ocean, but as rising sea levels poured in tidal waters around the hills east of Boston, ancient Native Americans lost no time adapting to and enjoying the change. Spectacle Island preserved a wonderful record of several thousand years of clam bakes, fishing and other activities, excavated as part of the Big Dig project. While Martin Dudek, Senior Project Manager of Commonwealth Heritage Group, will focus on Native American sites on Spectacle Island, he will also include a brief overview of other exciting archaeological sites worked on for the Big Dig.

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