Old Parsonage

New York, NY

During the American Revolution, the rocky heights of northern Manhattan were fortified to help hold the Hudson against the British advance. Fort Tryon stood as an advanced outwork guarding the approaches to the larger Fort Washington, and when Hessian regiments stormed the hilltop, its outnumbered defenders put up a determined fight before the position was overwhelmed. Among them was Margaret Corbin, who took her fallen husband's place at the cannon and kept firing until she herself was gravely wounded.

Concord, MA

On April 19, 1775, at Concord's North Bridge over the Concord River, colonial militia and the advancing British regulars exchanged the volleys that opened the American Revolution. Ordered by their commanders to hold, the assembled minutemen returned fire when the British fired first, and a British soldier fell here — among the earliest to die in the war. This granite obelisk, raised in 1836, marks the ground where organized armed resistance to the Crown began, immortalized soon after as 'the shot heard round the world.'

Concord, MA · est. 1936

Hours after Lexington, colonial militia massed at Concord's North Bridge and exchanged fire with British regulars, forcing their retreat to Boston. Emerson's 'Concord Hymn' immortalized the moment.

Concord, MA

In the decades surrounding the American Revolution, slavery persisted even in Massachusetts towns like Concord, and the men and women who won their freedom often built new lives on the margins of the communities that had once held them. Brister and Fenda Freeman were among these formerly enslaved residents, making a home near this spot and raising a family in the years of the young republic. The surname they carried — Freeman — was itself a quiet declaration of the liberty they had claimed.