Above: Celebrate Southborough’s role in history this weekend, in Framingham. (images edited from event promo and photo by Beth Melo)
This winter is the 250th Anniversary of a major turning point in the Revolutionary War. Southborough shares a piece of that history, and is included in a regional commemoration of the event this weekend.
This Sunday, Revolution250 and the Framingham History Center will host a celebration of the “epic 1776 adventure” of Colonel Henry Knox and “his ‘Noble Train or Artillery’ trekking across Massachusetts” — and through our Town — on their way to Boston.
The communities of Marlborough, Southborough, and Wayland are invited to join Framingham in marking the occasion.
At Tuesday night’s Select Board Meeting, Chair Andrew Dennington announced that he had just heard about the event from State Representative Kate Donahue.
Organizers asked for someone to represent our Town. Dennington said that he arranged for Historical Commission Chair Kevin Miller, who he believed was the best choice to speak on the topic. (Dennington will also attend, and encouraged others to join them.)
The February 8th event will begin at 2:00 pm with a short, but unusual procession:
a winter procession across the historic Framingham Centre Common, featuring cannons mounted on draft-animal-pulled sleds, a Fife and Drum unit, and colonial reenactors portraying a welcoming party for Henry Knox and his teamsters.
That will take place at the Village Hall on the Town Common (2 Oak St). The event will then move indoors to the Framingham History Center (3 Oak St) at 2:30 pm. The program will include a short historical video.
For those of you unfamiliar with Knox’s journey, MassMoments.org recaps:
In the early winter of 1775, a young man approached General George Washington at his headquarters in Cambridge with a bold proposal.
Twenty-five-year-old Henry Knox had met the general shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill, when Washington arrived to take charge of the colonial forces. Knox impressed Washington with his energy, ingenuity, determination, and knowledge of artillery. Now, as winter deepened, Washington faced a predicament. His ragtag troops had Boston under siege, and they occupied high ground from which they could shell the British. But the Americans needed big guns, and Henry Knox had an idea about where to get them.
In May 1775 when Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys forced the British to surrender Fort Ticonderoga, they had captured 59 pieces of artillery. Henry Knox proposed traveling 300 miles to Ticonderoga to bring the artillery back to Boston. With enough cannon positioned on Dorchester Heights, the Continental Army stood a good chance of dislodging the British from Boston and scoring a badly needed victory.
Many of Washington’s advisors thought the plan was hopeless. The guns would have to be dismantled and loaded onto barges, transported down Lake George before the great 30-mile-long lake froze, then hauled the rest of the way by sledge and oxen over rough trails.
You can read more about the audacious plan, and its challenges here.
As for the Southborough connection. . .
On page 85 of Richard E. Noble’s history of Southborough, Fences of Stone, he wrote:
One morning, in mid-January, Knox and his guns entered the Town of Southborough.
They were moving slowly by this point, but sure and steady nonetheless, as Boston was within their grasp after so many miles over ice and through heavy snow. At Southborough, villagers pressed steaming mugs of mulled cider and hot rum on the tired soldiers, and Nathan Stone blessed them in their endeavors. A few days later, Knox was at Framingham, and by early February, his mission was completed, as he delivered the artillery to General Washington near Boston.
MassMoments.org details how the Continental Army was able to use the artillery to great effect, and:
Thanks largely to Henry Knox, the vaunted British Army had little chance of ending the siege of Boston. On March 17th, British troops and Tory sympathizers began the evacuation of Boston.
99 years ago, the state erected a series of stone markers along the historic Henry Knox Trail. One of those is sited in front of the Southborough Community House at 28 Main Street.
To learn more about this Sunday’s event, click here.
(Credit to the late, great, Donna McDaniel and former blogger Susan Fitzgerald for a 2011 post that helped me identify where to find details about Southborough’s role.)
