Everybody knows Lexington and Concord. The 250th anniversary of American independence could easily be one long rerun of the same three battles. What is happening north of Boston this summer is more interesting than that. As the Eagle-Tribune reported, the region is leaning hard into the lesser-known stories, the everyday people who kept the whole thing going.
The old Merrimack Valley has even rebranded for the occasion. Twenty-one cities and towns north of Boston are now marketing themselves as the Revolutionary Valley, and the calendar is filling with the kind of programming you do not get every year. One example close to home: a three-hour tour through Andover and North Andover’s role in the war, cosponsored by the North Andover Historical Society and the Andover Center for History and Culture, that walks you to the actual sites and tells the stories of how ordinary residents rallied to support a brand-new country.
The North Shore is loaded with these. A Marblehead captain wrongly accused of refusing orders. The spot in Newburyport where colonists burned British tea in 1773, two years before the shot heard round the world, as Northshore Magazine laid out. These are the stories that do not make the grade-school textbook, and they happened on roads you drive every week.
If you have kids home for the summer, or you just like history that surprises you, this is a good year to poke around. The towns we live in were not bystanders to the Revolution. They were in it, and for the next stretch they are actually telling those stories out loud.
One of the quiet perks of this area is how much history is packed into it. If you ever want to talk about putting down roots in one of these towns, or what your own place is worth, I am happy to give you a straight answer.
