Revere House Radio
Revere House Radio brings you all things Revere House, from the true story of Paul Revere's midnight ride to lesser-known Revere family history, author interviews, and more! A new season is released each spring.
Revere House Radio
4.3 “Paul Revere Didn’t Imagine Being in that Situation, Either”: Interview with Sarah McDonough
In this episode we welcome Sarah McDonough of the Lexington History Museums. We discuss what happened when Paul Revere reached Lexington, some individuals’ stories from that revolutionary moment and that era, and the magic that happens in both costumed interpretation and large reenactments like the ones coming up. In the Our Favorite Questions segment, Revere House interpreter Jay shares some details of 18th-century daily life.
Please note that the episode includes discussion of some of the violent realities of both war and slavery.
- Lexington History Museums
- 1825 book that includes William Munroe’s account
- A History of the Fight at Concord, by Ezra Ripley (Google Books link)
- Dolly Hancock’s account
- “Mark Hung in Chains:” Slavery & Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride” from our Revere Express blog
- Liberty and Servitude at the Hancock-Clarke House
- Patriots’ Day events in Lexington
- April 18th events in Boston and Charlestown
Season 4 Episode 3: “Paul Revere Didn’t Imagine Being in that Situation, Either”: Interview with Sarah McDonough
Tegan 00:00
Welcome back to Revere House Radio. I'm your host, Tegan Kehoe, and this episode is one of a couple we're doing this season on other sites related to Paul Revere Midnight Ride. And today, my guest is Sarah McDonough of the Lexington Historical Society. A few notes for listeners before we begin: our conversation will get into some of the violent realities of both war and slavery in the 18th century. So if violent content is going to be difficult for you, please come back to the episode when you're ready. Second the interview is being recorded in January, when the organization was still known as the Lexington Historical Society. But by the time you hear this, they may have formally launched their new name, the Lexington History Museums. All right, without further ado, welcome to the show, Sarah.
Sarah 00:41
Thanks for having me, Tegan.
Tegan 00:42
So to start us off, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at the Lexington Historical Society?
Sarah 00:48
Sure! So I've been working in Lexington for over 15 years now. I started as a tour guide when I was in college. I was working in archeology and historic preservation. Really loved the material culture. Wanted a way to talk about it after someone else had glued it back together, instead of myself. And in 2017 I became the programs manager. So as well as filling in with tours and school groups and such, I also manage our adult programming, galas, lectures, reenactments, things like that.
Tegan 01:21
Great. And for listeners who haven't been to Lexington, can you share a bit about the organization and what visitors can expect to see there?
Sarah 01:28
Sure. So we operate three historic house museums, and we are soon to be opening our fourth. Three of them actually feature pretty solely April 19, 1775 history. I always joke with the contentiousness between Lexington and Concord. Concord was always a little bit jealous that Lexington's battle happened first, and Lexington was always a little bit jealous that Concord had a significant history after April 19-
Tegan 01:58
Right
Sarah 01:58
- And now we're fighting over your tourist dollars. So when the museums were started, the 19th Century history was still new. No one was bragging about it yet. Everything was all Revolutionary War all the time. So the Buckman Tavern is the main meeting place of our militia on April 19. It's directly across the street from the battle green. We also have the Monroe Tavern, which is where the British rested later on during the day, and the Hancock Clark House, which was the home of our minister, which we will talk about more in a bit. And then in April, we will be opening our fourth museum, which is a 19th Century train station that will house the rest of the non-18th Century collection.
Tegan 02:37
Got it! And you mentioned that when you opened, the 19th Century, stuff was new. So I assume that this is, like the Paul Revere House, a history organization that has been around for quite a while.
Speaker 1 02:48
Yes, I think a lot of them started around the centennial. Or at least the idea that people were going into their attics, going into their basements, and trying to figure out, what did grandma and grandpa save from the revolution that we can bring out and share with people during this anniversary. We just went through all of our spinning wheels. We had something like 17 of them -
Tegan 03:08
* laughs * Yeah.
Sarah 03:08
- because that was what was saved for most people. That was their symbol of the revolution, as far as women were concerned. And so we started that fairly early. The Hancock Clark house was the first building that we purchased, and that was in 1896.
Tegan 03:22
So yeah, even older than the Paul Revere House as a museum. We opened our doors in 1908. So let's jump right into the Hancock Clark House. Can you tell us what was happening that night on April 18th and why'd it become such a pivotal part of the Midnight Ride story?
Sarah 03:36
So Reverend Jonas Clark was our minister in town. And of course, in the 18th Century, in a small suburban town, your minister is probably the most important person in the town. He's the religious leader. He's also the political leader. And his wife, Lucy is John Hancock's cousin, so he is getting a lot of intel from Boston about the politics, more so than probably a lot of other people are. And he's just a very political guy in general, similar to Reverend Emerson, who was in Concord. So we really think that he was kind of spreading the good word of Patriotism to people every Sunday. They had no choice, as it was a one church town. But that also meant that he was kind of a safe house for John Hancock if he needed to not be in his home in Boston. During February, March and April of 1775 that was very much a necessity, because the tensions were getting so high in Boston -
Tegan 04:35
Right.
Sarah 04:36
- that John Hancock was getting harassed by soldiers in the street. They were defacing his house at one point, I think they cut down his fence. And he was, you know, complaining to the authorities, and they weren't really doing anything about it. So, you know, commuting from here to Concord is already not fun in the best of times, and especially when you feel like you're in danger and you're living on a tiny peninsula where you might be stuck if something goes down. Right? So he decided I'm gonna write to my cousins and find out if I can stay with them, have a much easier commute, and go back and forth from Lexington to Concord, where the provincial Congress was meeting.
Tegan 05:13
At that time, Boston had royal troops stationed in Boston, about a mile from the Paul Revere House, and we are in kind of the main residential neighborhood of Boston at the time -- the North End was the area. So this is...what you're describing happening with Hancock is happening kind of with the whole neighborhood as well. Can you tell me a little bit about how Samuel Adams ended up staying with them as well?
Sarah 05:34
So they were interesting, sort of, business partners, I think. Not really friends, but business partners. I consider them kind of this yin-yang thing where Sam Adams was the guy who was very good at, like, standing on the street corner, telling people what to think, writing pamphlets, you know, really rallying people to the cause. John was much more of a moderate person. He was more cautious, but he also had a ton of money. And so when he did join in, he tended to be kind of behind the scenes, but he was making all of these preparations possible. He was kind of financing this, so they made a good team together. Why they specifically decided to share a room together? I'm not entirely sure.
Tegan 06:18
Yeah, that's fair! And I often think of it as kind of like an awkward business trip situation where you end up lodging with someone that you don't necessarily...wouldn't be going on a vacation with. But I also know that 18th Century kind of concepts of privacy in the home and privacy in quarters are very different. The buildings don't have hallways. People are going through one another's bedrooms, as a matter of course, at home. Can you tell us a little bit about what the accommodations might have been like at the Hancock Clark House while people were staying there?
Sarah 06:47
Sure. So like you said, hotels were not a huge thing back then, so you weren't expected to have privacy or your own room. There's plenty of stories that have been floating around for ages, like John Adams and Ben Franklin shared a room once and argued for like, five hours before they're on to open the window, right? You know, no one was ever rooming someone they actually wanted to. That's just the nature of business. But the Hancock House is a really lovely home for the time period. When you look at some of our other buildings there, they vary quite a bit. Buckman Tavern was kind of purpose built as a tavern, so it's a lot larger than your average home. It was expanded really early on. The Monroe tavern was just a private home that ended up getting converted. And so you can really see a lot better from the layout of it, how it was meant to be a very modest family home -- a salt box -- when it was first built. And the Hancock House is kind of somewhere in the middle; so it was built for John Hancock's grandparents, we think, financed by their son, Thomas, who was the wealthiest one in the family. He was the only one who didn't become a minister, as well as his father did. And he was also the one who adopted little John Hancock when his father John died. So he's the one who built up the Hancock family fortune. So they purposely built the house with an enormous kitchen, a lot of storage space above. We're still not entirely sure if that was entirely storage space or if it was intended to be slave quarters, but there is a lot more space in that house than your average small-town colonial house.
Tegan 06:47
Okay.
Sarah 06:48
So there's nine kids staying in there, but there's also a full guest room that John and Sam can share.
Tegan 08:31
Okay, yeah, so that's definitely context. And it sounds a lot more spacious than the Paul Revere House, which also had nine kids in it at a lot of times. Yeah.
Sarah 08:39
Yeah. And of course, John and Sam were also traveling along with John's fiancé and his aunt, so they actually had to use the master bedroom. And we have no idea where the Clarks were sleeping. We think they might have sent some of the kids up to the attic or something.
Tegan 08:51
Yeah. So as regular listeners and anyone else who's very interested in the story of the Midnight Ride will know, on April 18, Paul left from Boston. He was not the only rider, but he was one of the riders who was on their way to Lexington, both to alarm the countryside, as it was said -- meaning spreading the word that troops were on the move towards the munitions and that it was time for the local militias to prepare to meet the troops -- but also to warn Hancock and Adams because they were at risk of getting arrested. So his mission was largely to get to the Hancock Clark house in time to warn them. And so that is kind of the...the peak of the Midnight Ride is arriving there. Can you tell us a bit of the story of him, kind of, knocking on the door and what happened next?
Sarah 09:37
We actually have a really good account from that, from the person who was in charge of the armed guard who is at the front door. So once the news started getting out that something weird had been happening in Boston and that a raid might be imminent, William Monroe, who was the orderly sergeant of the Lexington militia, got a group of about six or seven other guys together and decided to stand outside the front door. They weren't entirely sure what was going to happen. There had been some spies going through town several weeks earlier, asking questions that no one could quite interpret, because the spies were not very good. So they were asking about, where's the tavern? Is that Mr. Clark's tavern? And no one knew how to respond, because-
Tegan 10:19
Right
Sarah 10:20
- Mr. Clark doesn't have a tavern, but he does have two fugitives staying with him.
Tegan 10:23
Yeah.
Sarah 10:24
And they were probably pretty aware that General Gage, who was in charge of the Army, as well as being the governor, was under increasing pressure from his bosses in England to start arresting people. And he didn't want to do that because he knew that would start a war.
Tegan 10:42
Right.
Sarah 10:42
But we didn't know that. We didn't know how cautious he was. So we were really concerned that if the soldiers are going to Concord, Lexington is right on the highway, so they only have to take a detour of maybe a 10 minute walk up the street to actually reach two of the most important Patriot leaders and arrest them on their way. And so they really weren't sure what was going to happen and how they were going to get the word if things were going south in Boston. Paul Revere...he always reminds me of that old artists are the most dangerous people because they mix with all levels of society. Because he knows people all over the place. He has clients everywhere.
Tegan 11:09
Right. Yeah.
Sarah 11:23
But he doesn't know William Monroe.
Tegan 11:25
Okay.
Sarah 11:25
William Monroe is not wealthy enough to be buying silver tea pots, so-
Tegan 11:29
Right.
Sarah 11:29
This guy rides up and starts, like, shout-whispering at him that he needs to get into the house. William is the only person who admits to telling Paul Revere to be quiet and go away as the family is asleep and they don't want to have any noise. And according to him, that's when Revere said, "Noise, you'll have noise soon enough, the regulars are out" and I need to wake up Hancock and Adams. And at that point he was literally shouting, and Hancock opened the window and said, "Oh, I recognize you come in."
Tegan 11:58
That's great. And I kind of know the story from the "You'll have noise soon enough!" portion, because, you know the famous line is "The British are coming!", and Revere did not say that. And Monroe's account is the only account that we have of what Revere actually said when he was waking people up. And so that's that's a fun piece for us.
Sarah 12:17
Yeah, it's always frustrating that Paul didn't give himself any dialog in his letters, because he gave other people dialog. But I was actually flipping through Google Books earlier to see what was the earliest reference to "The British are coming!" that I could find.
Tegan 12:32
Oh, fun!
Sarah 12:33
And it was from 1827. And it was a book published by Ezra Ripley, who was the minister in Concord and became sort of the first town historian, and he wrote a book about the battle and included first hand accounts in it. And there was a man from Woburn who said "Some guy knocked on our door that night and told us the British were coming."
Tegan 12:35
Okay. Yeah.
Sarah 12:55
It's fascinating to think this gentleman was probably a child at the time. He's not going to remember his exact dialog. But it's also over50 years later-
Tegan 13:03
Right.
Sarah 13:04
-when he's writing this down, and that's when a lot of these accounts start to get more and more elaborate, because people are interviewing veterans, they know that that generation is dying out. People want to brag about what they did...
Tegan 13:15
Right.
Sarah 13:16
But also, again, it's 50 years later. His language has changed into how he refers to himself as "an American."
Tegan 13:23
Yes. And I think that that’s something we do today, too. When we're talking about something that happened in the past, we'll put it in modern language. And sometimes people find it fun to put it in modern language, but we don't always necessarily realize that that is modern language for the time. And, you know, Revere died in 1818, so this first example that you were able to find happens after his lifetime. But this also brings me to one of the things I wanted to talk about, which is Paul Revere's accounts of the ride. So you referenced there's two that he wrote for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, essentially not because of the Midnight Ride itself, but because it culminates in the beginning of the battle at Lexington green. And then about 20 years later, he's writing to the first president of the Massachusetts Historical Society -- because here in Massachusetts, we're into our history, and we've had a Massachusetts Historical Society since the 1790s -- and so he's writing that. How he presents the story is a little bit different between those two sources, but in terms of the actual facts, they're very consistent, which we as historians love, because it makes it feel more likely to be accurate. We also have some fun stories that came down through family histories that seem to have been the kinds of things he told his grandchildren about the Midnight Ride; You know, there's a bit about needing to muffle the oars and things like that that don't make it into the official accounts. And you mentioned some of the other sources that talk about that night and the morning of April 19th. And Revere was certainly not the only person able to report on what was going on. So can you tell me a little bit more about the other sources that you use in Lexington to talk about this event?
Sarah 14:55
What I like about Revere's accounts, which matches a lot of the others from people in Lexington and Concord, is that you have two reasons for them being written down. So the first reason is: something horrible has happened, a war might have just started, and there is going to be an inquest, and we need to get our story straight for that inquest.
Tegan 15:18
Right.
Sarah 15:19
So within a couple of days, Reverend Clark actually noted it in his diary. He said the Committee is taking depositions from people. So the Congress was sending people out to interview anyone who had an important story to tell. And they were really focusing, from what I can see, on two specific groups of people: either those who participated in the battle -- those people were all very clear and consistent in their reasoning for giving the depositions, which was to say "We didn't start it. It was self defense."
Tegan 15:49
Right.
Sarah 15:50
-- And also people who were actively harassed by the soldiers that day. So there were a couple of women who were interviewed who were not involved in any kind of battle, but were subject to harassment. And Paul kind of falls in between those two categories, because he doesn't witness the battle. He, at one point says that he thinks he heard pistol go off, but he's hiding, kind of in the swamp behind someone's house. He's not actively watching. However, he does focus a lot on the Midnight Ride, because he is harassed by the soldiers during that time. Right.
Tegan 16:20
Right. And I'll just note that the "blow your brains out" there is not us putting modern language into Paul Revere's mouth.
Sarah 16:20
He wants to make it clear that, you know, someone put a pistol to my head, said he was going to blow my brains out. This is not how soldiers are supposed to act. So anything that I do in retaliation is justified. Yeah, that's my favorite line of dialogue!
Tegan 16:37
That is literally how he describes what the soldier said to him. So that is a phrasing that was present at the time.
Sarah 16:44
So later on, in the 1790s, I kind of count that in the same wave as the 50th anniversary interviews that people were doing in the 1820s which is "Paul, it's been a while you're getting old. We want to save this" and "tell us how you were one of the people who founded this great nation that we have started." And so that's when you start to see the elaboration and the people starting to talk more about the planning process of all of this. I think that's the first time he mentions the lanterns is in 1798, because it would be way too incriminating to talk about that in 1775. If he's saying, I just happen to be out trying to warn people that something bad might happen, the more layers of contingency plans you're admitting to - - the more it seems like this was all planned ahead of time, right?
Tegan 17:33
Right.
Sarah 17:36
Which it was! But he does not want to say that.
Tegan 17:38
Right. And they had lots of contingency plans, but again, you're not going to admit that right away.
Sarah 17:43
Yeah. And that's also one of the time periods in which we get all the stories surrounding Paul Revere so 90% of what we know about what happened in the Hancock Clark House actually comes from John Hancock's wife. She was also interviewed in the eighteenteens, when she was in her 80s. And she just happened to sit down at a dinner party next to someone from the historical society- -who started interrogating her, and then rushed home and wrote down everything that he thought she said. Because John and Sam didn't really say anything about what happened. They were busy being politicians. They didn't think to write that down. And over and over again, we see often it's the women who are telling the stories over time, especially the more..I don't want to say "day-to-day" history, but the men are very focused on the battle. And Dolly Hancock -- Dolly Hancock Scott, at that time -- was much more focused on the emotions of that night, and what they were thinking of doing, and focusing on the danger they were in, because she didn't watch the battle. She might have; she it was visible from the Hancock house, so we don't know if she was trying to comfort the children, or comfort John Hancock's aunt, or if she was looking out the window. We're not sure.
Tegan 18:05
That's great! Right.
Sarah 18:59
But her focus is on...John wants to go fight in a war, because his idea is that if the war is starting in my cousin's front yard, I want to be a part of it.
Tegan 19:07
Right.
Sarah 19:07
And everyone's trying to tell him that he's an idiot, because he's going to get killed. And then, of course, it goes back and forth between the two of them. But you know, Paul doesn't necessarily write down what happens at that house. Right. Dolly doesn't necessarily write down what Revere said, or what they were doing in that house. But we can stick these two stories together and come up with a pretty accurate timeline.
Tegan 19:27
Again, people aren't writing down all the details. We don't really have a lot about what happened to Paul for the next 24 hours after his account stops, and we kind of find him again in another town a day later. And so that's kind of how history was recorded. We had a speaker in our lecture series this past fall who pointed out that Paul Revere never said what kind of horse he was riding, and she's a horse historian. Today, when people are talking about a very important trip they made, a very, you know, emergency thing, they usually don't say what make and model of car they were driving. That's just not the kind of detail that feels important at the time. So pulling back just a little bit, do you have either a favorite fact about Revere and that night, or alternatively, a favorite myth about him or his era?
Sarah 20:16
So one of the things that I've always found fascinating in trying to track Revere's ride is to figure out exactly how he got from point A to point B. Because his account is vague in some areas and very specific in some areas. He meets up with some British soldiers. Shortly after going off on his ride, he has to take a detour. And one thing that I've always wanted to discuss on tours, and I've never really had the opportunity to do it because it needs a tour in itself, is that when he gets into the center of Charlestown, in the area where the common is, there was actually a gibbet hanging off the side of the common. And Paul lists this as a landmark. He says that I was riding past and I turned where "Mark was hung in chains," and that was something that tends to get glossed over in a lot of the older histories, because it's just an uncomfortable subject. But a gibbet is essentially a metal cage in which prisoners were hung after they were executed, where their bones were sort of suspended, so that people can see who did the deed, and it would prevent them from doing it like you know, the introduction of Pirates of the Caribbean
Tegan 21:34
Right.
Sarah 21:34
And Mark was such an interesting case because...a couple of reasons. One, he had been hanging there for 20 years. He was executed in 1755. And also, Mark was an enslaved man, and he had been convicted of petite treason for murdering his master, along with the other enslaved woman in the house, Phyllis. And according to that law of the time, Phyllis was actually burned at the stake. It's one of the few times we see that in Colonial America. They didn't burn witches. They burned "treasonous" people, and particularly enslaved people. And Mark was hanged, and then his body was displayed to prevent other people from getting similar ideas.
Tegan 22:22
Right, as a warning. The most graphic warning possible.
Sarah 22:25
Exactly. And it is fascinating and heartbreaking to me that it doesn't get talked about. Because not only is it important for people to know that this sort of thing happened back then, but that it was so normalized. That's just, it's a landmark, like he knows that everybody knows, "Oh, that's where Mark is hanging. He's been there for 20 years." If anyone...he doesn't say, "I turned at the common," he says-
Tegan 22:52
Right.
Sarah 22:52
-"I turned at the gibbet." Which is horrifying to our modern people. But it really reminds us of how normalized that kind of situation was back then.
Tegan 23:02
Right, right. And I kind of can't think of a modern equivalent. I mean, certainly people give descriptions of journeys based on landmarks, but it's like a lynching site in some senses -- although lynching is extra legal, and this was part of the legal process. While there's perennial appetite for stories about the American Revolution, organizations that interpret this period sometimes get a general impression from would-be visitors that if we're doing the history of this period, we're talking about white guys, dates, and battles. Clearly, that's not the case. But can you tell me more about the efforts that Lexington Historical Society has made to tell a more inclusive, and therefore more accurate story of this era?
Sarah 23:42
Sure. We're very lucky in Lexington. First of all, as we were just chatting about, that a lot of the stories we have come from women, even if they're from a little bit later in the time period. Just across the board, women seem to be the ones founding museums and just adding extra context. Particularly, as I said, in this instance, the men are very hyper focused in their recollections on the battle, because that's what they're being interrogated about by Congress. Women can add what's happening around it. And in addition to that, a couple of years ago, we rewrote the tour at the Hancock Clark House, which was quite an endeavor, because there's so much story that we have to cram in there. In fact, we talk a little bit less -- or I do -- about the Midnight Ride in some ways, because it is a story that people get in many different places around Boston, Lexington, Concord area. But to include some of those other stories. And the way we describe it is: What does "liberty" mean to different people in this time period. We worked with Dr Robert Bellinger, who started the Black Studies program at Suffolk. He's from Lexington, and he works with us quite frequently to research the stories of Lexington's Black community and the various levels of what he calls -- and I love -- freedom and unfreedom, as opposed to freedom and slavery, because there were so many different levels back then: Are you a White man? Are you a Black man? Are you a White woman, a Black woman? Are you an indentured servant? Are you an apprentice? There's so many contracts and legalese that you have to work through. So as you go through the house, you were learning about how these various groups would have responded to the political upheaval that was happening in the months leading up to the battle, particularly because the Hancock Clark house is the only museum that we own that is a verified site of enslavement. John Hancock's family did enslave two people in the home. We know that at least one of them was likely a free woman by 1775. But we do know that Dinah is listed as being boarded somewhere else from March of 1775. She went to visit a family member who was very ill, and ended up -- one of the Hancock family members, not her family members -- which shows how people were treating even a formerly enslaved person at that time. This is just my conjecture, but she did live with this gentleman's family. He ended up passing away, like, within a couple of weeks, and at that point, she went to live with this gentleman's son, who moved to Maine, and we still have receipts from John Hancock. He was paying for her room and board with the Bowman family for another 20 years or so. And that was very common. If you were manumitting an enslaved person, you were required to care for them. So that would have, I suppose, fallen on him as kind of a bizarre sort of inheritance.
Tegan 24:34
Right. Yeah, so you've talked a little bit about your interactions with visitors at this site. And I know that in addition to your role at Lexington Historical Society, you're a historical reenactor yourself doing first person interpretation. Can you tell me a little bit about that? And do you see people reacting differently to history when it's presented in these different modes?
Sarah 27:04
Yeah, I think there's something special about seeing a person of the past in front of you, even if you're doing what we call "third person interpretation," which is just "I am me dressed in a funny outfit, talking to you and not playing a character." There's something to be said about just seeing that historical person as a person and not as a stereotype. We have this idea that people of the past, they looked funny, they talked funny.
Tegan 27:32
Right.
Sarah 27:32
You know, "They were powdered wigs. What's up with that?" You know, "We have nothing in common with them." And I think putting on the clothing really lets people know that this isn't something that's impossible for them to do. You know, I always joke, you know, I wouldn't be wearing stays, I wouldn't be wearing a corset, if it was uncomfortable. I'm not getting paid enough for that, you know.
Tegan 27:56
Right.
Sarah 27:57
I genuinely enjoy wearing this because it feels like historical archeology, in a way -- or experimental archeology. I'm doing the thing that I talk about, and so it's less of a theoretical and it's more real. And I can give people more of a sense of "What is it actually like to cook over a hot fire? What is it like to scrub something in the 18th century?" And it reminds folks that they were just people like ourselves, and a lot of things don't change. You know, I tell people, we still have hair powder. It's called powdered shampoo. They just used a lot more of it back then because they didn't shower that often. Right. They had to. And a lot of these things that happen, that become strange beauty fads started out practically, and then someone took it a bit too far and said, "Hey, that looks cool." So you would powder your hair all the time when you didn't have time to wash your hair. And eventually you get build up. And someone said, "Hey, we could color this. Make it look really neat."
Tegan 29:02
Yeah. And that makes me think of...in the Victorian era, there's this fad to create that beyond hourglass, almost ant-body figure that is taken to the extreme. And even people at the time were saying, "This is taking this to the extreme." But it was for many people, of course, it's just an undergarment.
Sarah 29:21
Yeah. And especially in this time period, I haven't really done the research on it, but it was something that you were even putting babies into. People were very concerned about posture in the 18th century, and if you have a floppy baby, that baby's gonna grow up with their spine all wonky, and you're gonna have a bad time, and they won't be able to dance, and that is a bad thing in the 18th century.
Tegan 29:41
Right.
Sarah 29:41
So we have baby stays in our collection that are, I don't know, maybe like 12 inches around. It's a little terrifying to our modern sensibilities. But also, we still swaddle babies. Sometimes babies like to be hugged.
Tegan 29:55
Yeah.
Sarah 29:55
And you would have been wearing that if you were a boy, you'd be wearing it until you were maybe four or five when you were potty trained, so that you would learn to stand straight. And if you were a girl, you would just keep on wearing it. And the way I see stays, I like to compare them to shoes in a way? You don't need one. But it's gonna feel a lot more comfortable to wear stays than to live in a world without bras, depending on your figure. But also you can take it too far. There are people who wear high heels that they can't walk in. They wear shoes that are uncomfortable for fashion sake. And there are also people who wear sneakers and it's fine, and people who wear well-fitting shoes and people who wear ill-fitting shoes. Stays are really like that. While I am not as big of a fan of the constriction of the clothing of the 18th century, I understand, as someone who knows how to sew why they did what they did. It's a lot easier to mold fabric around your body if you make your body into a nice cone shape. And also, while I'm sewing, my back hurts a lot more if I'm not wearing stays, because I have terrible posture. So if I'm hunched over my sewing table, it becomes very uncomfortable very quickly, and the stays force you to sit properly. And I can sew for a very long time.
Tegan 31:17
Yeah, I just noticed myself sitting up straighter as we were talking about that, because I was thinking, I'm probably slouching at the microphone right?
Sarah 31:23
Excellent back support, yeah.
Tegan 31:26
So I feel like we have both strayed pretty far from our topic, and not far at all. Because I think that these pieces of daily life, they didn't pause when the major events of the revolution happened. And I think that that's what kind of both of our sites are often talking about is the fact that people were wearing garments at the time that they were having these big political things. And people were worried about their loved ones when the political conflict is turning into a military conflict, in some ways, overnight; it was something that people probably knew was going to happen, or thought was going to happen, but they didn't know quite when.
Sarah 31:59
Yeah, we have this really heartbreaking account from William Monroe's wife, the guy who told Paul Revere to shut up and go away. Anna Monroe had been left alone in her home with four kids and was not having a good night, as you can imagine. Yeah. Eventually, a neighbor came over to help, but at the time, she had absolutely no idea it was going on. Will was probably one of the first people in town to find out that anything was going on, before there was any real intelligence. That was pre-Paul Revere, so it was really just rumors at that point. It would have been absolutely terrifying. And when you think about how insane a woman's day was back then, how long and how labor-intensive a woman's day was back then...Eventually, one of the family stories that gets passed down is she said that she had to just get up that morning as usual and bake bread. And she said that she "kneaded her tears into her bread" because she was afraid that by the time it finished baking, her husband would be dead.
Tegan 33:02
And yeah, but you still had to bake the bread, because you don't want to be hungry in the middle of all of this as well.
Sarah 33:08
Yeah, you can't just curl up in a corner and cry. You've got toddlers, you've got animals, you've got neighbors.
Tegan 33:12
Yeah. So can you tell us about what Lexington Historical Society is doing to commemorate this year -- Because this is the 250th Anniversary of all of this that we're talking about -- and anything else going on in Lexington around this anniversary?
Sarah 33:27
There is so much going on this year. I think I have over 100 programs on our calendar.
Tegan 33:32
Oh, wow.
Sarah 33:33
Which includes smaller things, like craft time. But it is quite the list.
Tegan 33:39
Yes.
Sarah 33:40
Obviously a lot of things are focusing around April 19th weekend. One thing that has changed very radically from earlier years to now is that the vast majority of the programs that all of our collective towns are doing (Boston, Arlington, Lexington, Concord), most of those events are going to be happening on Saturday before Patriots Day, rather than Patriots Day itself. It's actually the 19th this year is the Saturday. So a lot of the things that we would normally do on a Monday have been moved to the true anniversary so that we can stand there. I will be standing on Lexington Green at dawn on April 19th, which is going to be absolutely terrifying with the crowds. But it's a very special feeling. Yeah, if anyone hasn't done it before, I have no idea what to expect this year with the number of people we're expecting. But is it is so special, especially if it's, you know, a foggy morning and you can hear, you know, the echoing of the footsteps of the soldiers coming and the drums. Yeah. And even just a couple of days ago, I...I moonlight with the British, so reenacting at other historic sites, I tell that side of the story. They were saying that when they're coming down Mass Ave, they actually can't see The Lexington militiamen until they're nearly on the green, because the road curves there. And historically, there was an enormous building on the green that blocked their view. But even now, without that building there, it's kind of a shock for for everyone-
Tegan 34:55
Wow.
Sarah 35:07
-both the Americans and the British. And so you get that tension in the air as the sun is rising.
Tegan 35:21
Yeah.
Sarah 35:22
But yeah. The reenactment will be in on Saturday the 19th, a lot of the parades...obviously, the marathon is still on Monday. But for anyone who is a little bit terrified of finding parking in Lexington and Concord on Saturday, the Historical Society in Lexington will still be doing a lot of Monday programming for the sort of overflow crowd. We're having a lot of little living history demonstrations. Some of the British soldiers will be there to tell their side of their story. Some of the reenactors who deal with the American topics will be there. And also at the Hancock Clark House, we're focusing on the Black history. We have a small exhibit in our orientation room that talks about Dr Bellinger research on Lexington's 18th Century Black community. But it's too much to talk about within the context of the rest of the tour, and a lot of research has been done in the three years since. So those folks are going to be on hand to explain how much they've learned.
Tegan 36:21
Great.
Sarah 36:22
So probably the most important thing we're doing is the annual reenactment of Paul Revere arriving in Lexington. And this is a sort of theatricalized version of his arrival. It helps to explain what's going on, but it is based on the true accounts of Paul Revere, Dolly Hancock, William Monroe, which is really fun to see. We get real horses from the reenactors. We close off the streets so that you get the full scope of what was happening. And it is a really great experience to be able to see something again, more or less at the exact time and place it happened in. And particularly at night, it's, I think, a little bit easier to ignore the rest of the houses around it and to sort of feel like you're there. It will be held slightly earlier than usual this year. We have, in the past, done it at the actual time that Paul Revere showed up, at about 11:30, and this year we are doing it at 10 so that everyone gets a cat nap before the battle. Because we have to report generally at about 3:30 if we're working for the battle.
Tegan 37:31
Oh, wow, yeah. And I'll mention that again, with the timing being just slightly askew, on April 18, there will be events both here at the Paul Revere House and at Old North Church, and then across the water in Charlestown, commemorating the row portion where Revere had to row from Boston to Charlestown, borrow a horse in Charlestown to begin his ride. And we also we have...the timing is approximate. The part that's the most historical hand-waving is that these two rides are not continuous with one another. So he's leaving Charlestown and he's arriving in Lexington, but for logistical reasons, that is not a continuous ride.
Sarah 38:12
I think they used to do that, which was a lot on the horses, so we stopped doing that.
Tegan 38:17
Yes, yes. And I think that the state police weren't thrilled about this event that's taking place overnight and involves horses, and it just it felt like a lot. But I think we do some of that historical hand waving so that we're able to make the magic happen. So that we can have these events, we have them a little bit less accurately, and that means that more people can attend, more people can have part of that experience.
Sarah 38:39
Yeah, I'm very aware that everything we do is theater, in a sense. And that may be a somewhat controversial statement for me to make. But yeah, as someone who's whose studied the history, you know, I said, for example, that one of the most striking things at the battle is listening to the drums coming up the street. We're not sure if they were playing drums, they were kind of trying to keep quiet during this mission. They were they're trying not to make a lot of noise and rouse the public. But man, does it sound amazing. And it gives you the weight -- even if you don't have the four or 500 soldiers that were there -- it gives you a sense of of the magnitude of what was taking place.
Tegan 39:24
Yeah.
Sarah 39:25
Or even in the National Park, for example, if you go to see their April 19th festivities, we are not allowed to portray a death in the national park. So the reenactors will be moving over several miles of terrain and doing tactical demonstrations. But while they do have a very good idea of where some of these battles took place, we don't really call them reenactments. We just call them demonstrations, because we're never going to know exactly what took place. And if we were actually reenacting what happened to the best of our ability, we would have casualties.
Tegan 39:58
Right.
Sarah 39:59
And also the public wouldn't be able to see because it was in the woods. But more importantly, you know, we want to respect the people who fought in the war as much as possible. You know, we we're very aware that around all the hooplah of "Yay, it's Patriots Day!" like, people died here. Right. It's more difficult to deal with that in Lexington, because the green is a very intimate space. And so having the soldiers run through and having no one die doesn't quite make as much sense. But it is something that weighs upon us, and the National Park has taken a very hard stance that I mean, there are still graves there, as there are on Lexington Green. Those men are still buried there. And so we do want to constantly remind people that this was a real thing that happened. It's not just about the parades and swinging lanterns around, that this was the start of a war.
Tegan 40:48
Right. And I think that that...it's always complicated to tell these stories, because you want to talk about the death, and you don't want to make talking about it feel like a parody of what happened. You really want to make sure that it's that it's real.
Sarah 41:04
Yeah! And I think it helps having those of us who are on the sidelines. So I am well under the height requirement for the British Army, even by 1775 standards. So I do not carry any weapons. I portray just a woman who's following the army, you know, an officer's wife. And I think it helps to again, bring that larger context into it, that these people have families, that, you know, community is not a spectator sport.
Tegan 41:32
Yeah.
Sarah 41:32
Everyone in Lexington was involved in the revolution, even if everyone wasn't on the green -- that there were witnesses to it, that there were people who had to attend to the wounded and the dying. Someone had to bury those soldiers. Reverend Clark's daughter wrote about that process and how scary it was for her as a child. And so there are many of us who will be sort of standing off along the rope lines of the reenactment to explain what's happening and put it in context so it's not just a bunch of people running through the woods full of smoke. It's explaining what this actually would have meant for those people. Yeah.
Tegan 42:07
Yeah.
Sarah 42:07
It's the same way if we're off camping and people like to go watch a battle, but what's happening around the battle? We're drinking, we're cleaning, we're nursing. There's a lot that goes on in a British camp.
Tegan 42:19
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Sarah 42:21
I have no idea what Rachel was doing during all of this with all of her kids, and she had no idea when Paul was coming back, and she had to pack up all of their things and wrangle all of these tiny humans and arrange for their money and transport. That's absolutely terrifying!
Tegan 42:38
Yeah, and we have only a little documentation as to what was happening at home in Paul Revere's family. You know his wife, Rachel, was taking care of her own children, her step children, whom who she had been parenting for just a few years at that point. And we know that shortly after all of this goes down, she's able to arrange for a pass to get the family out to Watertown, which is where Paul Revere was then staying. And so there Boston is under siege. We mentioned earlier that people were thinking this might happen. What if Hancock gets trapped? Well, that does happen for hundreds of families. And so we really can only imagine what's going through Rachel's mind or the children's minds. And they ranged from little-little to teenagers, and so they have very different understandings of what might be going on here.
Sarah 43:27
Yeah, so that's very relevant to the Minuteman National Park, where the other part of the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place.
Tegan 43:33
So before we close, I'd like to ask, what's one thing you wish more people knew or understood about this period of history? I mean, I think that's what we're talking about right now, the day-to-day realities of the start of the war. But is there anything you'd like to add to that?
Speaker 1 43:46
I think, just to reiterate, I what I always want people to come away with is the fact that Paul Revere...I don't know how to say this without sounding like a jerk. Paul Revere wasn't special.
Tegan 44:00
I mean, I...one of the things that I like to say about Revere is that what makes him interesting is the ways he was both extraordinary and ordinary.
Sarah 44:07
Yes. And I don't mean Paul Revere specifically, but any of those people. I think when we put historical figures on a pedestal, and we think we could never be Paul Revere, we would - we can't imagine being in that situation, and therefore we can't imagine anyone being able to step up. But Paul Revere didn't imagine being in that situation either.
Tegan 44:30
Right.
Sarah 44:31
I mean, he knew that he was an alarm rider and that he was warning people things, but he certainly didn't think that he was going to become an American icon 250 years later.
Tegan 44:43
Right.
Sarah 44:43
He didn't think that his actions that night would have helped, y'know, begin a war. He was just doing his job in the same way that any of us are put in extreme situations. It could happen at any time. And I think the more we separate ourselves from those people back then, it's a poor reading of history, because that's just not the reality. They were ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. They're politicians and helpers. But also it kind of downgrades our role in our modern history that all of us have the potential to do something like that. We're all still living through history every single day.
Tegan 45:21
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, people talk about living through historical events and barely doing laundry at the same time, and how that's...that was happening in the eras that are now in the history textbooks as well. And I think that that's, you know, we've, we've touched on that in several different ways in this interview, but I think it's a really big part of the story.
Sarah 45:42
Yeah. I mean, William Monroe came home, you know. Anna got very lucky that he fought in the battle, but he was able to come home later that afternoon and, you know, put his house back in order.
Tegan 45:54
Yeah. We're going to wrap here. So thank you so much for joining me on Revere House Radio today, Sarah. We will have in the show notes links to a number of the upcoming events that we've talked about. But thank you for sharing this side of the story.
Sarah 46:08
Yeah, thank you so much for having me! It's one of my favorite things to talk about. It's such a saga.
Tegan 46:12
Absolutely. We just heard from Sarah McDonough, Programs Manager at Lexington Historical Society, or Lexington History Museums. Now, listeners, if you'll follow me, we'll step into the Paul Revere House for our next segment, Our Favorite Questions.
Derek 46:33
Welcome back to the segment where I'm going to talk to some of the interpreters here at the Paul Revere Museum about questions we get asked, and kind of what we do here, and all sorts of people that come in. And so who am I here today with?
Jay 46:46
I'm Jay. I'm an interpreter. I've been at the Paul Revere House now for over two years.
Derek 46:52
Over two years. Yeah, you are one of the only, or I think, the only, full time interpreter.
Jay 46:57
Yeah, I'm with Paul a lot.
Derek 46:58
You're with Paul lot, haha. So you're probably asked more questions than anybody on the staff.
Jay 47:04
Yeah, a lot of interaction. Yeah, definitely.
Derek 47:07
I'm sure! What are some of the most regular questions you do get asked?
Jay 47:12
Yeah. I think the most regular, at least lately, with so many tourists, usually coming from outside of New England or even outside the country, is just "Who is Paul Revere?"
Derek 47:20
Right? That's a very common one.
Jay 47:22
It is, and that's definitely a very big question. So I always try to not go over, like, 10 minutes of explaining it, but that's probably my number one question, at least, within the past few weeks, I would say.
Derek 47:33
You know, he's not really, I don't think, a well-known figure, besides the one thing that we all know he did, which is, you know, the Midnight Ride. He rode a horse and he yelled. Probably, maybe. And so it is really important, I think, to try and describe who he was as a human being, which can be kind of hard to do.
Jay 47:51
Yeah. And with a lot of interactions I have, they'll come in and say, either "Who is Paul Revere, I know of that one thing," or they'll go off...very loosely based off of the Longfellow poem. But even for people who don't know it, they have a very fuzzy image of a dude sitting on a horse.
Derek 48:08
* laughs * right.
Jay 48:09
But it's a really exciting question, because it really opens up both fact and fiction. And I usually start talking about that because I'm like, "This is the idea that you might have about Paul Revere." Of course, we're here to tell you a bit about what's accurate and what's more, of you know, that creativity that Longfellow had in his poems.
Derek 48:23
Right. Yeah, because the poem itself is not the most accurate thing in the world.
Jay 48:27
No, and that was definitely on purpose, but-
Derek 48:29
Yeah, for sure, it had a narrative kind of going on. Yeah, and I think the house itself is such an interesting way to kind of put yourself into Paul Revere and his family's head. Just because we don't know everything about who Revere was as a person. But to be, you know, in his bedroom or whatever, it really does help you kind of visualize him a little bit more.
Jay 48:50
Yeah, absolutely. I love talking about the fact of Paul Revere's involvement in the revolution, but I also like talking about "This is who he was during the revolution." But, you know, like you said, standing in his house, it's so much more than that too. Like, this is a more middling class lifestyle in Boston. But also with Paul Revere, there's so many other layers to him too, that I think opens up so many conversations. So with it being the most common question, I think I answer it a little bit differently every single time, because there's so much to talk about.
Derek 49:15
There's so much to talk about! Yeah, especially, like, if it's somebody from the UK -- is who I find asks that question the most -- I feel like I have to start from, like, scratch because they don't even know the poem, or, like, why he's famous. And they're walking in and it's like, "Okay, well, who is Paul Revere and why do we care?"
Jay 49:30
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And I usually try to do, like, the little rundown of, you know, the Midnight Ride. And this is what, if you have any sort of idea, this is the kind of fact of it. And then I'll get into, you know, how Longfellow comes into play years later. But I always think it's a really exciting question, because I think it opens up a whole, sort of, talking about the city of Boston in general, in the house and things like that. So that's always a fun question.
Derek 49:50
Yeah, I feel like he's a really interesting character, because he was a relatively normal guy, whereas a lot of the other sort of founding father figures were kind of exceptional characters. Not to like, you know, put any bad name on Paul Revere, I mean, he was a pretty cool guy. But he was definitely not a super rich guy or a super well-educated guy. He was somebody who really was a normal person and he really, really believed in what he was fighting for.
Jay 50:17
Yeah, and I think that's another thing too, with him being so "normal." I guess it makes it a lot more tangible when folks come in and like, "Oh, who's this figure that we hear so much about with his his name everywhere?" and things like that. I'm like...I think the house, and with that question, allows a lot people to make the 18th Century a lot more...easier to grasp and understand when you're using Revere as kind of a placeholder with that.
Derek 50:38
I think he's a very approachable figure, because the 17th- the 18th century is such a....I mean, for America, it is the foundation of everything. And so to have somebody who is sort of approachable is really important. Okay, so do you have any favorite questions? Anything that sticks out of your mind from anybody, a little kid -
Jay 50:57
Oh gosh.
Derek 50:57
-a really inquisitive older person who wants to know something?
Jay 51:01
I love when kids ask, you know, "What would I be doing if I was like living here in the 1700s?" You know, it's the usual questions of, you know, the bathroom and, you know, how are they keeping this place heated, little things like that. But I think kids are always blown away by how different things were back then. Of course, you know, you have kids doing things a lot differently, a lot younger, doing a lot more intense things that you know, you're not doing today. But also, at the same time, I love showing them like we have a doll on display and like little things like that, just to show that -- the same thing as talking with Revere! -- the kids are also able to grasp that things weren't too different in everyday life. And I think that is always really funny to see their faces, you know, try to grasp the fact that there were kids being kids in this house too.
Derek 51:42
Right!
Jay 51:42
So I always like when kids are asking that question. Because I'm like, "At the end of the day, they were young and they were playing too," and I think that makes it a little bit more exciting for kids who might not be, you know, too interested in really grasping the history that's going on around them.
Derek 51:54
Yes. Especially really young kids, I think, have a hard time. And it is like...I mean, there would have been kids all over this house pretty constantly. And like, they would have been doing things that kids today never would have but they would have been children.
Jay 52:05
Yeah, absolutely! Yeah, absolutely!
Derek 52:06
None the difference. So I think it is really important to try and kind of get that point across, especially, like you said, for some kids who maybe aren't so interested. That's something I feel like is really, really common for me. And so what are some things that you really wish that you could talk about more with people as they come through the museum?
Jay 52:22
Oh, that is a good question. I think I like talking a little bit more about Rachel's role in the house.
Derek 52:30
Definitely.
Jay 52:31
I think we do have one little part in the house where we do talk about her leaving during the occupation of Boston, very shortly after the Midnight Ride. But that always opens up the larger question, "What was Rachel's role in the house when Revere is doing all these things we know him for now?"
Derek 52:44
Right.
Jay 52:44
So I would love to have more opportunities to talk about Rachel's role. And Revere had a lot of older daughters as well. And even though we don't have as much resources as we'd probably want to, you know, dive into these questions, I think maybe just even opening up the conversation of what specifically Rachel's role was in the house, I think that would be really, really interesting. Because, you know, I always say in short, none of that would have happened if Rachel wasn't back at the Revere House controlling everything else.
Derek 53:10
Right! Yeah, because, like, it is Paul Revere's house, but like, really, I feel like it was Rachel's house. She's the one that was in charge of everything! She was dealing with all the children all day. It's very, very important to mention her. I always make sure I talk about Rachel in some capacity, and Sarah, too, his first wife. You know, we know next to nothing about her, but I think it's important to mention that, you know, they would have been the ones making sure that the house was gonna run smoothly while Paul Revere was out being a revolutionary all day long.
Jay 53:35
Yeah, absolutely! Yeah, I think there's a lot more to tap into that. And even though we don't have too much to work with I think just having those conversations is important.
Derek 53:42
I agree. Well, thank you so much for talking to me, Jay, and thanks for everybody listening. See you later.
Tegan 53:50
Thank you for tuning in to Revere House Radio. I'm your host, Tegan Kehoe, and I am the Research and Adult Program Director here at the Paul Revere House. Our production team for this season includes Derek Hunter, Mehitabel Glenhaber, Katie Stefani, and Adrienne Turnbull-Reilly. If you listening online, we encourage you to subscribe in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. Revere House Radio is a production of the Paul Revere Memorial Association, the nonprofit which operates the Paul Revere House Museum. You can find more information, subscribe to our mailing list or social media, or become a member on our website at www.paulreverehouse.org. Or come visit us in Boston!