We go on the road, for the first of our "Revolution 'Round the Corner" podcasts! Today we visit the Edmund Fowle House in Watertown. Built by cordwainer Edmund Fowle in 1772, it was still unfinished when the Massachusetts Provincial Congress leased it two years later to house the Provincial Council--with Boston occupied by British troops and the charter government suspended by General Gage--the elected government moved to Watertown. The Provincial Congress met in the Meeting House across the street, and the Council met upstairs at the Edmund Fowle House. Here on July 18, 1776 they read the Declaration from the window--its first public reading in Massachusetts--and the next day, July 19, they made the independent country's first international treaty, with the Mi'kmaq Nation, the first to recognize American independence.
We take a tour of the Edmund Fowle House with Marilynne Roach and Joyce Kelly from the Historical Society of Watertown, which has been restoring this remarkable place!