On the morning of June 17, 1775, smoke curled above the hills of Charlestown. Red-coated British regulars stood in ranks across the Charles River, on what is now Boston’s North End shoreline, staring across the water at colonial entrenchments dug hastily into Breed’s Hill.
For weeks, tensions had smoldered after the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord. Now, nearly 2,500 British soldiers were crossing the Charles in longboats, their red uniforms bright against the surf.
The Americans, led by Colonel William Prescott and an ad hoc force of New England farmers and fishermen, had fortified high ground in the hopes of preempting a British occupation of the hills. They stood their ground through two waves of assault, holding their fire until they could see “the whites of their eyes.” But on the third charge, ammunition depleted, the colonials retreated.
It was a British victory, but at a staggering cost. More than 1,000 British troops were killed or wounded, a loss that shook British confidence and emboldened the American cause. The Battle of Bunker Hill became a galvanizing moment—a defeat that felt like a declaration.
And now, 250 years later, Gloucester is preparing to bring it back to life in what is a preview of “America 250,” the national celebration of the country’s Independence next year.
Organizers selected the spot for its topography, which resembles colonial Charlestown. Today’s Charlestown, part of Boston, certainly doesn’t. Gloucester’s Cressy Beach will serve as the launching point for British troops, while Half Moon Beach will represent the shores of Charlestown, where the original Revolutionary militias stood fast.
More than 7,000 visitors are expected to line our rocky coast as British and colonial forces engage in mock combat. The event will include two days of encampments, military drills, public talks, and historical interpretations.
But more than spectacle, the reenactment is personal.
“Cape Ann was there in 1775,” says Gloucester resident Ringo Tarr, whose ancestor, 15-year-old Jabez Tarr, stood in defense at Bunker Hill and made it home alive. “It wasn’t just
Boston. My family, and so many other families from Gloucester, Rockport, Essex, and Manchester, sent men to fight. Some never came back.”
Indeed, records confirm that companies from Gloucester and what was then Chebacco Parish (now Essex) marched to Charlestown. Jesse Story Jr., a teenager from Essex, was killed in action. Others, like Nehemiah Choate, Benjamin Burnham, Aaron Perkins, Francis Burnham, and James Andrews, carried their scars home.
“We want people to see this not just as a battle, but as a community story,” says Michael DeKoster, executive director of Maritime Gloucester, a partner in the event. Local schooners including the Lewis H. Story, the Ardelle, and the Isabella will participate in the dramatic water landing that recreates the Brit’s amphibious assault—a first for any Bunker Hill reenactment.
Curated by Alyssa Rao, the exhibit traces the years leading up to 1775 through letters, documents, and family records. Visitors will learn of the Choates and the Burnhams—local families whose sons fought and died at Bunker Hill. They’ll also meet David Choate, who traded his whiskey rations for math and writing lessons while serving. And they’ll discover the ideological lineage stretching back to Reverend John Wise, jailed in 1687 for tax resistance and often cited as a precursor to Jeffersonian thought.
“We wanted to show how war doesn’t begin on the battlefield,” says Easton. “It begins in sermons, in tavern conversations, in decisions about what kind of future a community wants.”
Easton said the men of Cape Ann who went to Boston to fight knew each other well, and considered themselves connected, whether they were from Essex or Ipswich or Gloucester or Rockport. It’s a revealing portrait of a tight-knit community, shown in their letters and journals.
The exhibit is structured as a narrative timeline and includes interpretive signage, journals, and period objects including a musket powder horn, period shotgun casings, and the canon ball that killed young 16-year-old Jesse Story, Jr. at Bunker Hill, which is accompanied by a graphic journal entry from Francis Burnham, Story’s 19-year-old neighbor who stood next to his friend as he was killed. Burnham carried the small, heavy cannon ball home to Essex and presented it to Story’s family, perhaps as a relic of Story’s heroism and sacrifice.
Burnham’s telling of it in his journal is heartbreaking.
“Story and I were side by side, when a ball struck his head, his brains flew into my face and he fell back into the ditch,” he wrote.
The cannon ball stayed in a hand-inscribed wood box for more than a hundred years. That box, with the original cannon ball and Burnham’s journal, are the centerpiece of The Seeds of War, pulling a human lens onto national history that will be playing out up the road in Gloucester, with its sweeping visuals of the reenactment.
“We know thousands of visitors will be coming to Cape Ann for the Bunker Hill reenactment,” said KD Montgomery, the museum’s executive director. “We’re hoping they’ll take the time to stop in Essex to expand the whole experience.”
In Gloucester, the Cape Ann Museum continues its popular walking tour series with Patriots and Privateers of Revolutionary Middle Street, scheduled for June 14. The 90-minute tour explores historic homes and churches, highlighting the lives of citizens who resisted British rule and, in some cases, took to the sea as privateers.
Meanwhile, Cape Ann Plein Air—the region’s nationally recognized painting festival—will feature an America250 component this October. Titled Beauty & Birthplace: Celebrating Settings of Independence, the initiative will invite the top juried plein air artists to capture historic sites like Stage Fort Park, the 1679 Congregational Church in Essex, Rockport’s “Sandy Bay,” and Gloucester’s storied Middle Street.
Finally, the Manchester Historical Museum will debut Manchester, The Revolution, and The War at Sea this July to highlight the maritime
contributions of a town whose harbor once sent out privateers to harass British shipping.
And surely there will be more Revolutionary experiences around Cape Ann. Together, they form a portrait of Cape Ann as both witness and participant in the birth of a nation. After all, Gloucester’s Stage Fort Park may not be Charlestown, but it sure is a good stand in. And as the country edges closer to marking America250 next year, the story of American independence and Cape Ann’s connection to it is very real, very personal, and very much worth being remembered, relived, and reinterpreted right now.
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