How a revolt in Somerville helped spark the American Revolution

you are listening to radio Boston now if I asked you the anniversary of the American Revolution what would you say much of America might say July 4th 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence here in New England people jumped to April 19th 1775 and the shot her round the world but did you know about September 1st 1774 in Somerville that is when a sneak preview of the Revolution happened it was called the powder alarm and the historic event turns 250 this weekend with events across Somerville and Cambridge to Market local historian JL Bell knows why the powder alarm is so important he founded and maintains the Revolutionary history website Boston 1775 here in studio 2 JL welcome thank you very much D so I 1774 right not the year we talk about and Somerville as a seat a seat of the Revolutionary War exactly Somerville didn't even exist then it was part of Charlestown mostly uh and yet it had a very important part of Charlestown which was the powderhouse the gunpowder Storehouse that belonged to the province of Massachusetts and where the militia stored its gunpowder to be safe and in on September 1st 1774 the royal governor of Massachusetts Thomas Gage who was a British Army General decided that to be safe he should take that gunpowder away from Somerville and move it into the army camp in Boston or else uh some rural troublemakers might make bad use of the gunpowder so early uh Before Dawn on September 1st he had soldiers 270 soldiers go across the uh the harbor up the Mystic River and take out all the gunpowder he also uh some of those soldiers went to Cambridge and took away two small canons that belong to the Cambridge militia and so when the people of uh Charlestown Cambridge and middle sex County woke up uh they discovered that they had lost some of their self-defense system and on top of everything else that had been happening in September 7 in in the summer of 1774 that was a real wakeup call all right so couple of things first when people hear powderhouse some are going to say wait like powderhouse Square exactly right that Tower which is it a was built originally as a windmill and then uh people realized in the mid 1700s a they needed uh a better defense infrastructure because they're going to be fighting the French some more and B A Big Stone Tower on top of a hill away from houses that was a good place to store gunpowder because if it blew up then the explosion would just Blast Off The Wooden roof the walls would stay intact and no houses nearby would be damaged and stores of gunpowder did sometimes blow up oh yes there was a very bad incident in Connecticut that decade yeah now the other thing is some listeners will say this Thomas Gage name I feel like like I know that name and many may have heard of it either here on our show or elsewhere in discussions of the Boston Tea Party which was historically adjacent to what we're talking about that's right the the tea party was in December 1773 in response to the Tea Party of that year and in response to the second Boston Tea Party of March 1774 the British government Parliament instituted new laws which uh are known as the coercive Acts or later by historians were called The Intolerable acts and oh the the most important one was the Boston Port bill which closed the port of Boston sort of damaging the economy the other very important one came arrived in August 1774 it's called the Massachusetts Government Act so 250 years ago this this month this month suddenly Parliament was rewriting the constitution of Massachusetts and saying that there would be more top-down Authority uh people appointed in uh positions that had previously been elected towns were no longer able to have meetings whenever they wanted to they had to get permission from the governor to have more than one town meeting a year and that was what really caused rural Massachusetts to say okay this is not just a matter of tea this is not just a matter of tariffs for things that are coming into the ports this is uh our self-government being affected and uh limited and keep in mind if I am correct about this Massachusetts had the first constitution Massachusetts uh when I say Constitution it wasn't yet called the Constitution it's called the charter got it uh the Royal government of uh Britain or actually England had given Massachusetts Bay a charter when the uh Puritans arrived and then they revised that in 16 in the uh 1690s so that there was this constitutional order where the governor would be appointed by London but uh there the all the legislature would be elected locally okay and when we see this change in the Intolerable Acts in 1774 which were largely a response to the Boston Tea Party and who knew that there was a sequel right to the Boston Tea Party a small backup tea party a backup tea party right um this this strict restriction in governance which happened 250 years ago this month this was a really big deal self-determination of course you know we had had taxation without representation so the response was oh you'll represent even less that's right uh that you won't be able to uh elect the councilor you won't even be able to have Town meetings and that was you if you were small rural community out in the center of Massachusetts you weren't really worried about you know what the Tariff on glass was uh you were worried about have being able to have a town meeting to you know elect a new hog Reeve if the animals were running loose yeah so here is where we are we're talking with JL Bell who's a local historian and author he uh developed the website keeps it now Boston 1775 and we're talking about this moment 250 years ago on September 1st when there was an event in what was then Charlestown now Somerville and parts of Cambridge um at powderhouse Square now where the British took gunpowder and then went into Cambridge and took some artillery because they were afraid of what colonists might do and if they were afraid of a rumpus they did the wrong thing to keep one from happening exactly because on the September 2nd which is uh the real powder alarm in the sense of the alarm part uh militia men started to stream into Cambridge in hundreds and then thousands because they had heard about the removal of the powder they had heard about the removal of the Canon they had heard other things they had heard fake news they had heard there were by the time the story reached central Massachusetts there were stories of the royal Navy bombarding Boston from the harbor uh so they had heard something one of the Cities was on fire and and once they realized that you know there was not smoke rising from Boston in the distance they left their guns behind at the Watertown Cambridge border but they came into Cambridge and they massed on the common uh there are witnesses saying there were 5,000 people there demanding that the uh men who had Royal appointments especially appointments under the Massachusetts Government Act under this new Charter would uh all resign would apologize for any actions they had taken under the new Charter uh and so this all all took place on Cambridge common and the um the demands went to the uh the Upper House of the of the legislature called the council and they went all the way up to the lieutenant governor who happened to live in Cambridge and was trying to keep the peace uh but could only do that at the end of the day by signing a resignation under protest so I want to pull this piece out a little bit because this is interesting and the house he lived in is what we now know as L house is that correct uh or Elmwood yes it is the house that the president of Harvard University uh gets to use as uh his or her residence and um uh space for hosting so in 1774 the British lieutenant governor lives there and basically basically what happens is a huge mob of people come to his yard and say you got two choices you can either resign or we'll kill you and your family basically uh certainly him uh but he had a family there he had young daughters uh he had uh servants enslave servants he had a fairly large estate and yes he had thousands of people massed around his uh house banging on his windows demanding that he sign this resignation and from his point of view he had gone into Boston in the morning talked to general Gage told general Gage look yes there is this is Thomas Gage this is Thomas Gage the governor told him this yes there is this big Uprising this big Mass uh gathering in Cambridge but it's not violent yet if you send out soldiers it will be violent so don't so don't do that then he came back out assured the leaders of the crowd at that point that uh he would he had done what he had promised to do to keep things peaceful then he went home and the crowd decided that wasn't good enough and they chose new leaders and they marched the mile and a half out to his house and demanded that he also sign that resignation so this has been a thing since we you know we we talked with historians over the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in this that is a way I had not conceived of how the action on the ground happened JL Bell which is that often what happened to move uh the British Representatives hundreds or thousands of people would carry themselves and sometimes sticks or clubs or torches or whatever and they would desend on an individual and say you got two you've got two options here right option one do the thing we say or option two there are a whole lot of us in your yard with sticks and clubs and torches yes there's a moment on the Cambridge common where the leaders ask the crowd do we signal our abhorrence of mob violence and you know 4,000 men some of them carrying sticks said oh yeah we're totally against mob violence it was unanimous vote and yet they were using their numbers to intimidate and there was no violence that day but oh it came awfully close Okay so I mean just fascinating right fascinating how is it that we don't know so much about September 1st 1774 I mean I get it across the nation maybe right but we know April 19th 1775 here so why don't we know September 1st 1774 we don't know September 1st we don't know the powder alarm because nobody died because it wasn't the start of a war because there was uh there was no not as much danger we don't even know who was really involved with the uh Battle of Lexington and Conquer we have lists of men who came out because they had to be paid but we don't know who came out for the powder alarm because they weren't paid and really when they look back at them they thought oh okay we we overreacted to this rumor from Boston and uh and was overshadowed by what came later so there's actually very little folk memory of the event either and very little required documentation because of things like death certificates and and financial wreck or I mean isn't it fascinating that that's how history Works yes yes and I mean it was uh a case where the leaders of the Patriot movement were pleased that it happened but also tried to Tamp down to make sure it didn't go too far so there was uh a very a sort of Taming of the event in the Press amazing all right so uh there are events in Su rille and Cambridge this weekend any help you can give us on how people can find out what's happening where uh sure uh Thea Somerville museum is uh the main organizer of an event in Somerville on Sunday morning at the powder House Square uh there will be a reenactment of the removal of the powder there will be tours of the tower there will be a craft fair uh then on a Monday afternoon along Brattle Street at the Longfellow House Washington's headquarters National Historic Site and at history Cambridge uh which are two of the houses that actually were involved in the event in 174 there will be uh more talks and a walking tour very cool JL Bell is an historian local historian and author he founded and maintains the Revolutionary history website Boston 1775 thanks for being here to tell us a little bit about September 1st 1774 thank you very much I really enjoyed it