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Paul Revere Memorial Association

The Paul Revere Memorial Association actively preserves and interprets two of Boston's oldest homes. We provide our increasingly diverse audience with remarkable educational experiences based on historical issues and social history themes relevant to our site, our neighborhood, and Boston from the 17th through the early 20th century. Today the Association is an American Association of Museums accredited museum with a full range of operations and programs. Our properties are key sites along Boston's Freedom Trail, private cooperative sites in the Boston National Historical Park, and members of the Boston House Museum Alliance. We fulfill our mission by offering educational programs for all ages - walking tours, concerts, living history presentations, lectures, school programs and much, much more. We maintain an important collection of Revere-made objects, household artifacts, items commemorating the midnight ride, and items related to Revere's life and work.

https://www.paulreverehouse.org/landingpages/today.html

Agitate! Agitate! Collect!: Artifacts of Women's Dissent

Tue, Sep 19, 2017

In 1917, New York State women won the right to vote, an event that would help bring on passage of a federal woman’s suffrage amendment in 1920. As the United States prepares to celebrate this centennial, Ashley Hopkins-Benton, Senior Historian and Curator of Social History New York State Museum in Albany, NY, will show how her museum has been exploring artifacts of the fight for women’s rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while simultaneously collecting materials from the Women’s March, and other 2017 protests.

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The History of Protest in Boston Neighborhoods

Tue, Sep 12, 2017

New York Streets, the West End, Villa Victoria, Tent City, Stop the Highway: “Progress” vs. Community Control in Boston’s Neighborhoods Many of the national trends, public and governmental policies, and institutional practices that have shaped Boston’s physical geographies have roots in structural racism – a network of factors that perpetuate racial inequality and result in intergenerational wealth gaps, and highly segregated neighborhoods. Restrictive community covenants, redlining, urban renewal, divestment, and the placement of highways and mass transit have influenced where Bostonians live, and largely determine access to Boston’s amenities. However, Bostonians are resilient – communities’ acts of network building, activism, and resistance to imposed development in favor of neighborhood control have also shaped the geography of the City in a significant way. Giordana Mecagni, Head of Special Collections and University Archivist at Northeastern University will illustrate the effect of community protest on Boston’s geography, as seen through examples collected by Boston’s many archival collections, including Northeastern University’s Archives and Special Collections.

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Revolutionary Resistance: Paul Revere and Isaiah Thomas

Tue, Sep 5, 2017

**Collecting Dissent: Museum Collections on the History of Protest from the Revolutionary Era to the Present** The largest collection of prints and works on paper by Paul Revere is held at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Several of these prints helped fuel the American Revolution with their imagery of dissent. Much of the Revere collection was assembled in the early twentieth century by AAS librarian and president Clarence S. Brigham (1877-1963), whose Paul Revere’s Engravings (1954; 1969) remains the most significant book on the subject. Nan Wolverton, Director of Fellowships and Director of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture will look at the early collecting practices of Isaiah Thomas, patriot printer and friend of Revere, whose personal library of books, pamphlets, and newspapers became the foundation of the American Antiquarian Society’s archive when Thomas established it in 1812. Thomas’ efforts to collect a complete printed record of the past included cheap broadsides, many of which focus on Revolutionary Era dissent and will be considered alongside Revere’s works on paper.

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From Hills to Islands: Ancient Adaptations to the Inundation of Boston

Tue, Sep 27, 2016

From Hills to Islands: Ancient Adaptations to the Inundation of Boston. Some 6,000 years ago, Boston was well inland from the ocean, but as rising sea levels poured in tidal waters around the hills east of Boston, ancient Native Americans lost no time adapting to and enjoying the change. Spectacle Island preserved a wonderful record of several thousand years of clam bakes, fishing and other activities, excavated as part of the Big Dig project. While Martin Dudek, Senior Project Manager of Commonwealth Heritage Group, will focus on Native American sites on Spectacle Island, he will also include a brief overview of other exciting archaeological sites worked on for the Big Dig.

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Knee Deep in Paul Revere’s Privy: Archaeology at the Paul Revere House Lot

Tue, Sep 20, 2016

Archaeological investigations conducted by The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. at the Paul Revere House site from 2011-2013 resulted in the recovery of nearly 10,000 artifacts and a range of landscape and infrastructural features, including drains, cisterns, privies, and sewer pipes, dating from the late 17th to the late 19th centuries. (Photo credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=351475)

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Dig Boston: How, When, and Why Archaeology Happens in the Hub

Tue, Sep 13, 2016

While Boston’s history began many thousands of years ago, archeological investigations are a relatively recent development. Decades of professional and avocational archaeological work have revealed a complex narrative of Boston’s deep history that can only be known through archaeological investigation. City Archaeologist **Joseph M. Bagley** discusses the ins and outs of conducting an archaeological dig in Boston through the lens of recent excavations at Old North Church, the Seaport Shipwreck, and Malcolm X’s house.

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Archaeological Excavations at a Brothel and Boarding House

Tue, Sep 6, 2016

###### Boston Inside Out: What Archaeological Excavations at a Brothel and Boarding House Reveal About Life in the 19th-century North End Archaeological excavations into the North End’s 19th-century past show that the neighborhood was no teeming Irish “slum,” but a thriving place with diverse residents who struggled to overcome the challenges of urban life in America. Archaeologist Alexander D. Keim will focus on two mid-19th century sites in Boston’s North End: 27-29 Endicott Street, which served as a brothel at that time, and the Paul Revere House, specifically a privy used when the building served as a boarding-house for sailors. The materials recovered from these sites were used by a colorful cast of characters ranging from doctors and merchants to servants and sex-workers.

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The Lowest of the Mob

Wed, Sep 23, 2015

In the third and last part of this series, we explore the actions of sailors and slaves during the **Stamp Act Crisis**. In the late fall of 1765, colonists wearing “soot, sailors habits and slouch hats” harassed Crown officials, tore down houses of prominent merchants, and violently hounded those suspected of involvement with the “damned stampt paper.” Descriptions of these disorderly, drunken protestors contrasted with accounts of symbolic protest scenes, such as funerals for “Liberty.” **Molly Fitzgerald Perry**, Lecturer at Christopher Newport University, will analyze the descriptions of Jack Tar sailors alongside those of free and enslaved people of color, highlighting questions of these individuals as both social actors and political icons. Tracing the spread of news and heated debates between residents of New England port towns and plantation ports across the Lower South and West Indies, Ms. Perry will recreate the central role played by mariners and African Americans during this moment of imperial disruption. (Image: [Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Greenwood_-_Sea_Captains_Carousing_in_Surinam.jpg ""), John Greenwood)

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The Stamp Act Crisis

Wed, Sep 16, 2015

The Stamp Act Crisis--What difference did it make? What were the long-term consequences of the crisis? This second talk in the 2015 series is important for what happened: A broad mobilization of Bostonians demolished property and forced the resignation of Crown officials; the British government reacted by rescinding the Stamp Act. **Professor Robert J. Allison** of Suffolk University, will discuss the overall significance of the Stamp Act Crisis, how it affected all classes of people in different ways, and how it has been viewed in succeeding centuries. (Photo: [Wikimedia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Glorious_News_-_London_Gazette_%28Stamp_Act_repeal_notice%29_1766-03-18.jpg ""))

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The Stamp Act: Troubling their Neighbors

Wed, Sep 9, 2015

Boston Mobilizes against the **Stamp Act**. Just after the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the Parliament of Great Britain passed a series of policies intended to reshape the workings of its American empire. Colonial Boston already had a history of antagonistic dealings with imperial officials, and the townspeople reacted violently in response to the Stamp Act of 1765. **Paul Revere** belonged to a waterfront community that mobilized a strong coalition against the Stamp Act. Although royal officials attempted to divide Bostonians along class lines, the town stood unified. **Professor Benjamin L. Carp** will illuminate Boston’s waterfront community, describe the actions of its radical coalition, and explain why Revere and his compatriots were so successful. (Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Burning_of_Stamp_Act_cph.3b53085.jpg ""))

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