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☔Rainy day with highs in the 50s. Sunset is at 8:06 p.m.

Today we have a bit of revolutionary war history very far from the well-worn path of Boston’s Freedom Trail. Want to read more about Massachusetts’ journey from a British colony to a commonwealth? Check out this story about Revolutionary-era printers, the tale of a damaged musket and what it says about the battle of Lexington, and what old receipts and broadsheets revealed about Black Revolutionary War soldiers.

Four Things to Know

1. A two-year investigation into Massachusetts’ history of institutions for people with mental, intellectual and developmental disabilities found thousands of former residents buried in unmarked graves across the state. That means people who in life were often mistreated are now in graveyards that are unmaintained and deteriorating, and family members looking for information about their loved ones face an opaque system with poor record keeping.

Most members of the committee responsible for the investigation are themselves disabled — and some spent time in Massachusetts institutions. Evelyn Mateo said she spent her childhood in the 1980s and ‘90s in foster care and state hospitals. “I was mistreated. And my rights were violated as a person,” she said. “I felt like I was forgotten, myself, in society.”

2. What’s next for people seeking housing through the Massachusetts shelter system? Following Gov. Maura Healey’s announcement that the state will close emergency shelters, hotels and motels due to a decline in demand — and just one day after a report from the state auditor’s office revealed overpayments for transportation and meals at shelters – housing advocates declared that the fight is not over.

Ana Sophia Amieva-Wong of the Chelsea-based advocacy group La Colaborativa agrees that hotels are not a permanent housing solution, but said she worries about what will happen now that the state is shutting them down. “We really see a need to invest also in upstream efforts to preserve tenancies, to help people who are struggling stay in their home so that they never have to face homelessness,” she told GBH’s Marilyn Schairer.

3. Our city’s new professional women’s soccer team, Boston Legacy Football Club, will start its first season outside city limits. Construction on the team’s home turf, White Stadium in Franklin Park, won’t be done in time for the season’s start in March of 2026, a team spokesperson told GBH’s Esteban Bustillos.

Instead, the team will spend its first year playing at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough and plans to move to Franklin Park for the 2027 season, the spokesperson said.

4. Vocational schools in Massachusetts are switching to a new lottery-based admission system. Last year about 20,000 students applied for a spot in a vocational high school. 42% of them were rejected because there wasn’t enough space, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“We want a future where every student has a chance to discover their strengths, follow their interests and build a meaningful path forward,” said Patrick Tutwiler, head of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

These towns west of Boston might be the real birthplace of the Revolution

When people think about revolutionary war history, Boston usually gets all the glory. But before the Battles of Lexington and Concord — before Paul Revere’s midnight ride, and before British troops left the city of Boston — came significant steps in central and western Massachusetts, local historians said.

After the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament passed measures taking control away from colonists. That included appointing new judges to rule on local disputes.

“And so to have the British Parliament now going to run everything, that’s unacceptable for the average citizen of Massachusetts at the time,” said Elaine Gardella, leader of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Worcester chapter. “This is going to put their farms, their livestock, their homes at risk because they have no control over who’s going to be hearing their legal cases.”

In Great Barrington, about 1,500 colonists gathered in 1774 to lock a cadre of crown-appointed judges out of a courthouse. The judges all ended up resigning.

Two weeks later in Springfield, 3,000 people followed. And news of those uprisings soon reached colonists in Worcester, too.

According to a diary written by the father of a militiaman, more than 4,600 people came to a Worcester courthouse to keep the new judges out. They left their weapons behind so they would not be seen as an unruly mob and forced the new Parliament-appointed judges — all 25 of them — to go to a local tavern instead. In the tavern, the judges were told to walk back to the courthouse and recant their loyalty to the British crown.

“We have to stop at where each militia company is located and repeat that we apologize for the wrong we’ve done and we are going to resign as judges and we’ll never do it again,” Worcester historian Bob Stacy said.

By the time the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, the British had lost control of most of what is now Massachusetts.

“Western and Central Massachusetts was the founding of the American Revolution,” Gardella said. “You can and should be bitter that the stories in your town have not been told.”

Read Sam Turken’s full reporting here. 

For the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, GBH News is looking for local lesser-known stories about that moment in history. Do you have a story about Massachusetts’ role in the American Revolution that you’d like us to cover? Reply to this email or send a message to our reporters at daily@wgbh.org. We are already following up on some tips for future stories.