As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday this Fourth of July, Boston is once again at the center of the story. Few places capture the history and energy quite like the Old North Church Historic Site. That’s where two lanterns were hung to signal that British troops were advancing by sea, warning colonial riders that the march to Lexington and Concord had begun.
Now, at the same church that signaled the start of the American Revolution, educators are helping visitors of all ages connect with that revolutionary feeling. This week on the Joy Beat, we’re celebrating those bringing history to life. Emily Spence, director of education at Old North Illuminated, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share more about the historical site and its significance. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: I’m embarrassed to say this as someone who’s a big history buff and lives in Lexington, I have not been to Old North Church in a while. So, for people who haven’t been, tell them about what this spot is like and what it feels like — if it has a special energy this year — as we approach this birthday.
Emily Spence: Yes, it is, I think, an exciting place to be any year, but especially this year. The church is 303 years old this year, so we really focus on trying to tell the many, many stories there about the Revolution and beyond the Revolution. I think people don’t realize what a rich wealth of history exists in the church and how, you know, it is the story of Paul Revere and the signal lanterns that made the place famous, but we really try to tell the story of the ordinary people who have been there at the church.
That’s no different this year. We’re really leaning into the stories of the people who were there and were not as famous as Revere, and how they were impacted by the Revolution.
Rath: I want to hear you talk more about that, because we tend to know all about Paul Revere and that single moment, but tell us more about the ordinary people going to this otherwise ordinary church 250 years ago.
Spence: Yes. We describe it as a congregation that was united in their faith, but divided in their politics. We believe that about one-third of the congregation was Loyalist, one-third of the congregation was Patriot, and one-third of the congregation fell somewhere in the middle. They were kind of representative of the political division that existed in Boston as a whole.
We imagine that probably made for a pretty tense church service for people, especially in those months leading up to the battles at Lexington and Concord. We’re thinking about that this year, too — what that might have been like, for neighbors sitting in church next to one another, next to people who felt very different from them.
We know that within the church community, there were some very outspoken patriots. Among them were Captain John Pulling Jr. and the sexton of the church, Robert Newman, who were actually the ones who hung the signal lanterns. They were committing treason for this cause. But then, we also had members of the church, like Owen Richards, a customs official who ended up being pretty brutally tarred and feathered.
So, this was a very politically divided congregation, and I think that sense of political division is something that people can relate to today. It felt like something important to highlight about this congregation, in hopes that visitors can come and read about these people in the past who experienced political division, see their resilience, and be inspired by that.
Rath: It’s fascinating, Emily — this is really something that I had never given an awful lot of thought to — but as you’re talking about the church, the head of the Anglican Church is the King of England. That’s really just… You couldn’t get more divided than that, for the common person.
Spence: Yes, exactly. This congregation has pretty close ties to England because it was a Church of England church. The minister who was there up until the battles at Lexington and Concord — Reverend Mather Byles — was a fairly outspoken Loyalist.
But you also had a lot of members of this church who worked in the maritime trades. After the Boston Tea Party, as punishment to the city of Boston, the port was closed. No goods were coming in and out of the city via the harbor. A lot of the people who went to Old North would have seen their businesses struggling, and so we wonder, too, [if there were] some who maybe started out as loyalists [who], by the time you get to 1775, were starting to shift more to the Patriot side.
I think that’s something, too, that we’re trying to encourage our guests to think about while they’re in this church, is that it’s not this dichotomy between Patriot and Loyalist, but rather, the spectrum that people are sliding along as we get closer and closer to — and then into — the Revolution.
Rath: Tell us about the July Fourth celebrations at Old North Church, because it’s a big one this year, but you do this every year. I’m especially curious about the bells — the change-ringing bells.
Spence: Yes! So, we have a set of eight change-ringing bells that were the first set in America. They were installed in the church in 1745, and teenage Paul Revere and his friends from the North End were the first bell-ringers at the church. They have this rich history, and we are so fortunate to have a group of volunteers — the MIT Guild of Bell Ringers — who regularly ring at the Old North. They come and ring on the Fourth of July as well, so they will be with us.
We usually have a full day of programming performances in the courtyard and performances inside the church, so it’s definitely a day filled with music, activities and tours. It’s a great day to visit Old North.
Rath: Old North is a fascinating historical site, but it’s not a museum. It’s a living site, right? Tell us about how the existing services of the church live side-by-side with this historic sense.
Spence: Yes, it is unique in that there are two organizations that share the space. I work for the historic nonprofit Old North Illuminated, which does the preservation and interpretation at Old North. But there is, as you mentioned, a congregation that worships at the church as well, who we share the space with, alongside.
I think that makes Old North so special. Pretty much for almost its entire 303 years, there has been a congregation worshipping. There were a couple of years during the Revolution, shortly after war broke out, in which the church was shuttered, but it was just about two-and-a-half years later, reopened. They’ve been worshipping there ever since.
The presence of the congregation there today, I think, is so wonderful to be able to share with guests. Anyone can come and go to services, but it also means that the history of the church is still being written, and so part of what we do is not just about telling the stories from the past, but thinking about, what is the congregation doing today? How can we be preserving the work that they do today so that we can be sharing that with the next generation? One hundred years from now, people will be looking back on what we do in 2025 as history.
We have the 250th anniversary of the signal lanterns, and then, this year, of course, is America’s 250th. For the bicentennial, the church hosted Gerald Ford in 1975 and then Queen Elizabeth in 1976. Those were such monumental moments in the church’s history, and we look back on those today with so much excitement and think about what that meant for the church’s history. So, I’m very conscious that what the church does for the 250th anniversary will be meaningful for people 50, 100 years from now.
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