Boston is a city of stories. The regal names of squares and streets, the faded bronze plaques nestled within brick facades, the rivers decussating its low hills; Boston is a composite of many, many stories. Once I began to notice the whispered stories etched into the cobblestones beneath my wayward feet, I could not help but find that my whole world was suffused with like whisperings. There is the story of my life — the narrative of my perception and those who vie for control of it — and there is the rich, boundless story of my world. And one, invariably, speaks to the other.
The story I seek to share has an acrid scent; it smells of gunpowder, of beacon fires, of men perspiring from fear and of thousands more perspiring in the exultant heat of a rebellious September sun. I first glimpsed it as I crossed the Mystic River in 1774, spying 13 British boats glide silently through its dark waters. I saw soldiers disembark on the shore closest to Tufts using lanterns to guide their noiseless passage through the pre-dawn stillness of Somerville.
The story continues in Nathan Tufts Park, where the Powder House was not merely a historical relic. Its conical silhouette, ordinarily encircled by placid trees and dog-walking Somervillians, is instead encircled by British soldiers. They are under the order of Thomas Gage, Massachusetts colonial governor and commander-in-chief of the British forces in the U.S., to appropriate the last dredges of gunpowder potentially left available for revolutionary forces. They wait in bated anticipation for the sun to break the horizon so that they may extinguish their torches and steal away with 250 half-barrels of gunpowder before full daylight.
In Cambridge, the silence is broken. Under the false impression that British soldiers had fired on civilians in their morning raid, thousands of “reputable substantial farmers” converge on the city, demanding first the security of their countrymen and then the resignation of Loyalist officials installed into unelected positions by the Intolerable Acts.
But the story is heard well beyond the cries and shouts and hushed whispers of a people “risen in one body.” It can be heard in the muffled bells ringing outside the First Continental Congress for the apparent, but fabricated, violence in Boston. It can be heard in the startled countryside, where women were reported to be lamenting their husbands and sons for their freedom — an effort that resulted in thousands of militiamen preparing to march on Boston. It can be read in the defeated signature of the last Royal Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver after he, along with other notable political appointees, resigned under public pressure, and the despondent anxiety of Abigail Adams for her family and country during this period that rendered “the day tedious, and the night unpleasant.”
However, there was no war in 1774. The Powder Alarm struck new fear in the hearts of Loyalists and intensified revolutionary aspirations in the rural farmers of New England, but it resulted in no violence. And, over 250 years later, its story is faded, muted by the overwhelming noise of the modern political world.
Yet, I believe I see and hear it today all the same. I see partisans, cloaked in the repose of an unburdened populace, absconding with the resources necessary to equip our communities “to fight for the common liberties of the body of people,” while aristocrats flee and lock themselves in their homes, avoiding the unflinching, regal gaze of their righteous subjects. And I hope I see beacon fires alight in the distance and messengers galloping at full tilt; hear the indignation of a people aroused and the level demand for political change.
No gunpowder lies within the circular walls of the Somerville Powder House, but they do hold a story of resistance, justice and an invincible collective. We dare not let that be taken from our memory.
