Back in Boston

L to R: Rabbit sculpture, Working teapot

Dave and I were in Boston many years ago, basically wandering about on our own. This time we had two days of guided tours. The first was generic while the second focused on Harvard and the Freedom Trail. We learned some new things and took quite a lot of pictures. We didn’t actually get into the park to photograph the Make Way for Ducklings statues in Boston Public Garden, but we had seen them previously. The statues are a homage to the children’s book written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey (published in 1941). The story focuses on a pair of mallards who raise their family on an island in the park’s lagoon.

When you visit Boston, you’re visiting one of the oldest cities in the United

Top L to R: Trinity Church, Faneuil Hall
Bottom L to R: Old North Church,
Boston Public Library

States. The peninsula on which the city originally sat was inhabited as early as 5000 BC. However, the history of Boston begins when it was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England, and originally called Trimountaine; it has played a role in many of the key events in the American Revolution. While I knew that the Puritans were a rather strict religious sect who came to the US for religious freedom, I didn’t know how intolerant they were of other branches of religion. So intolerant were they that they hung a Quaker woman for being a Quaker. Sounds similar to what is going on in the US today – violence toward people who are different. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston all supported the war for independence from Great Britain. As Boston continued to grow and prosper, it became the site of the first public park, Boston Common, 1634; the first public school, Boston Latin School, 1635; and the first subway system with the Tremont Street Subway, 1897. Faneuil Hall has been a marketplace and a meeting hall for more than 280 years. . It is the where the Sons of Liberty declared their opposition to Royal oppression; it also hosted the US's first Town Meeting in 1741 (or 1742 – 43, depending who you read).

Boston has always been fond of education, from the Boston Latin School through the current 35 colleges, universities, and community colleges in

Top L to R: Harvard Quad, Motley Fool building
Bottom L to R: Odd architecture, MIT

the immediate area. And of course, some of the most famous of these are Harvard, Radcliff (now a part of Harvard), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dave and I can now truthfully say that we’ve entered Harvard – actually Harvard Yard.  In 1636, the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established Harvard. Two years later it attained British North America's first known printing press. It took another year for the school to be named Harvard College after John Harvard, who left the school £779 and his scholar's library of some 400 volumes. While the school was originally set up to educate ministers by providing them a classical and religious education, this took a back seat in 1869 when Charles W. Eliot eliminated religion from the curriculum while focusing it on ‘the dignity and worth of human nature, the right and ability of each person to perceive truth, and the indwelling God in each person’. Harvard has expanded its offerings to include medicine, law, engineering, education, and a whole host of other courses.

Boston is literally riddled with very old cemeteries. Many of the founders

Headstone with Specter of Death

of the constitution are scattered through these graveyards. What interested me most was the art on the tombstones. While most of the current markers are decorated with angels, lambs, and crosses, these older stones are generally ornamented with the Specter of Death, ivy, or other non-religious art. Religious additions to headstones seemed to have arrived in the late 1800s to early 1900s. In any case it’s all very interesting how we commemorate our dead.

Since we do enjoy exploring historical places, I’m sure we’ll return to Boston at some point. However, on this trip we were all too quickly back on the boat and headed for NYC.

Massachusetts State House

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