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This statue is of Captain John Parker, leader of the Lexington, Massachusetts, Minute Men, who stood facing east, the direction the British were advancing from, on the night of April 19, 1775. He was reputed to have given this speech to his fellow countrymen standing guard with him:

Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.

Word of those deaths reached the patriots in Concord, and by the time the British troops got there, they met heavy resistance from the American militiamen. At North Bridge, the British began firing, and Major Buttrick of Concord gave the order to return fire. For the first time, Americans fired a volley into the British ranks. The British troops, meeting more resistance than they had planned on in this routine operation, were outnumbered by four to one. They began a hasty retreat back down the road from Concord to Lexington and on back to Boston. Their casualties were heavy as more and more Americans came to the road, hiding behind trees and fences, to fire upon them. The Americans showed the British that day that they were indeed prepared to fight for the rights that the British had denied them. The American Revolutionary War had begun.

This large, beautiful home was under the ownership of several famous people through the years. In the early years of this house, it was the home of Samuel Whitney, muster master for the Concord Minute Men. Many generations later the Alcott family bought it, and Bronson Alcott (an excellent carpenter) added wings onto the ends of the house. Louisa May and her three sisters spent two years of their childhood here, and it is this house that she refers to in her book Little Women.

Sometime later, Nathaniel Hawthorne bought the house and added the turret at the top, which became his writing studio, complete with a desk built into the wall at the right height for him to work standing up. He had trouble with his back. He and his family lived in the house for twenty years.

A long time later, Margaret Sidney, author of the "Five Little Peppers" books and her husband and daughter bought the house. The daughter never married, and when she died she willed it to be preserved for everyone to visit. This house is the only National Historic Landmark that was lived in by three literary families.

Guests in this home, of both the Alcotts and the Hawthornes, would have been Henry David Thoreau and also Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family. The name The Wayside was given the house by Hawthorne, who always named the houses he lived in. The house sits at the eastern edge of the village of Concord, beside the road leading to Lexington.

When it was nearly evening I visited Walden Pond for a quiet walk around a part of the lake. This pond sits just a mile outside Concord, Massachusetts, and for two years from 1845 to 1847 it was the home of Henry David Thoreau. He built a very small cabin on the north shore of the lake, and archeological digging has revealed the hearth stone that would have been at the end of the cabin opposite the door. The second picture shows the hearthstone (the flat stone) and other commemorative upright stones that mark where the walls of the cabin would have been. Thoreau wrote a book about his time here, Walden; or Life in the Woods. Walden Pond covers 64 acres; to my thinking, that is hardly a pond. While I sat on a rock wall and looked out over the lake for a very long time, watching the light of day fade, four swimmers started out from the near shore headed quietly and determinedly across the lake. I pulled my jacket a little tighter around me, watching them until they had swum so far out I couldn't see them anymore.

The day I went to Sturbridge Village was so cold and drizzly that I couldn't imagine paying eighteen dollars to freeze myself walking outside through 200 acres of grounds to see it. For sure, I was disappointed to miss it, because I had been looking forward to it. But since I knew you could get your information on this early 1800's village from the links on this report, I decided to show you the herb garden, which I could see without going into the village. Back in that time--and long before--medicines were created from plants. Instead of hoping to find the plants they needed growing wild in nature, people cultivated gardens of the several herbs that they would need in case of illness or injury. Only the roots of some plants were used, and they might be dried and ground into a powder that could be mixed with water to create a poultice to be rubbed on the patient's skin. Or roots could be boiled into a tea. Leaves were also used, and these likewise would be prepared different ways to serve a medicinal purpose. The blossoms of other plants were used as medicine.

Herb gardens were also important for providing plants that give flavor to food in cooking. The plants would be grown and harvested in the summer, dried, and preserved for use all through the winter.

In the middle of the busy city of Boston, Massachusetts, is a park set aside since colonial times. Part of the green area is called Boston Common, and on that part animals used to graze in colonial times and British soldiers paraded during the Revolutionary War. It's now a place to stroll across grass and through gardens and enjoy the beauty and the peace and quiet. The other part of the park area is the Public Gardens, also beautiful, in which is the lake with the swan-shaped boats. Not far from that lake is this statue of Mrs. Mallard and her eight little ducklings from the children's book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. If memory serves me correctly, the ducklings' names are Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack, and Quack. Mrs. Mallard is also called Mother Duck.

Children from a pre-school were swarming all around and over the ducks when I arrived in the park. I waited for a time when no children were around so I could get a picture that would show you each duck. While I waited for groups to clear out, I walked across the street just outside the park to see the Bull and Finch Pub that is shown at the beginning of the television show "Cheers." Then, glancing back at the statue from across the street, I saw that all the children had left. I ran back into the park and grabbed this shot just as the little boy in the picture was approaching. Whew! Got my picture!

The Old State House, built in 1713, is the oldest public building in Boston. It was where the government of the Colony of Massachusetts met during the years before the Revolutionary War. In 1770, in the street in front of the building, the Boston Massacre took place. A mob of protesting colonists had assembled there, and British soldiers began firing on the mob. Five Americans died that night, further heating up sentiment among Americans to throw off the rein of England.

From the small balcony you see at the front of the building the Declaration of Independence was read in 1776 to a crowd assembled on the street below.

Today the building looks quite small, compared to the surrounding skyscrapers of downtown Boston, but imagine how tall and impressive it would have looked in the 1700's when the only buildings near it were one- and two-story shops and houses. I had followed a wide red line painted on the sidewalk all the way from Boston Common to get to this building, a walk of many, many city blocks. The walk is called the Freedom Trail, and it goes from Boston Common all the way through the city and the North End, across a bridge over the Charles River, and up to Bunker Hill, a distance of two and a half miles. The next reports are from the Freedom Trail, as well.

The first picture is of Paul Revere's house in the North End (as that section of Boston is called). It is the oldest surviving structure in Boston. Maybe you can tell from the picture that the windows are leaded. It was Paul Revere's home, with his wife and children, from 1770 to 1800. While the family lived in this house Mr. Revere, a silversmith, engraved his famous scene of the Boston Massacre, in which he took part. Also while living in this house he participated in the Boston Tea Party and took his famous ride to Lexington and Concord.

In the second picture you see a statue of Paul Revere on his horse the night of April 18-19, 1775. By the time I'd walked the red line to this spot on the Freedom Trail it was afternoon, and the light wasn't right for a good quality picture. I wanted you to see what I saw, anyway. If you can make it out, the steeple of the Old North Church is visible just under Paul Revere's outstretched arm.

This is Old North Church in Boston, which became a famous icon of the Revolutionary War. From the highest window in the steeple there were two lanterns displayed by the church sexton, Robert Newman, on the night of April 18, 1775. Paul Revere, waiting in the darkness on the shore of the Charles River across from Boston, saw the lanterns and spurred off on his horse toward Lexington and Concord to warn the Minute Men that the British were coming by sea. That meant that the British soldiers headquartered in Boston were crossing the Charles River in boats and would be marching up that same road in just a few hours. (One lantern would have meant that the British would march out of Boston to the west and then north to the Lexington-Concord road.)

Old North Church was originally named Christ Church in the City of Boston. It was built in 1723 and is Boston's oldest church building. Inside are four angels that adorn the choir loft. The pamphlet about the church tells that the angels were "liberated by a privateer in 1746." The bells that hang in the steeple are the oldest maiden peal of bells that are rung in North America on Sunday mornings. Tea from the Boston Tea Party is on display in the museum of the church. The church's first bell ringer was a fifteen-year-old boy named Paul Revere.

A tour guide told a story that when the British found out how the signal was given that night, they were so angry that they decreed that every church tower in New England should be torn down.

In Charlestown near the end of the Freedom Trail, the walking tour through historic Boston and across the Charles River, I came to this great old sailing ship, the frigate U.S.S. Constitution. It's the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world, having been launched in 1797. It is still on active duty as it begins its third century of service. Navy sailors, dressed in 1812 uniforms, provide guided tours every day. The U.S.S. Constitution was undefeated in battles against England's ships in the War of 1812. During those battles cannonballs were seen to bounce off its heavy oak sides; hence, it came to be called "Old Ironsides."

Unwilling to walk back the nearly three miles I'd walked on the Freedom Trail, I caught a water taxi (small ferry) at the next pier over from Old Ironsides and had a relaxing ride across the Inner Harbor and over to the New England Aquarium pier, just below downtown Boston where I'd started my walk hours before, in the morning.

By the time I'd walked another mile from the Aquarium Pier to this pier, in addition to all the other miles I'd walked on the Freedom Trail, I was too tired to take part in a tour of this ship. It was also too late in the day, as the last tour group was already on board. On the night of December 16, 1773, Boston patriots climbed aboard three English ships that sat in the harbor loaded with tea for the colonists. The colonists had refused to pay the tax on the tea, so it had remained on board. As a protest, the patriots jumped onto the ships and dumped the tea into the harbor.

This brig, the Beaver II, is a working replica of one of the three ships that were in the harbor that night. As part of the tour, people are encouraged to dump the bales of "tea" overboard, just as the patriots had done over two hundred years ago. The bales are tethered to the boat so that they can be recovered in time for the next tour group to dump them. There is much shouting accompanying the dumping of the tea, and the tour looked like a lot of fun.

This was a difficult trip for me to make, to visit this museum. But once inside this beautiful building, designed by I. M. Pei, I was able to mostly enjoy the memories of JFK's time in office. Just after the entrance to the exhibits, guests to the museum walk through a big room lined with pictures of JFK as a little boy and as a young man. There was on display a note he had written to his father when he was nine years old, defending his need for an increase in his allowance to buy something he wanted badly. I've forgotten exactly what the item was, but his arguments were very logical and presented the position of how this would make him a more conscientious person if he owned this desired thing.

Further into the museum we walked through a hallway depicting Main Street, USA, in which there were storefronts and display windows as they would have looked in 1960 when JFK was campaigning for president. In a clothing store I saw an A-line dress just like one I'd worn back then. In a hardware store window I saw a clock exactly like one I once owned. Imagine finding something of one's own in a museum! Could I be that old already?

When I got to the room containing memos and pictures from the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, a flood of half-forgotten memories washed over me. I was a sophomore at Nebraska Wesleyan University then, and that crisis was so threatening for a few days that I called home to Wray, Colorado, to see if I should leave school and come home. It was my father who answered the phone, and in a gruff voice he commanded, "No, don't come home. There's not going to be any war. Now you just get busy with your studies and don't think about it any more."

He didn't know any more than I did how this was going to turn out (and from the memos I read in that room at the museum neither did Kennedy or any of his advisors). But the crisis passed, and the Cold War was once more pushed to the back of my mind. I found out later that my dad was as frightened of the possibility of war that night as I was, and the gruffness was his way of hiding that fact from me.

In another room containing scripts of some of the speeches Kennedy delivered during his term in office, I read this excerpt from his remarks at the groundbreaking at the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, Massachusetts. Kennedy said:

"This day, a day devoted to the memory of Robert Frost, offers an opportunity for reflection, an opportunity to be prized, I might add, by politicians no less than poets. For Robert Frost was one of the greatest figures of our time in America. Today this college and this country honor a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit, not to our ideology but to our insight, not to our self-esteem but to our self-comprehension. In honoring Robert Frost we pay homage to the deepest sources of our national strength."

The sad part of the library was simply a darkened hallway displaying television monitors replaying over and over the various news reports of the events in Dallas that terrible day, November 22, 1963, and that unforgettable report delivered by Walter Cronkite as he choked back his tears and reported that President Kennedy was dead.

Grateful to pass on through that hallway, I enjoyed an exhibit of maritime paintings and sculptures and model ships that had been given Kennedy throughout his career. Just outside the last door, on the grass next to the harbor, is his favorite sailboat, the one his parents gave him for his fifteenth birthday--the "Victura." The sea was a very important part of JFK's life, from his early childhood on, and it provided him his most courageous moment, when he escaped a sinking PT boat in World War II, as well as his happiest moments sailing with his brothers and his wife and children. This room and the little sailboat outside would have been his favorite part of the JFK Library and Museum, I think.

Today we look down on this rock which is protected by a portico, an open-sided shelter with a roof over it. The shadows in the picture are cast by the railing and some people standing on the viewing platform above. Thousands of years before the Native Americans and the Pilgrims came to this part of the land, the rock was brought here by a glacier. Although this rock sits in the middle of a beach today, it was at one time at the edge of the stream that flowed down through the site where Plymouth Colony would be built. That stream flowed into the bay where Mayflower had anchored. People out on the Mayflower had to be lowered into a smaller rowboat to come to shore, and it being December when they arrived at this location, it was too cold to risk getting shoes and clothing wet to hop out of the rowboat when it reached the shallow water of the beach. It was much handier to row the boat up into the stream a short ways to tie up beside this nice big rock on which people could step as they were getting out of the boat. Dry shoes, dry clothes, much happier people. The rock was used so routinely that no one thought to write home about it. There are no references to it in any of the Pilgrims' records, but how many of us write about our own doorstep, anyway?

Over the years the stream's course was diverted for various reasons, but the rock stayed put. Today the stream flows into the bay several hundred yards east of here. The rock was finally recognized for the icon that it was--a symbol of the beginning of European settlement in this part of the land. The date 1620 was chiseled into it. When this site was dedicated as a historical site, Rose Briggs, a speaker at the ceremony had this to say:

"It is the fact that they landed--and remained--that matters, not where they landed. Yet it is no bad thing for a nation to be founded on a rock."

This statue in Plymouth, Massachusetts, shows Chief Massasoit looking out toward the harbor where the Pilgrims landed in the Mayflower. He is holding a peace pipe, indicative of the relationship he and his people had with the Pilgrims. Massasoit was sachem (chief) of the Wampanoags, a group of people who had suffered from a devastating epidemic from 1616 to 1618. This put them in a weakened political position with other Native groups, so Massasoit made a treaty with the Pilgrims in 1621 to be allies. Thus each group helped strengthen and protect the other. Although in his pose in the statue he is at ease and welcoming, I also see a suggestion of resignation in it, as if way down deep he knows this is the beginning of the end for his people.

This ship is a re-creation of what today's experts believe was a typical English merchant vessel of 1620. It is most likely what the original Mayflower looked like; hence, it is named Mayflower II.

The Mayflower brought the Pilgrims from England to this country in the fall of 1620. The east coast of America had been visited by the Spanish and English for almost one hundred years when the Pilgrims landed here, so the country was somewhat known. It's true the Pilgrims were headed for Virginia, but all of the east coast had been claimed for England and its Virgin Queen, Elizabeth, so the entire coastal region was named Virginia. The Pilgrims hadn't missed their destination, as I once had been taught in school. They were exactly where they had been headed when they left England.

When you go on board the Mayflower II today you are greeted by people in costume, acting out the roles of specific crew on the ship. Each actor has studied about the person he or she is representing, and even the accent in the speech is authentic! Tourists can ask questions of the crew and get answers as if they are asking in 1620. There are also modern-day staff to answer questions, so visitors can find out what it was like living in Holland for 12 years and then crossing the Atlantic Ocean in cold, stormy weather. I know that they were all braver than I could ever be.

It would seem likely that everyone had to live on board the ship for awhile after landing on Cape Cod, because it would have been difficult to build houses in the winter weather. The ship and crew didn't return to England until the next spring. What must it have felt like to the Pilgrims standing on shore then to see that ship sail out of sight on its return voyage?

This re-creation of the original Plymouth Colony sits on a hillside overlooking Plymouth Bay a few miles east of the site of the original colony. The original colony is now a part of the modern town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the dirt streets that the Pilgrims plowed out are now covered with cobblestone or pavement and lined with houses. The original colony had a hill at the top of the town, on which the Pilgrims built a fort to defend themselves against pirates and the Spanish. Also, the original colony had a stream running down beside it, which provided fresh water for the Pilgrims. This "pretend" version of Plymouth Colony, which is called Plimoth Plantation, also has a stream running down beside it and a hill at the top of the street on which is built a fort.

A sign at the entrance to Plimoth Plantation says, "Welcome to the 17th Century," and so I step in and walk down this dusty road. I stop in at houses, stand under thatched roofs, and talk to the Pilgrims who work here today, role-playing the parts of actual people who lived here in 1627, a few years after the colony was established. There is the delicious smell of chicken simmering in a pot over a hearth fire in one cottage. I can hear a little goat bleating in a pen behind another cottage. Next door there are two Pilgrim women gossiping and laughing as their knitting needles click in time to their chatter. Everywhere I listen the language sounds like Shakespeare. I truly have stepped back in time.

Behind one house two Pilgrim men are sawing a log, the men standing at each end of a two-handled saw. When I approach, along with a few other guests of the colony this day, the men stop to have a drink of water and cool off while they talk to us. The older man tells us he is from London and is not a Pilgrim. He has come to the new world as a settler, but he says he may adopt the religion. It is inviting to him, he says. A young man, not much more than a boy, comes into the yard to pick up the wood, which the other two men are cutting for him. All three tell us their names and where they are from in England. One is English, but he was born of Pilgrim parents when they were living in Holland to escape the persecution inflicted on them by the English. He is happy to live in this new land.

I wander back out to the main street and walk over to an older guest who is seated on a bench, leaning on his cane, under the shade of a tree. He and I are remarking how wonderful this all is when a Pilgrim woman walks up to us and begins talking in her accent, which is different again from the three accents we have heard from the men. She comes from a different part of England, and her speech is markedly different. She answers our questions about her life and what role she plays in the decision-making of the colony. She can only listen to her husband talk of the decisions the men have to make; she wouldn't want to have any say in what those decisions would be. It wouldn't be anything that she would do, to recommend a course of action to the men, she says. Just as she is being asked her name by yet another guest who has joined in our conversation, another Pilgrim woman walks up to wish her a good day. As she greets her friend she replies to the guest, "Christine Eaton."

I blurt out, "Samuel's mom? I've heard of Samuel Eaton!"

Both Pilgrim women turn to each other, laughing, and exclaim, "What's the lad been up to now, that you've heard of him?"

I tell them that I have learned of his work in the fields and the blisters he earned from his first day of mowing the grain fields, and they nod their heads and say, "Yes, he is learning to work hard. All the children have to work here. There is much to be done and not enough hands to do it all. It's good training for the children to work, for they learn to be strong."

I'm grinning to myself because I recognized this character from a book I read to my first graders every year. The book is based on the life of an actual child who lived in Plymouth, just as this actress is pretending to be a real mother who lived in the colony.

I walk up the dusty street to the fort at the top of the hill, sun shining warm on my head on this glorious autumn day, and I catch just a hint of the smell of the sea. I turn around at the top of the hill to look out over the peaceful blue water of Plymouth Bay, and I think it would have been nice to have been a Pilgrim.

When Chief Massasoit made the treaty in 1621 with the Pilgrims, his counselor Hobbamock came to Plymouth Colony to be an ambassador to the English. Hobbamock and his family were the only known Wampanoags to have lived alongside the colonists in the 1620's. We read about him in a sentence from either a letter or a journal entry of Emmanuel Altham's in 1623:

Only without our pales [stockade] dwells one Hobomok, his wives and his household (above ten persons).

Today at Plimoth Plantation guests can visit Hobbamock's Homesite and see the ancient indigenous culture at work: how the people grew corn, cooked their food, cut grass (or bark from trees) to cover their houses, carved canoes out of tree trunks, and wove strands of fiber into bags to carry their belongings and store their grains. I was told by the young woman cooking over the fire that they would never eat an animal that ate other animals.

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, I found the house where Frederick Douglass first lived when he escaped from slavery . The sign in front of the house said, "Nathan and Mary Johnson's house. They sheltered escaped slaves in this underground railroad "station." It was here in September, 1838 that Frederick (Bailey) Douglass found freedom, a new name, and with his wife Anna, his first home.

Frederick Douglass had had two other last names (names belonging to his owners in slavery) before coming here, and when the Johnsons were helpful to him and his wife, he wanted to honor them by taking their last name. They were pleased, but they said the other Johnsons who originally had the name by birth or marriage might not take too kindly to so many others carrying the name. (Prior to this, many freed slaves that the Johnsons had helped had taken the name, as well.) Mr. Johnson was at that time reading a Sir Walter Scott novel and glanced down at the name Douglas, a character in the book. He suggested that name for Frederick and his wife. But he suggested they add another "s" at the end of the name to make it different. Hence, the famous name Frederick Douglass came to be.

Douglass was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Bedford, serving in many capacities. One time he was invited to speak to the congregation, and he spoke very eloquently. People enjoyed how dramatic and persuasive and even funny he was when speaking in front of an audience. He developed this talent and used it to carry out a lifetime of speaking for the cause of abolition of slavery and later for the women's suffrage movement.