As our nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its birth next year, I flew to Boston, the cradle of liberty, earlier this month with a friend to see the historic sites and learn more about the Revolutionary War that sparked creation of the United States.
Our theme for St. Helens Club lecture topics in Chehalis during the 2025-26 year is “Celebrating 250 Years of Independence.” So when Edna Fund, a former Lewis County commissioner and Centralia City Council member, suggested a trip to Boston close to her granddaughter’s birthday in November, I didn’t hesitate. I’ve never been to Boston or anywhere on the East Coast, so it was about time.
I’m so glad we did. The gorgeous fall colors of the changing leaves in red, gold, yellow, orange and green served as a backdrop for our five-day dive into the past. I used credit card points to book a room at the Battery Wharf Hotel on the waterfront in the North End, the perfect place to launch our tour of historic sites.
We purchased GoCity passes that included entrance to nearly 50 attractions, although some, like the Swan Boats, operate only in the summer, and the federal government shutdown left us unable to board the USS Constitution or tour the JFK Presidential Library and Museum.
But we found plenty to see and do, starting with a Sunday service at the historic Park Street Church, a congregation founded in 1809 — that’s only five years after the Corps of Discovery, led by Captain William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, left St. Louis to explore the Louisiana Territory and the Pacific Northwest. The church was built on the site of the Old Granary building, which is where sails for the USS Constitution were sewn.
We hopped onto a Cityview hop-on/hop-off tour bus and passed all the historic sites — Faneuil Hall, the Massachusetts State House, the Old State House, the USS Constitution Museum, the Paul Revere House, North Church, Fenway Park, TD Garden, the site of the Boston Tea Party, the Old South Meeting House, and so many other places. Our pass included a harbor tour, which proved wonderful on a sunny but cool November afternoon under blue skies.
As we strolled along the waterfront, returning to our hotel for a rest before dinner, I spotted a couple sitting on steps nibbling cannoli or other goodies from Mike’s Pastries. The young woman looked just like Edna’s granddaughter, but what was the likelihood of running into the one person we knew in Boston? Just then she looked up and exclaimed, “Grandma?”
Sure enough, we ran into Amanda McGee, who is studying at the New England College of Optometry. We later met her for dinner at an Italian restaurant on Hanover Street (although we inadvertently entered the place next door and sat down, saying we had reservations). I doubt anyone can go wrong eating at any of the Italian restaurants on Hanover.
That night, to set the mood for our explorations, I bought and downloaded the movie “Johnny Tremain,” based on Esther Forbes’ 1943 Newbury-award-winning historical novel of the same name. When I read that novel in ninth grade, it introduced me to the characters who spawned the revolution that led to our nation’s independence — Samuel Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and so many others. A few years ago, preparing for a St. Helens Club lecture on books, I once again read “Johnny Tremain” to see if it was truly as good as I thought it was.
It is. Perhaps Esther Forbes, who won a Pulitzer for her 1942 nonfiction book, “Paul Revere and the World He Lived In,” ignited my interest in history with her historical novel. When we moved to Washington from Colorado, my mother checked out another Newberry-award-winning book from the library and read it to us — the 1940 novel “Young Mac of Fort Vancouver” by Mary Jane Carr.
Both historical fiction books testify to the truth of Rudyard Kipling’s quote, which I often share: “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
But I digress. Edna and I watched the 1957 “Johnny Tremain” movie on a tablet perched on a chair between our hotel beds. That set us up for another day of exploring Boston with trips to the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, where we tossed fake crates of tea into the harbor from a replica ship. A couple from Chicago we met two days earlier at Joe’s Waterfront happened to be on the same tour and snapped a photo of us dumping the crates. Small world.
The living history tour guides teaching about the historic tea party gave us names of characters who played a role in the 1773 rebellion against taxation without representation. I received the card for Joshua Wyeth, a teenager who kept the secret of his involvement in the tea party for half a century, when he spoke about it to a reporter and listed the names of others who were there. Most people kept their involvement a secret until they died, when they listed it in their obituaries. (I do wish someone who was at the Mellen Street Bridge on Nov. 11, 1919, would have given us the names of those involved in lynching Wesley Everest as nobody was ever brought to justice.)
Although we couldn’t board the world’s oldest commissioned warship still floating, launched in 1797, we learned about the three-masted wooden frigate while touring the USS Constitution Museum, which is operated by a private nonprofit. The museum offered wonderful places to sit and watch construction of the ship and tales of the battle with the British in the War of 1812, when the ship earned its Old Ironsides moniker. From the museum we walked to the 245-year-old Warren Tavern, established in 1780, an alehouse frequented by Paul Revere and our nation’s first president, George Washington. Oh, if those walls could talk!
After visiting Amanda’s apartment, we saw the New England College of Optometry, which is inside five Gilded Age homes merged together. We then rode to the top of the Prudential building to take in a 360-degree view of Boston from a high point in the city and admired the floral displays created for the Downton Abbey Fleurs des Villes.
After lunch in Eataly, we stopped at the Paul Revere House, a wooden building constructed in 1680 that is being reinforced. It’s hard to imagine the home was nearly a century old when Paul Revere moved into it. I never realized he had fathered eight children with his first wife, Sarah Orne, who died in 1773 at 37, and, after marrying five months later, another eight children with his second wife, Rachel Walker Revere. She died in 1813 at 67, and he was 83 when he died in 1818. So in 1773, Revere had buried his first wife in May, married again in October, and helped start a rebellion with the Boston Tea Pary on Dec. 16. Busy year for the well-known silversmith made famous after his midnight ride to Lexington and Concord on April 18, 1775.
The next morning, we visited Faneuil Hall, a marketplace and meeting house for early colonists established in 1742. We watched delivery of a 50-foot Norway spruce from northern Michigan that will be set up outside Quincy Market and decorated with a mile of lights and more than 900 ornaments. We wandered through the market, then rode an Uber to the Bell-in-Hand, the oldest continuously operating tavern in the United States, established in 1795, where printers, politicians, students, and sailors gathered for ale.
We split our third lobster roll there and ranked them in order with the tastiest at Saltie Girl, the second-best at Legal Sea Foods, and the third at Bell-in-Hand. We split fish and chips at the Boston Sail Loft, which is also known for its good lobster roll, and baked haddock at Warren Tavern. After a quick stop at Ye Olde Union Oyster House to say we’d been there, we hopped an Uber back to the hotel, retrieved our luggage, and took another Uber to Logan International Airport.
As we waited to board the plane, we started a list of all the things we need to see on our next visit. Next year promises to be a gigantic party in Boston, heart of the fight for independence. But we can celebrate our hard-won freedom anytime, anywhere, as we are the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
