American Revolution

Poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians) presents an original poetry reading created for Revolutionary Legacies. Hartley will share the commissioned poem inspired by Museum objects and discuss her broader work, offering Indigenous perspectives on memory, belonging, and the Revolution’s unfinished promises. Supported in part by Mass Humanities.

Visit the Concord Museum on the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Museum admission will be free, and the grounds of the Museum will be buzzing with a minutemen encampment with the Billerica Colonial Minutemen and Acton Minutemen, and family activities.   Free Museum admission is supported by Highland Street Foundation, and family activities are supported by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

Historian Rick Bell examines the American Revolution as a global turning point in The American Revolution and the Fate of the World. This forum explores how events in North America reshaped international politics, empires, and ideas about liberty, revealing the Revolution’s far-reaching and lasting consequences.

Visit the historic Wright Tavern and enjoy a tour, family-friendly outdoor games, music, beer, specialty drinks, food, and more.

On Saturday May 10 from  11am to 3pm your $10 discounted admission to the Wright Tavern Museum comes with the opportunity to play a historical miniatures game of the British retreat from Concord on April 19, 1775. We will be using Muskets and Tomahawks rules which enable players to command British Regulars or minutemen. Children 8 and up accompanied by an adult are encouraged to participate.  Prizes will be awarded for good play. Can you do better than history?

The Umbrella Arts Center in historic Concord Center will commemorate the semiquincentennial of the American Revolution and “the shot heard round the world” with an ambitious outdoor/indoor public and gallery art exhibition, Weaving an Address, curated by artist Marla McLeod. For the first time, Weaving an Address combines The Umbrella’s popular Art Ramble public art installation, on view April 15 through October 7 at Brister’s Hill in nearby Walden Woods, with an indoor exhibition on view April 14 through June 14 in The Umbrella’s Allie Kussin Gallery.

Exhibition: April 14 - June 14, 2025 Opening Reception  April 14, 6PM

Join renowned author and historian Robert A. Gross for an engaging presentation, “The Minutemen and Their World Revisited.” Nearly 50 years after the publication of his groundbreaking work, Prof.Gross revisits his original interpretation. Does it still hold true? What new discoveries and perspectives have emerged in the past half-century to reshape our understanding?

Join The Friends of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery for a very special presentation by Concord historian Beth van Duzer.  "Rediscovering Our Revolutionary War Veterans" will introduce you to several brave Patriots whose names Beth has recently discovered in her research and who are interred at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Saturday, March 15 (Reservation deadline: March 7)

$ 30.00 includes buffet breakfast. Advance Reservations are needed by Friday, March 7th, 2025. Due to limited seating at the Inn, we cannot host walk-ins that morning.

Are you hosting family and friends for the 250th? Would you like to impress them with what you know about Concord's history? If you want to update the stories you know and learn new ones, you will want to attend this talk. Public historian Beth van Duzer has updated and expanded some well-known stories using primary sources, such as John Jack's, enslaved to a Concord shoemaker Benjamin Barron, able to purchase his freedom, and buried in Concord's Old Hill Burial Ground.

Paul Revere’s legacy has been both elevated and obscured by his now famous ride 250 years ago on April 18, 1775. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s dramatic poem replaced what actually happened with a much beloved romantic version. Discover the truth behind the legendary ride, the poem, and the man behind it.