Quick History Stops: Cambridge, MA | Part 3
Back in August 2023, I visited Cambridge, MA. This is my final post about that adventure. My main stops were Longfellow House Washington Headquarters, Cooper-Frost-Austin House, and Harvard Art Museums. I also visited several quick history stops during my adventure. Part 1 covered the houses of Brattle Street, Part 2 focused on houses of worship in Cambridge, and Part 3 highlights memorials and buildings at Cambridge Common. At sixteen acres in size, this city park provides a paved walking path, monuments to a multitude of historical events, and the Alexander W. Kemp Playground completed in 2009.
An abandoned cannon from the American Revolutionary War sits on a red brick paver patio across from Prince Hall Memorial. This set of five granite plaques placed in a semicircle honors the founder of the first Masonic Lodge for Black Americans. Prince Hall led the free Black community in Boston through his support for education and abolition. Beginning in 1775, Hall and fifteen other Black men joined the Masons but did not receive their own club, African Lodge #459, until 1784. This lodge began a new branch of the Masons, which is called Prince Hall Masonry to this day.
Plaques of varying sizes and materials surround the common, many of which commemorate events and people from the Revolutionary. In 1976 during the Bicentennial, the Italian-American Historical Society of Cambridge put up a gravestone-like plaque honoring the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In 1985, the Polish American Veterans and Artillery Cambridge Post put up a plaque for Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski, a fellow Polish American who led the Continental Army at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania, founded the cavalry, and stayed at Valley Forge before dying in the Battle of Savannah in 1779 at age thirty-nine. Nearby is an older plaque from 1934 for another Polish military man, Brigadier General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who survived the war and is honored by the smallest property in the National Park System.
A pair of metal engravings create a tactile experience for understanding the map and scenery of the Old Charlestown-Watertown Path. In 1636, Puritan minister Rev. Thomas Hooker traveled on this road with his congregation after a disagreement with another minister, John Cotton. Hooker believed all adult White men should be allowed to vote regardless of their religious affiliation, which was about as radical an idea about suffrage as existed at the time. Hooker later founded Connecticut Colony, where his constituents wrote the first democratic constitution. Also on the common is a green copper plaque affixed in an engraved stone marking the area where General Henry Knox, for whom Fort Knox in Kentucky is named, kicked off Evacuation Day by joining General George Washington with artillery from Fort Ticonderoga in New York.
A gravestone style plaque denotes a tree under which Washington supposedly first took command of the American Army on July 3, 1775. I am not a tree expert, but the tree did not look old enough to have seen the event. Additional research on the History Cambridge website showed that the original elm tree died in 1923, or about a hundred years before I read the plaque. The website also pointed out that the location of Washington taking command was not recorded.
No New England common is complete without a massive monument to the Civil War. While this statue is extra big, on account of the size of Cambridge, the Union Soldier standing at ease at the top of the many layers is no different than the many other soldiers found across the country. Additionally, this version has a bust of Abraham Lincoln. The city put up this monument in 1870 and used a design created by twin brothers Darius and Cyrus Cobb. (As an added bonus, these excellent twin names appear to be based on emperors who appear in the Bible and were noted for being unusually nice to their subjects so long as they stayed in line.)
Across the street from the common, Harvard-Epworth Church looms large with its distinctive bell tower. This congregation began in 1792 as the first Methodist society in the city. In 1893, Amos Porter Cutting of Worcester, MA constructed the Richardson Romanesque style building with its 110-foot tower out of red granite and sandstone. The current iteration of the congregation came in 1941 after a merger between the Harvard Street and Epworth Street congregations. Back on the common, a statue honors John Henry Bridge, colloquially called “The Puritan”. His descendent General Samuel James Bridge gifted the monument to the city in 1872 to highlight his fifth-great-grandfather’s contribution to the city as a public school founder, politician, and church leader.
Across the street from Cambridge Common, First Church in Cambridge houses the congregation first formed by Thomas Hooker in 1633. Notable events at the church included the trial of Anne Hutchinson in 1637, a visit from George Washington in 1775, and a schism over Arminianism in the early 19th century. The current building was constructed in 1872 and is the sixth iteration of the church. Back on the Common, a monument from 1997 commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Irish Famine, where about 1 million Irish people died from starvation in a crisis exacerbated by the British government. The monument is currently used as a place to provide clothing for unhoused people in Cambridge. My last stop was a statue of Charles Sumner relaxing in a chair. Known as a lifelong politician and friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sumner was caned nearly to death on the Senate floor for supporting the abolition of slavery, yet survived to see the end of slavery and the American Civil War.
