By Joseph A. Curtatone

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This holiday weekend, Somerville will mark the 240th anniversary of Paul Revere and William Dawes riding under cover of night to warn their fellow patriots of the British troops marching from Boston to Concord and Lexington. Somerville will celebrate its part in our nation’s history on Monday, April 20 at Foss Park, where we’ll have Colonial games and songs, refreshments, and of course a visit from Paul Revere on horseback as he makes his historic ride through Somerville on the way to Lexington.

At 10 p.m. on April 18, 1775, Revere left Boston and was rowed over the Charles River to Charlestown, passing the British frigate Somerset just before British troops received orders to stop all boats, according to the 1896 book Somerville’s History by Charles Darwin Eliot. Once on horseback in Charlestown, Revere first road up Washington Street to Crescent Street at the current Somerville-Charlestown line, where he saw two British officers also on horseback, Darwin wrote. Revere raced back to the Charlestown Neck and then up Broadway. One of the officers chased after him and tried to cut him off, but fell into a clay pit, enabling Revere’s escape over Winter Hill, up Main Street and into Medford Square, from which he eventually made his way through Arlington to Lexington. Today, a tiny park at the corner of Broadway and Main Street is home to a stone marker commemorating Revere’s Ride.

That was just the beginning of Somerville’s role in the Revolutionary War. When British troops marched to Concord that same night, they did so through Somerville. Lt. Col. Smith of the Tenth British led 800 men across Back Bay in boats from the foot of Boston Common to Lechmere Point. From there, they waded thigh deep and crossed to Somerville, coming upon dry land again at Washington Street near Prospect Street, marched through Union Square to Bow Street, Somerville Avenue and Elm Street on the way to Concord.

During the British retreat from Lexington and Concord back to Boston, they turned from Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge down Beech Street to Elm Street, where minutemen hiding in a grove at the corner fired upon the troops. Continuing their retreat while under fire, heading down Elm and Somerville Avenue back into Union Square, they came to the foot of Prospect Hill, where American patriots fired upon them—a scene depicted in the mural inside the former Union Square Post Office. British troops eventually flanked and surprised those Americans on Prospect Hill, and while many fled, 65-year-old James Miller stood firing at his post, who reputedly told his sons, “I am too old to run but not to fight.” Miller died in the battle, and a marker on Washington Street in front of the site of the former Cota Funeral Home stands in his memory.

.Two months later came the Battle of Bunker Hill, and Eliot wrote that “Somerville beheld vivid scenes of war that day.” Troops marched to the front in Charlestown over Washington Street to Broadway as Charlestown residents fled away from the burning town. American artillery bombarded the British fleet from Cobble Hill, while British frigates hit east Somerville. When the Americans eventually retreated from Charlestown after only great cost to the British army, they “planted themselves on Prospect and Winter Hills, expecting and ready for a renewal of the battle.”

How important were Prospect Hill and Winter Hill to the Revolutionary War? Words were later defined by them in Webster’s. When Noah Webster published the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language, he provided context to the word ‘intrenchment’ by using those fortifications as an example, citing a letter written by George Washington in 1775: “On our side, we have thrown up intrenchments on Winter and Prospect Hill.”

Those fortifications on Winter and Prospect Hill were critical strongholds during the Siege of Boston. Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston, published in 1873, said that the fort on Winter Hill “to have been the most extensive, and the intrechments more numerous than any of the other positions of the American army.” On Prospect Hill stood the Citadel, “the Americans’ main fortress … within cannon shot” of the British troops that occupied Bunker Hill after that battle, according 1876’s The Diary of the Revolution.

After George Washington took command of the Continental Army in July 1775, the army was organized into three divisions, with the left wing composed of the brigades at Prospect and Winter Hills and holding the line from the Mystic River to Prospect Hill. Additional fortifications stood on Ten Hills Farm, Central Hill, Cobble Hill and Ploughed Hill. Eliot wrote, “Each must have reminded [British General Thomas] Gage of the similar work he had captured at so great a sacrifice on June 17 and brought to his mind the question asked in England, viz, ‘If it cost a thousand men to take Bunker Hill, how many will it cost to capture all the hills in America.’”

These are just a few snippets of Somerville’s role in the Revolutionary War founding of our nation. Where we walk today is where the history of our nation began, where men from towns around Massachusetts Bay banded together to become minutemen. As our city grows and changes, we will always strive to protect and cherish our history, too.