Arlington Historical Society

Sun Jan 24 · 1pm

Bullet Strikes: First Day of the American Revolution

Arlington Historical Society · Arlington

Historian and archaeologist Joel Bohy presents the research behind Bullet Strikes From the First Day of the American Revolution, written with conflict archaeologist Douglas Scott. From the Elisha Jones House in Concord to the Jason Russell House, the two examined battle-damaged buildings and bullet-struck objects from April 19, 1775, using forensic methods tested by live fire, to show how brutal the fighting was on the British retreat.

$10

Wed Feb 10 · 1pm

Harvard in War & Exile

Arlington Historical Society · Arlington

Historian Michael Ruderman examines Harvard during the Revolution, when it was still a modest “College in a Yard”: college life in wartime, the ideological divide between students and their instructors, and the upheaval of the era. The surviving sites, among them the Old Burying Ground, President Samuel Langdon's house, where George Washington lived, and the dormitories his troops damaged, show how the war transformed the college.

$10

Wed Feb 24 · 1:00pm

Arlington's Living Landscape

by Matt Beres (speaker)

Arlington Historical Society · Jason Russell House · 7 Jason Street · Arlington · MA · Arlington

Matt Beres, the society's executive director, traces how Arlington's woodland has been remade over centuries — Indigenous land management, colonial farming, the clearing of forest and the secondary growth that followed — reading the changes through which tree species dominated at which point. The landscape that looks natural now is the residue of all of it.

$10; AHS members free

Tue Mar 30 · 7:30pm

The Road and the Land: Menotomy, April 19, 1775

Arlington Historical Society · Jason Russell House · 7 Jason Street · Arlington · MA · Arlington

On April 19, 1775, the opening day of the American Revolution, colonial provincial militia and ministerial British forces clashed in bloody, vicious combat through Menotomy. As hundreds of red-coated soldiers and humbly attired provincials surged down Battle Road—known today as Massachusetts Avenue—the relentless fighting left roughly 150 men dead or wounded along a three-mile stretch through town.

Tue Apr 27 · 7:30pm

Johnny Appleseed: Myth and Reality

Arlington Historical Society · Jason Russell House · 7 Jason Street · Arlington · MA · Arlington

For generations, folklore and children's tales have painted a gentle picture of Johnny Appleseed—a whimsical wanderer drifting barefoot across the American frontier, scattering apple seeds wherever his travels took him. Yet beneath this cozy folk tale lies a far more intriguing historical reality.

Thu May 27 · 7:30pm

Fessenden's Spice Mill: A Pioneer in Boston's Victorian Botanical Medicine Renown

Arlington Historical Society · Arlington Historical Society (Jason Russell House) · 7 Jason Street · Arlington · MA · Arlington

Arlington historian Richard A. Duffy gives an illustrated history of the Fessenden spice mill, a water-powered business on Arlington's Mill Brook in the mid-1800s, covering the products, processes and people of what the Society calls "this long-forgotten enterprise." Duffy brings examples of the medicinal and culinary botanicals involved, placing the mill within Boston's Victorian trade in botanical medicine.