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The Shot Heard Round the World - Ep 273
2.1k Plays3 months ago
This week we talk about our recent visit to Minute Man National Historical Park. We also discuss a recent archaeological find at that park which is likely related to the first shots fired in the American Revolution. And finally, we talk all the famous authors that also happened to live and write in that same area!
Links
- Musket balls that started the American Revolution sat buried. Until now.
- Minute Man National Historical Park
- The Concord Writers
- Orchard House
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
[email protected]
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
ArchPodNet
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Show
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Exploring Minuteman National Historical Park
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 273. On today's show, we talk about Minuteman National Historical Park, the American Revolution, and all the famous authors of Concord, Massachusetts. Let's dig a little deeper, but make sure you go on the right day and make sure it's open.
Tribute to Richie Cruz
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to the show everyone. Hello. All right. So we're going to start real quick with just a little bit of sad news. We've mentioned before our friend, Richie Cruz, who he was on probably one of, um not my first project in the gray basin, not yours either, but one of my, like the second company, I think maybe third company I worked for. I think you'd kind of done some other things by then, but yeah, um yeah he's he's younger than us. So he was sort of like the next, Yeah. Generation after us. He's maybe what, eight years younger than me? Something like that. And seven, eight years. Is he that much younger than you? I thought he was in his early thirties. Yeah. Early thirties. Yeah. Well, that's the funny thing is I don't know a whole lot about Richie Cruz as far as his age goes because I know he's just a man in the hat. And he's always been, I mean, I hate these sort of cliche terms, but he really was like an old soul. He was an old soul. you know He wore like vintage-ish clothing yeah that looked vintage. he like Nobody gets their boots resold. He does. yeah He finds a good pair of expensive boots and he gets them resold. right and so But he he was just always very, very unique and his own person and didn't care who thought about it. yeah and But we've talked about him before. He came down with cancer last summer and unfortunately passed away on Friday, July 26th.
00:01:57
Speaker
so And as far as his connection to this show, you guys used to do a lot of live YouTube stuff together.
Richie's Contributions and Interests
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah. And before he got sick last summer, you guys were really doing it. And then the years before that, and there was sort of a transition time for the archeology show before I was on it, when he was kind of your, almost your co-host a little bit for TAS. Cause you guys were putting that YouTube recording onto the speed. So. This show's gone through a lot of changes. I wanted to keep the feed alive, but yeah my first host had to move on. you know Her kids, her grad school just didn't work out. yeah it happens But I wanted to keep the feed going. And yeah, Richie and I were doing another show called You Call This Archaeology, which it was supposed to be a show about
00:02:40
Speaker
nothing really nothing related to archaeology. But the whole point was everything relates to archaeology. And that phrase comes from Sean Connery saying that in one of the Indiana Jones movies. And it's just Richie's sense of humor that yeah that caused that to happen. And so you know when I had no content for this show, because I had no co-host and no time, I would take the audio from that YouTube channel. And if you want to go find it, you can find it at Happy Archaeology Fun Time. That's the name of Richie's YouTube channel. but All the stuff's over there. Some of it's on the APN as well. We started recording directly to the APN YouTube put youtube channel later on at ArcPodNet. But anyway, we would just chat about whatever. Richie would come to the show with topics, and most of the time they had literally nothing to do with archaeology. You guys talked a lot about camping, a lot about technology, because Richie was super into like staying up on the high-tech stuff. And yeah and also, he was like a a rabid Android user, and you were a rabid iPhone user. So I think you guys had some good debates over that. A lot of Apple versus Android conversations. Oh, he was just such a unique, just a special snowflake in the best kind of way. He's really going to be missed. He and I worked together really closely on that like last project that your company did. And you were doing other things and just couldn't really be in the field as much. So it was like me and Richie just together. And I'll never forget the time that I was driving the rented work truck yeah and put truck in big quotations because it was more of an SUV. than a truck but it did have four wheel drive and I was driving down this hill and hidden in that like center two track where the weeds grow up was a big rock that I didn't see and I hit it with the front of this rented SUV and
00:04:31
Speaker
It dragged the rock and it bent some stuff under there. And like I was afraid the car wasn't even going to drive. And Richie was just so chill in those circumstances. He never freaked out. I'm freaking out because that's who I am. yeah And he just gets on the ground and sort of crawls partly under the truck. And he had some kind of tool, not a trowel, maybe like a hammer type thing. And he just sort of hammered whatever I bent back into place. Pulled it out of his multi-tool vest, no doubt. So he just like hammered the rented work truck back into place. I'm not going to say who we rented from. It doesn't matter. It was five years ago. Nobody's going to know, but we don't need to say it. And, uh, yeah, we went along on our way and he just like managed that situation for me, even though I was like, you know, having a panic attack on the inside. So guaranteed he got back in the vehicle after it started rolling again and you guys were on your way and said, neat. yeah
00:05:24
Speaker
wait Well, he did. Yeah. So anyway, he will be missed. he was He was just a great guy to work with. Well, we are going to have an episode where we talk about Richie and maintaining your health and things like that in archaeology on the CRM archaeology podcast.
Minuteman Park's Historical Context
00:05:40
Speaker
yeah And because he was a CRM archaeologist, and I feel appropriate to talk about him over there. So if you want to check that out, it's not out by the time you're hearing this, but it will be the next episode out of that show. So stay tuned in the future for that show. It'll be a week and a half if you're listening to this in real time. I believe it's episode 293 or 294, give or take. Yeah. OK. So we're going to move on to our topic of the day. So we are in the Northeast, in New England, in Massachusetts. Yes. And last weekend, we went out to Minuteman National Historic Park, which isn't really a park at all. Really? I mean, kind of. There's park parts of it. but Yeah. So there's this like distinction in the national park system of historical park yeah as opposed to regular park. And I mean, I guess they're commemorating historical places. So that's the difference, but they're just not the same either. They're not like your big parks that you think of. they They tend to be a little bit more spread out. they're not
00:06:35
Speaker
you know, in the same place. This one in particular is following this five mile trail that follows the original path of all the battles and skirmishes that were fought on ah April 19th, which was the beginning of the Revolutionary War, essentially. And so it's sort of this like long linear spread out park with like different chunks in different places to sort of follow along that path. But it was also really cool because like, I haven't really looked into revolutionary war history since I was in, you know, high school, maybe elementary school. I don't even know. So it was a fun little like a trip down history and memory lane a little bit too.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, so let's give a little context here for those that don't know about this, especially probably our British and and and the British colonies out there. you know This is a little lesson in in how to how to break the chain. No, I'm just kidding. yeah So I did read, I think I mentioned this last time, I did hear something, I think it was when we were having Independence Day, I think I said this on a previous episode, that it's like every week of the year some country celebrates its independence in Britain. Well, they were like the dominant force in the world at at one point. so yeah I imagine if you go back far enough, like every week of the year before Britain took over, like every country celebrated its independence from Rome, right so you know yeah um if that were a thing. yeah But anyway, but they just kind of like replaced Rome with Britain. They're like, oh, so you guys are here now. Well, Rome just fell apart, whereas Britain didn't exactly fall apart. It's still doing its thing. It's just smaller now. It's just so like smaller now.
00:08:04
Speaker
yeah So yeah anyway, this is all located 22 miles northwest of Boston between the towns of Lexington, Lincoln and Concord. Yeah. Yeah. So Lexington and Concord probably yeah that whole yeah thing sort of where the war started essentially. So and that is the point of this park. It's to preserve and protect the places and structures where the opening battles of the American Revolution happened on April 19th in 1775. Yeah. The shot heard around the world, which you may have heard before, but that was also yeah a phrase used at the start of World War I, I think. It was coined by one of the authors that lived in the Concord area, which we're going to talk about in either segment two or three. Right. But it was coined by him in one of his writings about the American Revolution, essentially. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. But that shot that he was writing about 50 years later, a figurative shot. Right. Because like Well, there was a shot. Somebody fired a bullet. But it happened at the North Bridge, they call it, which is right at one of the visitor centers for this park. And you can just walk right down it. You can walk over the North Bridge. It's not the same North Bridge that's been rebuilt, yeah you know because this bridge would have been 300 years old. And it's just like a wooden bridge. It's not a very big bridge, really. Like, I don't know how old it was when a bunch of soldiers were trying to walk over it. It was probably old then, but who knows. But anyway, it takes place at the North Bridge, and that was a critical river crossing being guarded by a column of British regulars or soldiers. Yeah, regulars is another word for soldiers, which I had to look that up because I was like, yeah regular British what? just like dudes, except bros. Anyway. Yeah, so the colonial militias from all of these surrounding towns, which was another little piece of history I'd kind of forgotten about, but the every town essentially had created its own militia. And then of those militia, the Minutemen were like the best of them, essentially, from what I i remember reading at all the different places that we went.
00:10:01
Speaker
and And so all those colonial militias from all these different towns, they converged on this area. And the reason they knew about it is because of the Paul Revere's ride thing that happened the midnight ride that that happened the night before where he was you know British are coming and bla bla blah, blah, blah. He did that ride out to let everybody know that the British were coming this way. And so all these colonial militias are converging on this area. And I think the first official orders were given to fire on the British, which is why this is considered the beginning of the American Revolution, because they were organized and they had somebody telling them what to do, essentially. Yeah, before it had kind of just been malicious and people kind of taking potshots at the British. Yeah. Yeah. But this was an ah an American, well, so to speak, military order. Yeah. Hey, see those guys in red over there? Yeah. Shoot them. Yes. Yeah. and that We want them gone. That was a big thing. yeah I mean, that was that was us saying, you know, we're not going to take this anymore. Yeah. So.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, and they exchanged gunfire at this point, and it essentially began this really long retreat by the British from Concord all the way back to Boston. And the colonial militias did not, you know, back off and let them just retreat. They engaged them like the whole way back, basically. When we say they stopped at Boston, I'd say they retreated all the way back to London. ah Yeah, like eight years later, the Revolutionary War was not quick. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. So what the militias were doing is they, they kind of adopted this like guerrilla warfare style thing where they were laying in wait at various points along this path that the British were going to be taking in their retreat. And they were attacking the soldiers as they went by. That was, that was how they worked this whole thing out and why the British just had no chance. Like they just, they were trying to stick to the road and get away and it just out of the woods would come shots and people that they didn't know were there. So yeah. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. yeah The park itself contains landmarks along the trail. And like I said, when I said it's not really like a park, when we think of national parks in the West, they're just these million acre behemoths that are enclosed by a fence right or are a boundary anyway. yeah Well, this is this has some some national park areas, but there's also these houses yeah and other things that are part of the national park. and in fact
00:12:16
Speaker
Pro tip, if you want to visit any of these houses, look at the schedule well ahead of time. Because like like one of them might be open for two hours on a Tuesday, and another one open for three hours on a Thursday. Honestly, I was so frustrated by that, because there's nothing I love more than like touring through an old house. right right And that was part of the draw of this park, is that they have all these old structures that were not necessarily waypoints on April 19 and 1775, but they are places where people were meeting to make these plans throughout that time period. So there are these kind of places and I was so excited to go into some of them and they were all closed. I think like one of them was open while we were there. So and we were there on a weekend too. So yeah, it was crazy. Just keep that in mind. If you're super interested in going inside these buildings, check the schedule because it's not conducive to weekend people. It's conducive to midweek right like school trips. It's kind of what it seems like but anyway. One thing that surprised me, and we saw we saw this at the North Bridge, but apparently this is all along this trail, is there are graves of British soldiers. I mean, they obviously died there. died they way They would have been buried there if the British themselves didn't pick up the bodies, yeah which really, how could they? I don't think they could. like They talk about this one area called the Bloody Angle. yeah And that was where 30 British soldiers lost their lives because it was just constant attacks from the militia on either end and on the sides. And the road was rising and curving so they couldn't see what was coming. And I think I read that the only reason they got through that without losing more soldiers is because they all started running. yeah They literally had to run to get out of this area and into somewhere that was more protected. But those soldiers, they had to bury them somewhere and they couldn't go back for them. They were running.
00:13:53
Speaker
I'm just a little bit surprised that even now, like how many foreign nationals are buried because of conflict on American soil? Unlike other countries, not very many. It would be all mostly British, and probably French, right and and probably some Spanish as well. aren't there like graves all over France from World War II and stuff like that? I mean in the United States. oh i set aside In other countries, yes, because of World War II or World War I, sure, there's people buried all over the place. But I really don't know how that works. like Even now, you know there's groups that try to go to like Vietnam and other places to recover Missing in action and downed fighters, and people who died, and they want to bring their there remains back to the United States. yeah now That's now, and it's a little more fresh in our minds, and this was 300 years ago, but or 250 years ago. But I'm still like, I'm a little surprised that those British soldiers were never repatriated back to England, even 50 years later. you know But there's a ah marker up that says, you know here's the British soldiers at the North Bridge. yeah like I'm really surprised that they even put that up and didn't
00:14:57
Speaker
you know repatriate them back to England. And England didn't even ask for them, or I don't know it know how that worked. They may have. There's two things at play here. I think it's the time. I think the British, 300 years ago, the British weren't interested in digging up the remains and then having to transport them for three months or however long it would take to cross the ocean back to England. like They would have been buried here no matter what. And when a soldier came over here to participate in this war, that was probably part of the understanding. It was like, if you lose your life, you're going to be yeah buried there. But also I think that this whole like recovering remains from other countries might be a distinctly American thing too. Cause you don't hear about other countries wanting to go in and find the remains. I could be wrong about that. I'd love to hear if I am, if there are other groups in other countries that are out there trying to recover. We talked about it on Sierra Mark before, I think, or maybe something. There's at least another group somewhere in Eastern Europe or something like that that does that for their soldiers. Oh, OK. But anyway, I know other countries do that. But I think this was just possibly too long ago. Is there no group that's concerned about it now? Well, it's just become part of the American Revolution, right? And I don't think there's any bad feelings between the British and the Americans. Or at least there's not from most people. So I don't know. It's part of history now. And people just go and see it. OK, well, we're going to take a break. And on the other side, we will talk about some musket balls that were found that we know, or at least we're pretty sure, were American revolutionary militiamen. And we know that because the British are so God's damned precise. But anyway, I think we were just shoving anything in a rifle to shoot it. You are always giving away the entire segment at the end of the previous segment. All right, so the next segment will be segment three. And no, so we're going to talk about these musket balls, and then we will give some more thoughts about our trip to Minamat historic park.
Discoveries of Musket Balls
00:16:52
Speaker
So back in a minute.
00:16:56
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 273 of the Murica show. Murica shuttle. Back when it was baby Murica. I know our temporary title for this is just colonial Murica. I don't think we're going to call it that. Probably not. What do you think you spelled it right? You said Merica. I think it's Merica. How did you spell Merica? M-U-R-I-C-A. Oh, there's a U in there. I think it's an U when you're going to put an apostrophe there. OK. Yeah. OK. So that's how you redneck a society. Thanks for educating me on how to spell the wrong way to say the name. Got it. That's right. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about this musket ball thing. Yeah. I know you're super excited about it. Musket balls.
00:17:37
Speaker
but Okay, so like full disclosure, Chris was not excited about this article. I don't know why. I just... But too bad. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's an interesting situation, right? So... When we're traveling, we're always looking for these kind of parks and places to go visit, right? And at the same time as I'm trying to figure out, and I do most of our travel planning, so that's why I keep saying I. And at the same time that I'm trying to figure out like what cool places we're gonna go see when we're in the Cape Cod area, I also came across this article called, Must Get Balls That Started the American Revolution Sat Buried Until Now.
00:18:13
Speaker
And I was like, oh, where is that? Oh, wait, that is at this national park, National Historic Park that we were planning to go see anyway. So I was like, it's like these two overlapping things came together and they were like, well, obviously you must talk about this article and you must go see the basketballs. So that's where we're at. And I'm very excited about it. and Yeah. Now, if I did all our planning, we will be talking about whaling museums and things like that, but we're not. We will talk about that next week. So maybe yeah, no, we will. We, yeah, you didn't, you got your heart a little broken on that one, but we'll explain that next week. So this article, the article that started it all, the article heard around the world. Wow.
00:19:00
Speaker
So at the park, the they were doing some trail improvements, right? And when you're doing improvements, you have to have the right permits and you have to look for archaeology, among other things. So that's basically what they were doing. they They had to do this archaeological survey before they could do the improvements along the trail. Yeah, one of the park rangers and archaeologists, park archaeologist, I guess, Jared Fouse said that they didn't really expect to find anything yeah between in in a field between Lexington and Concord. And I'm like, in one of the most historic areas that's been populated by Europeans for 400 years and by Native Americans for 10,000 plus years, you didn't expect to find anything? I think what he meant is they didn't expect to find anything that was specifically related to these events that took place on this property. Which I'm still kind of surprised about. Because of all of the occupation over the years. They expected to- It's already been disturbed and taken out. Yeah, so disturbed, either removed or just related to something in the 1800s or the 1900s, but not necessarily all the way back to the American Revolution. yeah so So yeah, they were they were not really expecting to find anything, but then they started doing what looked like shovel tests or maybe unit testing. i was They weren't clear about their methodology and it's not really that important, but but they found not one musket ball, but five of them all in this field area.
00:20:26
Speaker
And here's where the heartbreak of the story comes in because I got super excited about this because I read that they were going to be on display and that we would be able to go see them because we were going to go to this park anyway. But unfortunately, we missed out on it by one week. They were on display on July 13th for Archaeology Day. And then they sent them off to the archives for future study or whatever preservation, all the things that you have to do before you can release a an artifact to to a museum or whatever. So they do plan to have them on permanent display, but it won't be until 2026. And the reason they're shooting for 2026 is because it's the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding. So that is probably the next time you'll be able to see them if you didn't catch it on archaeology day, which unfortunately we did not. which is part of the absurd nature of museums to begin with. Two years before you can put those on display. I know, I'm not really sure why. Maybe they have to go on like a a country tour first, send them around to different places to be seen. They're literally going to sit a box in a building yeah before they can. I don't know what. They have top men working on it.
00:21:31
Speaker
Top men. The cogs move slowly. will be quote I know it is. Twice head men. I know. Yeah, it's probably top women. Uh-huh. Yeah. Anyway, the cogs move very slowly in this type of environment. But here's the thing. environment We saw musket balls anyway. We did. They had some. Yeah, musket balls are freaking musket balls as far as I'm concerned. Yes, but these are special musket balls. And the reason that they're special is because they know for sure that these musket balls would have been shot by militiamen as opposed to British soldiers. right I think the ones that we saw that were on display were
00:22:05
Speaker
British musket balls, I think, because they had the little the little dimensions up next to it. And that, you know spoiler alert, that's how they know. is did The British musket balls all have the same exact dimension, and the American ones would be all over the place. That's because we like to keep them guessing. Yeah, exactly. The British were anal even in the 1700s. Right. Yeah. Okay, so there's several reasons why they are pretty sure that these are American musket balls, yeah and include, you know, not just the size, but they were found in and in an area that we know that British soldiers were. So shots were coming at them from the Americans. yeah So any shots that missed and would have just hit the dirt and then, you know, laid there for 250 years would be American musket balls.
00:22:51
Speaker
However, they could have been dropped by British soldiers because musket balls when you reload, it's kind of a process, right? So dropping them was kind of a common thing too. But that's where the size comes into play. The British soldiers were using a standard .69 caliber musket ball at this time. And the ones that they found were outside of that size. So they were basically not dropped during and reloading. Right. And musket balls like this. would only have been used to hunt big game. Or humans. Or humans. And this area was deforested, and there was no big game to hunt here. So you know the militia men of that time, they're like just using what they have, basically. And if there's no big game to hunt there, then it's the the musket balls weren't from some hunting incident, yeah some past hunting incident. yeah
00:23:40
Speaker
and they also commented on how closely grouped these musket balls were together making it highly unlikely they were from like separate but random events maybe if it was one or two and they're kind of far apart you know but And again, if you've got somebody out there hunting, they're probably hunting by themselves, and they shoot an animal, before they can fire again, they've got, even if they're really fast at it, they've got 20 to 45, 60 seconds before they can reload and then shoot again, and the animal's probably not still standing there. But British soldiers are all standing there, and when you've got a line of militia men or a group of militia men all firing, they're all firing at the same time. So you're going to have a group of musket balls sitting all in the same place, because they all aimed at the same place. And even if they all missed, or maybe they hit the British soldiers and bounced off, because musket balls weren't super awesome. They weren't perfect. They could have hit something hard.
Visiting Concord and Transcendentalism
00:24:30
Speaker
They could have actually, I don't know how musket balls deform when they hit human bone and flesh, but they could have actually gone through and penetrated targets, too, and then hit the ground. It could have just been a flesh wound and didn't hit any bones and gone into the ground. Your arm's off. No, it isn't.
00:24:46
Speaker
What's that then? Yeah. So anyway, all of that comes to the conclusion that these were probably musket balls fired by colonial militiamen at British soldiers, making them some of the first shots of the Revolutionary War. ah yeah i do i do want to think I do like to think that there was like a British commander standing on the North Bridge going, none shall pass. And that's what started the Revolutionary War. I mean, maybe.
00:25:18
Speaker
yeah But yeah, just a little bit more about the National Historic Park. It was a really beautiful area, really, really cool to visit it. So I think worth the time. And like we mentioned in the first segment, try to time you know going to see the places when they're open, as opposed to when we were there. but It is easier to see these places when they're open. yeah That's one thing we've found. But even the he has so towns themselves, the things that are not really connected to the historic park, like Lexington and Concord were both such cute little towns. And there's a lot to do there that is not even connected to the national park too. So it's definitely worth like a day trip to just go out, see the towns, check out some of the things we're going to talk about in segment three, which are not part of the national park.
00:26:02
Speaker
And yeah, just enjoy that like early colonial American history. It was a cool place. It was kind of neat with Concord, which we'll kind of talk about next a little bit, but just imagining the town area and driving around those roads. And we actually drove around a couple of roads that just because this is the way the GPS took us when you're kind of going through little neighborhoods and stuff. I was really easy for me to envision that area as dirt and wagons. Yeah. Because a lot of the houses really haven't changed much, and these are historical towns, so I'm willing to bet building codes over the last couple hundred years have mandated that they stay historical. So even some of the newer houses are probably built in older styles, or remodeling has taken place in older styles. There's definitely a style there that seems very colonial. Right, that colonial New England style, right?
00:26:50
Speaker
But just because of that, and again, the width of some of the roads, like just the the main road going in and out of there is very narrow. yeah It's like two wagons passing in the night narrow. And yeah, and it's just, you can just see it. You can feel it. It just feels like an old colonial area and it's really cool. so Yeah, there's no like straight roads intersecting, you know, at 90 degree angles. Like everything comes in at an awkward, weird angle and it makes for these like, like almost like villa style houses, like set up on these weird corners. And it's just, it's it's just really cool. Even what's now basically treated like a roundabout in the middle of Concord is basically like an oblong pickle like yeah on a roundabout. yeah It was like a town square that's now like sort of rounded on the edges. It's been treated like a roundabout because it's one way all the way around. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Like on on the map, it's treated like a roundabout, but there is also another roundabout right next to it. So it's all very strange. Yeah. Don't take an ah RV through there, I don't think. It's probably not smart. Yeah, not not the right roads. No, we had our Jeep, so yeah. so No, cool area there. Definitely recommend visiting it and get your stamp. ah Get your stamp, right. All right, well, when we come back, we'll talk about visiting a writer's house and where all the other writers are buried and basically seeing all their graves back in a minute.
00:28:08
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 273 of The Archaeology Show. And now, we're going to talk about something that we didn't expect to see when we went out to this park. We just kind of like jumped in there yep and had a two-hour history lesson on Louisa Bay Alcott. I don't know that you necessarily wanted or expected that. I definitely didn't expect it. I'm not sure I would have wanted it had I known it was coming, but it was definitely interesting because she is a historical figure. I didn't know anything about her, really, and I didn't know anything about her association with everybody else, so let's talk about it. Yeah, so like we're still in Concord, but fast forward historically speaking, about 100-ish years.
00:28:51
Speaker
Getting to like the mid 1800s and I am a huge little women fan like huge little women fan so I've read that book so many times and I just I don't know it like had a big impact on me when I was kid and I love it so much so So when we were driving down like the road that sort of connects Lexington and Concord through the park We passed a house called Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott, and I was like, I'm sorry, what? And I looked it up, and they have a whole tour and everything, so we were able to hop on that and go see the house. Yeah. Now, it's privately owned. Yes. It's not part of the park. Not part of the park, but it is on the main road that yeah the park goes you know right right past it. Right. and it was
00:29:37
Speaker
donated by Louise May Alcott in her estate to basically run tours. Yeah, it's it's basically a nonprofit now. I don't know if they're nonprofit. I looked it up. It is. oh was Yeah, it's a nonprofit organization. I think they're just like trying to keep the like the dream ah dream of Louisa May Alcott alive, right? like Keep her history, her life, her family, and all of that. Well, it was like 1920 that her family, I think it was 1920 that the tour guide said that her family donated the house yeah basically to preserve it as a place where people could come learn about Louisa May Alcott yes and the Alcotts in general. yeah yeah so
00:30:13
Speaker
And there's a lot to learn because there's a lot going on with writers in this part of the world at this time period. yeah There's a ah whole group of famous 19th century writers living there. And they were all friends. They were all friends and they, I don't want to say like influenced or fed off of each other, but you have to imagine they did in some way. Like it just happens with creative people when they get together, they're going to, they're going to use each other and use, you know, to grow and yeah. well And as we mentioned in the first segment, this whole area, I mean, with your sort of religious revolutionaryism that basically started the Revolutionary War with these people saying in their churches, that's where it's all started. Like, we're not going to stand for this English BS anymore. yeah let's get Let's get on with it.
00:30:58
Speaker
I mean, that's where it all started. And then fast forward 100 years and it's still going with the attitudes of the people that live here. And you've got Henry David Thoreau, again, Louisa May Alcott, when really her dad, which was giving her all these kinds of ideas yeah with his with his friends and his nature. Yeah, her dad was like friends, really, truly friends with all yeah these, the male writers, you know, and she learned from all them too. Yeah. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing, who I'm not as familiar with. Not as familiar, yeah.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, so these guys, they all lived in this area and they they shared many of the same values, morals, and beliefs. And like the revolutionaries of 100 years before, these guys were kind of revolutionary in their own ways as well. They were abolitionists, which was not as common in in this time. It hadn't really reached the peak that it did by the 1860s when the Civil War happened. This is earlier. This is 20, 30 years earlier. They were transcendentalists. They were naturalists. In addition to being writers and poets. And so when we were doing this research, I was like, okay, but like, what's transcendentalism again? So just a quick little like refresher if you're like me and you didn't really remember what you learned about that in your, you know, eighth grade class that covered this 20 or more years ago.
00:32:23
Speaker
You learn about transcendentalism in eighth grade? I don't know. Probably not. It was probably high school, whenever it was. Probably So it's a movement that developed in the 1820s and 30s in Concord, Massachusetts. And transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions, particularly organized religion and political parties, corrupt the purity of the individual. Yeah. One of the core beliefs is in the sort of inherent goodness of people and nature and that you don't need these overarching groups like religion and political parties to tell you what to do. You can just rely on your inner goodness, yeah which is a really nice thought. I'm not sure how practical it is like in real life, but it is a, it's a nice idea. and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. They saw it.
00:33:14
Speaker
divine experience in the everyday rather than some place like heaven. In fact, Nathaniel Hawthorne, you could see some quotes and and I think it was mentioned in a little movie we got to see and things like that, but Louisa May Alcott had a lot to say about Nathaniel Hawthorne basically in some of the writings she had and just in some of her experiences, but he was very influential on her because he knew a lot of stuff about just like nature and you know you could ask him anything and he would know it, but he was very in tune with You know, and so were all the other people that came, but him especially was very in tune with nature and natural things and saw a lot of spiritualism in that nature. In nature, yeah. Well, in several ways the same way. I mean, he's Walden's pond guy, right? So like Mr. Nature right there. So that was definitely a big part of the movement. Yeah, I don't know what path he took, but not very many other people did.
00:34:07
Speaker
So this group of writers, they wrote some of the most famous and influential books of the 19th century. Of course, you've got Louisa May Alcott with Little Women, which was most influential on me. Even 150 years later, it's crazy. And then, of course, Hawthorne wrote Scarlet Letter and the House of Seven Gables. Emerson had volumes of poetry titled Essays, First and Second Series, and the famous Concord Hymn with the phrase, The Shot Heard Round the World. And of course Thoreau had Walden and his essay on ah called civil Civil Disobedience. Those are very famous. Yes, very famous. Yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
And what's interesting too about this group is that of them, only Henry David Thoreau was actually born in Concord and he lived there basically his entire life. I think he left here and there for various educational purposes, but almost his entire life. Louisa May Alcott and her family, we learned all this on the tour at Orchard House. We don't we didn't just like pull this information yeah out of nowhere. Extensive tour. It was so long. It was like two hours of talking about the Alcott family. and lot It was a lot. Her family moved to the area from Pennsylvania. Her father was part of the Transcendentalist Movement, one of the founding members really. yeah He even built like a whole thing at the house that was a meeting house essentially for these guys to get together and talk about these ideas. It was called the Concord School of Philosophy, I think he called it. yeah And he built it to look like a church yeah because he he figured people should worship education.
00:35:34
Speaker
ah same tell yeah There's a lot to love about that, right? Yeah. yeah When they first moved to the Comm Corps, they moved into the wayside, or what's now known as home of the authors. And they sold that home to Nathaniel Hawthorne, and then moved to what's called the Orchard House. There was a whole bunch of apple orchard. There was a big apple orchard area right behind there. yeah And it was kind of run down, actually, too, which I thought was kind of neat. And there was a whole bunch there was a little outbuildings that they basically kind of got for free. yeah And they waited till the winter time when the ground was hard. And Nathaniel Hawthorne, some of the other big writers, and a bunch of other people from the town, helped the Alcotts basically roll the other houses down on logs into the main house where they joined them up. Yeah, to make one big house. To make one big house. Because none of the houses on the property were big enough for the Alcott family. yeah Because there were six of them. And then at at one point, like some of the kids moved in too, like the grandkids. so yeah Yeah, so kind of neat. And when you're just walking through the house, I mean, you can feel the joy, too. And you can see where the different houses are connected together. Yeah. Isn't that amazing to imagine, like, Nathaniel Hawthorne, like, rolling a house down a hill for Louisa May Alcott to live in? Like, these incredibly famous authors who wrote well just such big works. I know. It's crazy. They weren't famous when that happened. No, they know they weren't. They were just living their lives. But yeah. and
00:36:52
Speaker
so And so just back to Louise and me, Al got a little bit, because we did learn a lot about her on the story. she She mostly loved living in the countryside, but she did find it a little too quiet sometimes. And my favorite quote from her that we learned was, poor, dull, Concord. Nothing colorful has come through here since the red coats.
00:37:15
Speaker
She had a way with words that lady. yeah So this area, like we said, it was full of these these guys that were part of the transcendentalist movement. And the Alcotts were definitely abolitionists and most of the other transcendentalist people were as well.
Visiting Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
00:37:31
Speaker
And the wayside, which is part of the National Historical Park there, they they were known to have helped at least one escaped slave. And it's listed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Yeah. So this was part of the Underground Railroad and it was a ah significant place because it was where people were developing these ideas of abolitionism and equality amongst people and what they were developing, it got into their works, it got into the the things that they were creating and putting out into the world. And and I feel like that was just such a, it had a long-term really important influence on the thinking of American people
00:38:13
Speaker
It just took a while to get there because obviously the Civil War wasn't until 1860s and you know equality some would say is not even here yet but it's a work in progress that has been going but these people were the seeds of it some of the seeds of it to help move us past slavery and and the lack of equality between people of different colors so yeah. Well, one of the other cool things we saw in this area was Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yes. Now, there was some kind of legend here that I can't remember, but we'll just skip right past that. I don't think that this is that Sleepy Hollow. I know. In fact, I'm pretty sure that one was in England, so... I think it was. And actually, there was a couple other sleepy hollow cemeteries in New England that we saw. I saw one down somewhere near the Cape Cod area where we were. I remember seeing another one. So sleepy hollow is more of a common term, I guess. I don't really know. I think so. I guess maybe that's what they used to call cemeteries because you're like, oh, it's sleepy. Oh. I don't know. That's a weirdly macabre thing to name your cemetery, but go on. But anyway, there's a cemetery there in Concord, and you can go there. I mean, it's just a regular cemetery. Regular people are buried there, still to today. Yeah, still to today, yeah. But there's a place called Authors Ridge, and we walked up there. And the first one I think we came to was Emerson, if I'm not mistaken. I think so. Just right up on the first one, if you're taking the normal trail, everybody takes. And it's just not just
00:39:41
Speaker
him, or was it Emerson, or was that the one we had a hard time finding? I can't remember. Anyway, we saw him, Louisa May Alcott. yeah Her whole family is buried there. Her whole family's buried there. And what did you see on her grave, though? Oh, it was so cute. So there was there was the four graves for the four sisters. Because this is the other thing that we learned on this tour, is that Little Women is based almost exactly on Louisa May Alcott's actual family. And she did have three sisters. She was the second. oldest of the four and so they're all buried all four of the sisters are buried together at this at this graveyard and on Louisa's tombstone there was just like a pile of pens and that's because her character represented Jo who
00:40:25
Speaker
was a writer in the story and in the little women's story. And also, you know, Louisa was the writer. So there's all these pens and there's a letter there, too. There's a letter that was written to Beth that some modern person wrote. It said Dear Beth on the outside of it. And it was just so sweet because Beth is the character that dies in the story and was Joe's closest sister. And anyway, it was just really sweet to see how many people are still so affected by that book 150 years later. Well, and the funny thing is, like, they wrote this letter to Beth, the character she wrote about that died, and her actual sister also died. Yeah. Young. And is buried there. And is buried there. Or her grave was right next door. And never got to live in the house. Never did, no. Got to visit the house while they were remodeling it early on, because I guess it took like a year to make it livable. Yeah, yeah. And they said they would come and play around and do stuff. But then she died early. She died before they actually moved in. Yeah, before they moved in. Which is not how it was in the book. But yeah, it's just crazy how intertwined the story was with the real life characters. And then also how all of that is still so popular, mostly with young girls these days.
00:41:37
Speaker
so That was another thing I want to mention, too, just before we continue with the authors, is the Alcott name isn't really in Concord anymore because, well, they had all daughters. They had all daughters. And they married off. And Louise and Alcott never married. Only two of them even had kids. Yeah. And, of course, they were married, so they didn't have the Alcott name anymore. No. But either way, Louisa May Alcott, she had this whole thing because she wanted to basically send her money off to her family in her estate, but her lawyer or whatever was like, you can't do that, you're unmarried, your money's going to the state of Massachusetts. Yeah, apparently in the 1800s when you die, if you were an unmarried woman, your money doesn't go to who you choose, it goes to the state, which is ridiculous. And she was not about that. Yeah, so she adopted one of her nephews. Right. Yeah, so she adopted one of her nephews. Like officially. Officially adopted. Yeah. And is like, great, here's my son. Give it all to him. And he was awesome and basically said, OK.
00:42:35
Speaker
I'll satisfy my new mom's wishes and distributed the money and all that stuff like she wanted. And and there's so so many things that are influenced in Concord by her. That was one of the things I wanted to mention. And then another thing is the girls used to put on plays at the house. And we saw where you know leading from the living room into basically what was the dining room, the dining room was the staging area and like the the stage itself. And people would sit in the living room. And they would charge people. to come in the house and watch their plays yeah that Louisa May Alcott would write. and And I guess this is all in the books, too. yeah She would do that. It was part of her character. Yeah. And there was two staircases. And the staircase that went down to the dining room, they would use that to go up into the attic or into the other room and change clothes. And you know that was there it was a whole thing, a big production. yeah But they started this little like mini production company did that they just called it that, which still actually exists yeah in Concord. yeah And every year they put on Little Women. Yeah. That's so cute. I love it. I love how connected to history that whole place is. And didn't the tour guide say that every year there's somebody from the Alcott, ah an Alcott descendant that's in the play? I think they, she did say that. Yeah. Yeah. So it in some way, maybe a small way, but yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, can they all act? he Yeah. Or want to. Right. That would be my personal nightmare, but. The Alcott family gets together. The Alcott descendants are like, okay. Who's doing it this year? Okay. It's cousin Jeremy.
00:44:01
Speaker
You're in it now. so yeah But Louisa was such a savvy, savvy business woman. She made ah a fair amount of money off of Little Women, but she invested it so wisely into railroads and stuff that like she set her family up yeah for the rest of their lives from there. Yeah, because their family was basically poor because her dad wasn't super great at making money. No, he was a transcendentalist, so like he was more interested in like knowing thyself, probably, without making money. Yeah, he didn't know thy bank account. And he was a teacher, too. And he got fired from a lot of schools for trying to teach wrong. Yeah, because he didn't teach religion. He didn't teach the way they wanted to teach. And that's why they moved a lot, too. When they found Concord, he kind of found his place. But he still didn't like make a lot of money there. And you know she brought in, when her book started selling, that's when money started coming in. But yep yeah, she did right yeah by the family with all her investments. She did, she was amazing. um It's just like what a couple more things about her. Because I feel like she was just so much more amazing than I realized until we went to this tour. But she was an early feminist, basically. And she was like, I don't want to get married. I like being alone and by myself. And I don't want to give all of my money and hand over all control over my life to a man. So I'm going to just keep doing my solo single lady thing. And she wanted her character, her mirror character in the books, Jo, to be the same way. But her publisher was like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
00:45:32
Speaker
Like the right ending for this girl is that she's got to get married. And so 150-year-old, spoiler alert here, she does have Jo get married in the books, but it's to like a professor who's much older than her and almost has like fatherly tendencies. So that was sort of her revenge on the publisher who said that she had to marry that character off, which I kind of loved. Yeah, she did it her way. Yeah, she did do it her way. She's like, if I were to get married, this would probably be it. Her dad, did she marry her father? Yeah, basically. I don't know if she exactly meant it that way, kind of came across that way. But no, she never did get married, and she did her own thing, and I love that about her. I did think it was funny, too, that if her dad ever did have any money, it's not like he was neglecting his family, but they did say that he was more apt to probably buy a new hat, because he really liked hats. He wanted to be fashionable. It's not like he didn't think about putting food on his family's table. He's just like, man, that hat. Some people just aren't able to look at what happens in two weeks when you also need to feed your family. You could save that money and use it for that instead. But anyway, that's economic lessons. I know. Bye, Rachel. There you go. There you go. Anyway, all those authors that we mentioned, they're all buried on Authors Ridge. Yes. So if you want to go there, it's pretty cool. That place was so cool. You just walk up this hill and it's just like famous person, famous person, famous person. Yeah. I don't think it was Emerson that we saw first, which was the one that had the big rock. It might have been Hawthorne. It wasn't Hawthorne that we saw first. I might have to look at my photos. We definitely saw Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and Hawthorne.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. It was Thoreau that was first. He was kind of on the path first, kind of on a little bit of a hill. yeah And the crazy thing is with a lot of these, I mean, they weren't necessarily even rich or famous while they were ah alive. And some of these weren't very ostentatious with their burials either. yeah Like Thoreau had a really big tombstone for the family with a lot of the names on it. And I can, you can see these in pictures. I'm going to try to put these up on Instagram. I haven't yet. yeah So if you want to see them at Roadster adventures, we'll show them to you. So we'll put them on the arc pod net Instagram as well too. But anyway, so you'll see that. And then you'll see the Louise May Alcott thing. I want to put Rachel's video up that she made of her talking. i did talk about it Yeah. yeah
00:48:02
Speaker
But then the Ralph Waldo Emerson one was super cool because there's like this huge, huge rock that looks like granite. I'm not really sure. I think it's granite. It doesn't seem natural to the area, that's for sure. It really kind of doesn't. yeah It almost seems like it was brought in. yeah But it's just really cool because that's in the Emerson plot. And there are probably 20 graves in the Emerson plot. I mean, there's yeah a ton of them. Big family. yeah So, but what I do like is a lot of these, like Louise May Alcott's is just a rock in the ground with her name on it. Yeah, it's really nothing special. The family plot, you know, there's an Alcott stelae almost, like a big one that represents the family, but you see all these and there's just like kind of a big thing for the family and then all the little headstones, you know, for the for the family members themselves. And I mean, Louise May Alcott died. She wasn't super old. She died relatively young.
00:48:54
Speaker
What is it? She's in her 50s or 60s or something? Something like that. Yeah. and And she was wealthy by that time, but she slipp but you know probably
Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes
00:49:00
Speaker
by her wishes. It was just great. Stick her in a plot with ah with a little headstone. Yeah. I mean, that's how yeah ostentatious Greystones was not part of that time, really, and also really like not that group of people either. you know yeah i'm Unlike Greece, 2,000 years ago. wrecking yeah yeah Flip back to that episode. yeah yeah so Anyway, I think that's probably but all we have to say about all this, but we do have some episodes coming up because we saw some other cool things that I hope we get a chance to talk about because we got to walk on the Mayflower too.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, our next episode will be about the coastal stuff that we saw. We did see Plymouth the Rock. Yep, Plymouth the Rock. And we went to the historical whaling center of early America. It was actually Massachusetts. Was that Massachusetts? Oh, that is Massachusetts, yeah. And then we went to the other place in Rhode Island. Yeah, so we went to a bunch of cool places. Hopefully, everybody's happy to hear us talk about our visits to historical places and not so much archeology, but. So much history up here in brand new England. Brand new England. England 2.0. All right. special. All right. Well, with that, I think we'll see you on Roadster Adventures, and on Instagram, and maybe ARCPOD. Oh, I do have one more thing to mention. Oh my God, one more thing. This is the longest segment ever. What do we add? 28 minutes? Yes, but we're still under an hour for the show, so calm down, everybody. Stop writing in. If you do have questions and comments, write Dr. Andrew Kinkela.
00:50:38
Speaker
and Then we'll find out. no Anyway, I did, and I should have done this a long time ago because Google Podcasts basically shut everything down in the last year. I know not very many people probably subscribed on Google Podcasts, but if you did, and now you're listening somewhere else, if you prefer to find this content on YouTube, Then I put all the shows on YouTube and by the time you get this YouTube should finally have sucked everything in off the RSS feeds So if YouTube is your preferred medium you can subscribe to it's still the audio versions But you can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube now because YouTube has podcast subscriptions That's just how Google's doing it these days. They don't have their own podcast subscription thing anymore. They basically shut it all down and All the podcasts from the APN are at the Archeology Podcast Network YouTube channel, and you can subscribe to those podcasts there. so There's over 2,500 episodes on YouTube. and now I'm working some things out because YouTube doesn't like the way things sound sometimes, and I've noticed I've got to go through. Some of them were marked as copyrighted.
00:51:40
Speaker
because of certain sounds and things in there, because the AI thinks it's copyrighted, and I'm like, we have no sounds, what are you talking about? Yeah, so I gotta go figure that out. But most of the episodes should be in there, and it should be good to go. So anyway, with that, we'll see you guys next time around. Bye.
00:52:01
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet dot.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:52:24
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.