|
To | Estabrook Woods home page |
Each Patriot's Day, early in the morning, the Carlisle minute men (and their neighbors) come down the old Estabrook road. They reenact the journey the minute men took on April 19th, 1775 as they hurried to the fight at the North Bridge. That day was the start of the American Revolution. |
|
 |
|
| These modern minute men pause at the old Estabrook cellar
hole (1683) and have a brief patriotic ceremony (above) as a reminder that
the walk is about more than the donuts they enjoyed earlier on the
Carlisle Green. (Parkman Howe reminds us that history is not bunk, it is
our collective act of memory.) These Carlisle minute men (from what was
then northern Concord) were distinguished by sprigs of pine stuck in their
hatbands. (The tops of the trees in the distant background are pines on Middlesex School's eastern property line. Most people do not know that Middlesex School property can be seen from the old Estabrook road and cellar. Unfortunately, this line is now the edge of the school's Development Zone B, and buildings there would be visible from the historic minute man road.) |
|
 |
 |
| In remembrance, the minute men each year fire a volley over the Estabrook's colonial cellar hole. This photo was taken by Nick Chase on April 19, 1975, the Bicentennial of the American Revolution. Click for larger version & see a ghostly Ken Harte, a friend of Estabrook Woods.) | This plaque in Carlisle Center names the men that mustered there and marched down the Estabrook road. Other paths cross Estabrook, which others may have taken en route to Estabrook's Punkatasset Hill, the assembly spot prior to the Fight at the North Bridge, April 19, 1775. |
Others came to the Estabrook country that morning in 1775-- some of the women, children, and infirm were sent here while the British occupied the town. For example:
"One of the Clarks took his wife and baby off into the woods beyond what is Hugh Cargill Road and hid them. He warned them to stay there until he returned, but said if he had not returned by dark, they must come out of hiding, for he would be dead."
 |
 |
| Today, Carlisle townspeople (and their dogs) follow the
minute men down the Estabrook road to the North Bridge across the Concord
River, where they participate in the annual reenactment of the start of
the Revolutionary War. The picture on the left was taken on the nation's
Bicentennial, April 19, 1975, by Nick Chase of Carlisle. The
picture on the right was taken on Patriot's Day in the late 1990s.
|
|
For more terrific history --The 1683 Estabrook cellar & stone circles: clickMore yankee ruins: cellars, quarries & mills: clickOther National Register sites near Bateman's Pond:
|
To | Estabrook Woods home page |