Revolution 250 Podcast
Revolution 250 Podcast
Revolution 'Round the Corner - The Edmund Fowle House in Watertown
We go on the road, for the first of our "Revolution 'Round the Corner" podcasts! Today we visit the Edmund Fowle House in Watertown. Built by cordwainer Edmund Fowle in 1772, it was still unfinished when the Massachusetts Provincial Congress leased it two years later to house the Provincial Council--with Boston occupied by British troops and the charter government suspended by General Gage--the elected government moved to Watertown. The Provincial Congress met in the Meeting House across the street, and the Council met upstairs at the Edmund Fowle House. Here on July 18, 1776 they read the Declaration from the window--its first public reading in Massachusetts--and the next day, July 19, they made the independent country's first international treaty, with the Mi'kmaq Nation, the first to recognize American independence.
We take a tour of the Edmund Fowle House with Marilynne Roach and Joyce Kelly from the Historical Society of Watertown, which has been restoring this remarkable place!
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Well welcome.
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Revolution around the corner.
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All around Massachusetts there are sites that were part of the Revolution.
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Buildings that would have witnessed the scenes and that the people participating would have seen.
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And we're at one of them now in Watertown, the Edmund Fowle House, which was the headquarters of the Provincial Council.
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from 1775 to 1776.
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The British were occupying Boston, had suspended the colonial government, the provincial government, and the provincial government met anyway.
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The assembly met here in Watertown at a meeting house across the street.
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They chose a 28-member council and they looked for a place to meet and here it was.
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Edmund Fowle Jr.
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had just built this house.
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The second floor wasn't yet finished and it would be a perfect spot for the provincial council to meet.
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And now the Edmund Fowle House is being preserved by the Watertown Historical Society.
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which is overseeing its restoration, opening it to visitors, turning it into a museum, which tells this story as well as other stories about Watertown.
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And we're happy to have with us Marilyn Roach and Joyce Kelly from the Watertown Historical Society, who are going to show us a bit more of the house and tell us a bit more about its history.
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Welcome.
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Thank you, Marilyn.
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Thank you, Joyce.
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It's a well-kept secret.
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Well, let's not keep it a secret for much longer.
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And it was restored in 2004 to 2008, so the inside now looks like it did in 1775.
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Interesting.
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Fascinating.
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Well, thank you, and now I look forward to seeing the inside.
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Welcome to the Edmund Fowle House in Watertown.
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Thank you.
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Formerly the seat of the rebel government at the beginning of the Revolution, the civil government, because even though the militia is forming itself into the provincial army,
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You need civil government to keep life going on.
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And a lot of it happened here.
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So the provincial congress comes to Watertown and they meet over in the meeting house.
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And then they choose the members of the council and there's 28 guys who are looking for a place to meet.
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Yes, where they can hear themselves think because there's a lot going on over there.
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And this was one of the closest houses.
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It had a very small family.
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A married couple.
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The wife had died in childbirth.
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It was a new house, very close to the meeting house.
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It was built in 1772.
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It was a very small family.
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They could move in with relatives.
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And the upstairs was not finished yet.
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One corner of it maybe, but the rest was apparently just down to the studs.
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So they could make as big a meeting room as they could manage with the space for what they needed.
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We're going to take a look at that in a bit, but can you tell me a little bit about Edmund Fowle, the guy who had built the house?
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Yeah, as I said, 72.
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That was the year his father had died.
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He's inherited the family farm, or most of it, and builds this house, which we know because that's the year the trees were cut down, according to dendrochronology, from his woodlot further up the hill.
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and he gets married, so this is a new life he's starting.
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He's called a cordwainer, so he's a leather worker like his father, and they also farmed because there was fields and woodlots and it must have been an orchard because he had a cider press, hot cider possibly, and he was working as a cordwainer at that point anyway.
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Would he have been working in the house, do you think?
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Or a shop on the premises.
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So why don't we take a look around the house?
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Or, well, you can try to tell us a little bit about the kitchen.
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Oh, yeah.
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Well, the house, in its time, got moved slightly and divided into a two-family building.
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So there were other entrances and other stairs put in and rooms divided up.
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And when it was moved, of course, you don't need the whole huge fireplace because the technology has advanced to small stoves.
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This was rediscovered by the preservation architects during the renovation, and they figured out exactly how big it was, how big and tall.
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The subflooring indicated how much of a half it should have been.
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So this turned into a nice-looking colonial kitchen.
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It did?
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But this had been a two-family house for quite a while, too.
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Yes, it was.
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Originally, the stairs went up to what is the council chamber.
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out through this room, but the addition of a side entrance blocked that.
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But, yeah, it's gone through changes, but then, figuring out what it looked like.
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So you're doing it, and you grew up in Watertown, and you went to school across the street, but didn't know the insignificance of this house.
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Well, you know, they never mentioned it in class.
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They'd mention the Revolution every so often in Carlevier, but not Watertown.
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Yeah, and here you had a rate.
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It was right across the street, but it hadn't been restored yet.
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It was still rental property at that time.
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Okay, good.
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So let's take a look in some of the rest of the house, because you have a lot of exhibits here, but we're really going to be focusing on the Revolution.
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Sure, we're putting together an exhibit for the 250th.
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Very good.
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But the house is 250 years old already.
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So this room would have been?
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A parlor, I guess, but of course when the council was here there were a lot of people staying in the place and they seemed to have bedded down everywhere.
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It was crowded.
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So here is one, there are two of them actually on the walls here who
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He stayed in the house.
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Joyce, you know that.
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And Joyce has some fun things to say about James Warren.
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So James Warren became the president of the Provincial Congress after Joseph Warren was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
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And he stayed in this house on and off for a year and a half.
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Really?
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And often his, which we were really surprised to hear, that Mercy Otis Warren, his wife came up here and visited with him.
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and brought the children.
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We were very surprised to hear that.
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Lots of people stayed in this house.
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James Warren writes to John Adams down in Philadelphia.
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John Adams says, You are my eyes and ears.
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What is going on up there?
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James writes back to him in October of 1775 and says,
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he apologizes for not writing and says, this crowd of company must be my excuse.
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Everyone either eats, drinks, or sleeps in this house, and some do all three.
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Wow.
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So a crowd of people eating, drinking, sleeping in here, and also running the provincial council upstairs.
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Yes, yes.
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And Mercy's picture is over here, portrait is over here.
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And she writes sometimes from James' side when he's writing letters that headline, Out of Watertown.
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Really interesting.
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In the case, you have one of the shoes that maybe Edmund Fowle made this shoe that was found under the floorboards.
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And those are original boards from the house as well.
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Good, good.
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He or his father probably.
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Yeah, interesting.
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So do you want to take a look upstairs at the council chamber?
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Yeah.
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Well, welcome to the council chamber.
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Well, thank you.
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So this was an unfinished room.
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In 75, yes.
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But the council then... They ordered, did it be fitted up for the requirements and later when the house was divided, it was known that it went back all the way through.
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But it was more than just two rooms.
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It was actually L-shaped.
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Okay.
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Which was a surprise to everyone.
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Yes.
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Preservation architects figured it out.
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And they did...
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The fact that this is one continuous whitewashed ceiling is what helped them figure out that it was original and that's how far along it went.
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So this is the original ceiling and floor.
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And floor, yes.
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John and Sam Adams walked on these floorboards.
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Yep, we have the roll call for the meetings.
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So there are 28 members of the council.
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They were chosen by the provincial assembly.
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Yes.
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And some of them are notable people, like James Otis was a counselor, Samuel Adams, John Adams.
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James Otis, the father.
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So the senior Otis.
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Yes, yes.
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And James Bowden.
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And again, like we said, John and Sam Adams.
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Yeah, lots of names.
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Roger T. Payne.
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Right.
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And then Moses Gill has a special connection with the house.
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Oh, he does.
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Because Edmund Fowle apparently became a friend.
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Yes, so Moses Gill is from the western part of the state, Princeton, and when Edmund remarried, his first wife had died in childbirth, when Edmund remarried, he named his first child Moses Gill Fowle, after Moses Gill, obviously, so obviously they became very good friends.
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I mean, there are several bills here where...
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that Edmund gets paid for doing certain things, going and picking up chairs or delivering something to George Washington out at headquarters in Cambridge.
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And his second child, his next child, was named Rebecca Boylston Fowle, which is Moses Gill's wife.
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So, yeah, there's a connection there.
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And then there's another child named Marshall Spring.
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Yes, named for the local Tory doctor, who was well-liked in town.
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He didn't make any...
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secret of his feelings and he wasn't trying to undermine anything.
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But every time the Committee of Safety thought he should be arrested for the public good, his grateful patients would rally around because he didn't charge if he couldn't pay.
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And he stayed free and he treated everybody.
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He lived in the western part of town in what's now, what was then to the Waltham line and his house was a hospital during the siege.
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So the Provincial Congress met here, and what they, you know, our friend Edmund Fowle has to come up with chairs.
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They asked him to get chairs.
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Yes, he has to fetch them from Weltonham.
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There were going to be other chairs, but they got burnt in the Battle of Hunker Hill fire.
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In fact, they have a receipt here for them, the chairs.
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Yeah, it was actually Deacon Larkin, 18 chairs, and then a great chair.
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another great chair, and they were moved from Charlestown Ferry to Mr. Beecham's warehouse and were consumed by flames on June 17th, 1775.
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And Deacon Larkin is the man who owned Paul Revere's voice.
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Yes, yes.
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He had all sorts of interesting diamonds.
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Yes, there's also an invoice here about having a chest made for the provincial notes to be put in that Paul Revere was printing.
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And they had to come here, and they weren't valid until they were signed by, is it two members of the council?
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Yes.
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So they were kept in a locked chest up here.
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So revered in the engravings, but then we think that they were printed by Benjamin Eads, who had set up his printing press.
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In Watertown Square.
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Which is Watertown Square now.
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Yes.
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So a lot's happening in Watertown Square.
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Oh no, a lot has happened.
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In fact, there's one week in July of 1776, one of these two big events happening in this house.
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Oh, yes.
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The brand new Declaration of Independence, a copy of it, arrives in Watertown.
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It's worked its way north from Philadelphia, and it's first read to the public from the council chamber window, so it would be one of those two windows.
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As well as from the old state house.
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As well as from the old state house.
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provincial government, were they still meeting here?
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Yes, the smallpox left.
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So not everything went on.
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But they were here that day.
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And the very next day, the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet delegates who had been conferring with the provincial congress in the meeting house about which side they were going to fight on, they signed the Watertown Treaty that they will fight alongside the Americans.
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rebels on an equal basis.
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And I believe they had some, they held a turning point in Maine when Macias was attacked.
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So apparently that treaty has never been broken as the modern day McMax reminded Massachusetts a couple of decades ago now.
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And causing them to find the treaty, the copy of the treaty in the archives, restore it and
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It's considered the first international treaty because it was right after the independence and they were from Canada, the Canadian main border.
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That's why there was a question to decide to fight on.
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But they'd already taken the sword away from the British officer who was sent to get to side with the British and they refused and they took the sword anyway and presented it to General Washington, at least it was supposed to be.
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So this house has belonged to the Historical Society for 100 years, more than 100 years?
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Yeah, 1922.
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But it's only been fairly recently that you've been able, been in the process of restoring it.
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Yes, we had a substantial rider on a bill back in 2004, and then we had another $200,000 from Mass Tourism Council, and so the house got restored.
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It took, yeah, four years, you know,
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doing research, dismantling parts of it.
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North Bennett Street School helped out a lot.
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They did a lot of the dismantling.
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They adopted this room as a class project under the supervision of their teachers.
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At one point, they took this mantelpiece off of her, leaning on the other side.
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and they recreated it with the proportions to fit the second fireplace which was discovered even though it had been completely banished when a second set of stairs led up to the other apartment because the house was two-family at that point.
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What they discovered that existed with these tiny clues was just amazing.
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and find out what they're looking for.
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And even the fact that there's a verdigris glaze on a fancy woodwork.
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They could be arrested as traitors at any time.
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But no, we want crown molding.
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We'd like some verdigris glaze there.
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How about the wings going there?
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You were saying earlier, the members of the council, the ritual waiters, that they wanted a little comfort.
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And then you actually can see
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Parallels with the old State House Council Chamber.
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Yes, which is a very grand place.
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This is comparable to it.
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It is, yes.
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As is the Senate Room in the current State House.
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It is, it is, yes.
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They're not going to be meeting in an unfinished attic.
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Right, no, they're not sitting on a pumpkin out in the vine.
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Nobody knows.
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Interesting.
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Is there more to see on this side?
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There's another fireplace.
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There's another fireplace.
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That's the second fireplace.
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And one of the clues was, so this had been, in behind here had been turned into a hallway when the house was moved because they couldn't take the central chimney.
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And so when the conservators were trying to figure things out, they found a little bit of an original plaster ceiling in there.
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And they wondered, why is the whole room, you know, this whole room, but there's this little bit here.
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And then they pulled up floorboards here, discovered the hearth layout, and assumed that this was a closet.
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And that's why it was an original ceiling in there.
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And that is a reconstruction by the north end of the school.
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Yes.
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And so the room then was L-shaped.
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And what was over on this side?
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So there is a bedroom over there.
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And the conservatives assumed that that was
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was the only part that was done up here.
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We had Richard Nylander come in, who's the wallpaper expert, and he dated one layer of that wallpaper to the 1770s.
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And then behind that door is a small room that was also made back then in 1775, and that's where the clerk kept it, did his notes and did his work.
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Okay, interesting.
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And they had put into warden bathrooms with a cloth for the tub.
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Okay.
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When it was a rental.
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Interesting.
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And this is a picture of the Coolidge Tavern, which was right on the river.
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And Redcoats and Americans both met there, ate there, drank there, and Washington also went there twice and stayed overnight, in fact.
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He didn't sleep there.
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He did.
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He didn't.
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As president.
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Yes, as president.
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And he complained about the accommodations.
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Yes.
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He was a rich guy, too, so, you know.
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Well, he had certain standards.
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Yes, exactly.
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He was president.
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Yes, it's true.
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Something about what they both said.
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And the food, he didn't like the food.
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He didn't like his food, so it doesn't get very good Yelp reviews.
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No, maybe from your average person it did.
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Yes, in fact, there was a meeting of the delegates that were going down before the war started to Philadelphia, and they met there with Sons of Liberty for a big send-off.
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And actually that is the house that Charles Brigham grew up in.
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The architect?
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Oh, really?
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Born in Watertown.
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Designed the back L on the state house.
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The Mother Church for Christian Science.
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The barge house.
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He was the one who bought this house and moved it from the corner.
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And he was a founding member of the Historical Society, and then he sold it to the Historical Society in 1922.
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So he bought it as a way of preserving it.
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Yes.
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More or less, because he divided it up into two.
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And he changed it.
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He built a few more houses on the street.
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In fact, the house right next door, he built for his mother, and he and his mother lived there for a while.
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Okay, interesting.
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So this is Doll's Cradle.
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Doll's Cradle.
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that was made from a cask of tea that was thrown over during the Boston Tea Party.
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Wow, that is amazing.
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So it was made in the 17th century?
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Yes, yes.
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And there are a couple of plaques on there that talk about how Leonard Bond made it for his sister Nancy.
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Wow.
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Yeah, and we got it in the early 1900s.
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There was an article in the newspapers about it.
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That's fascinating.
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Apparently Nancy is an old woman who was living in Chicago.
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And her grandson donated it to the Historical Society.
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And it had some beautiful decoration on it.
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It does, it really does.
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They screwed it to the very board.
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Yes.
20:21.741 --> 20:27.925
Now you just had a ceremony marking the grave of a Tea Party participant in Watertown, and you said there were three.
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Yes, yes.
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Samuel Bonnet is the one that we recognized, and then we also had Phineas Stearns and John Randall
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Randall, who was a civilian, but we're not sure where they're buried.
20:43.354 --> 20:44.375
Okay, interesting.
20:44.655 --> 20:47.576
Havana has one on his grave, a marker on his grave now.
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Yes, he's got a beautiful, big, beautiful gravestone.
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Very good.
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Good, thank you.
20:53.639 --> 20:58.321
So this is a portrait of Rebecca Fowle, Rebecca Fowle Bradley, who she ended up marrying.
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But Rebecca Fowle grew up in this house.
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Her full name is Rebecca Boylston Fowle.
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And that name comes from the wife of Moses Gill.
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So Edmund married after the Revolutionary War, again for the second time.
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And the first child was named Moses Gill Fowle, after Moses Gill, the counselor from Princeton who met upstairs.
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And the second child was Rebecca Boylston Fowle, who is Moses Gill's wife.
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So obviously, they became very good friends while
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Moses Gill was sitting upstairs in the Executive Council.
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The painting was done by the famous artist Henry Sargent.
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Also, her husband's portrait is over there.
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That's also done by Henry Sargent.
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Henry Sargent did the dinner party.
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He did Peter Fanuel in Fanuel Hall.
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He has done many famous paintings.
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This is a cradle for twins from the 1780s.
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from the Sanger family.
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Apparently the kids were put foot to foot and as they grew older they probably pushed against each other, but it would accommodate both of them at once until they learned to crawl out.
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So we have a ledger from the late 1780s to the late 1790s, a tavern ledger, Mellon Tavern.
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It was in Watertown Square and Main Street.
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And it came up on eBay.
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And some pictures were on eBay, and I saw that Edmund Fowle's name was in it.
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And so we wanted it.
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And it was going for $2,000 on eBay.
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And we are a nonprofit.
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Nobody gets paid.
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We have no money.
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But anyways, I spoke to a friend of ours who used to be on the board here.
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And he buys things off of eBay often.
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And so he went in and
22:56.710 --> 23:00.073
and waited and got it for us for $500.
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And so we find Edmond in here and his brothers, Samuel, Jeremiah, John.
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We found Samuel Parris, must be the grandson of Samuel Parris from Salem.
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Only he lived in East Sudbury at the time.
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And it says that in the entry.
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Yes, it does, so we know it was him.
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So what kinds of things are the fellows buying at the tavern?
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So there's lots of punch bought.
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We have one where one of the brothers bought a dozen sleigh bells.
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People bought their horses there.
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They are buying butter and different meats, different vegetables, buttons.
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Interesting.
23:36.551 --> 23:41.233
Yeah, we were really surprised of some of the stuff that, I mean, you assume that a tavern just has...
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drink and food, but they actually sell dry goods and other things.
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I know my tavern bill doesn't look anything.
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Yes, I know.
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Yes, it's very, and he crosses out every time somebody pays him.
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Interesting.
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There are lots of names in there.
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So he's putting down what they owe and then he crosses it out.
23:59.419 --> 24:02.040
Yes, and we recognize lots of names from Watertown.
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And there was also someone passing through Crane the Paper Maker, which I assume is the crane paper company that still makes paper.
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They make the currency, yes.
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Yeah, it's very interesting.
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So I'm going through it and making notes.
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Great, very good.
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Thank you.
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I want to thank the Historical Society of Watertown for this great tour of the Edmund Fowle House.
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And if you have a place in your neighborhood, your town, your community, you think we should showcase on Revolution Around the Corner, send an email to Jonathan Lane, jlane at revolution250.org.
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And I look forward to seeing you next time and seeing another piece of the revolution around the corner.
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Thank you.