Revolutionary Dwellings – Homes of Patriots and Loyalists in Marblehead

Nearly every house in Marblehead that predates 1775 was the home of a serviceman in America’s Revolutionary War. An estimated 300 houses still survive, even if modified by later generations, out of perhaps 525 or so that existed as the war began, when Marblehead was apparently still the sixth most populous metropolis in British North America. In June 1775, nearly 600 men and teenage boys from those homes joined the Continental Army’s new “Marblehead Regiment” under Colonel John Glover, which grew from the earlier rebel Patriot militia led by Colonel Jeremiah Lee until his death in May 1775. Starting in Autumn 1775, hundreds of them would sail out as captains and crews of privateer vessels. And many would lose their lives that way. But the “prize” vessels they captured helped to supply and pay soldiers in the new nation’s struggling army, and to outfit its fledgling navy. Over the course of the war’s eight long years, an estimated total of 1,400 or more would serve from this town of about 950 families–– all living in those 525 houses! Nearly all were Patriots, as only about a dozen heads of households can be identified as Tories, or Loyalists. And nearly every house was filled with women and many children who suffered greatly. It would take several generations for the town to fully recover–– and that was only briefly. But that is the reason so many pre-Revolutionary homes still survive. Come learn about where some of Mhd’s. Revolutionary heroes and their families lived.

Judy Anderson is an independent social, cultural, and architectural historian who worked at the Marblehead Museum for 16 years
as the organization’s first administrative director in 1994 and the only specified curator of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion from 2001-2010.