Revolutionary Near Miss – How the Rev. War’s First Battle Could Have Occurred in Marblehead

In this first of eleven FREE illustrated talks offered by the Marblehead 250 Committee and Marblehead’s Abbot Public Library in 2026, the United States’ 250th year, see and hear the fascinating story of how the first shots of the American Revolution were almost fired in Marblehead or Salem on a cold Sunday in February 1775, when nearly 250 British soldiers “marched through the town” and on to Salem’s North Bridge, instead of in Lexington and at Concord’s North Bridge less than two months later, on April 19. That infamous ”first battle” could easily have happened here or in Salem, with loss of Marblehead lives and more instead. And that near-miss episode could have made Marblehead and Salem instead of Lexington and Concord “Ground Zero” for the seven long years of war that followed.

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.