{"id":1921,"date":"2026-03-25T11:27:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T15:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essexheritage.org\/rev250\/?post_type=tribe_events&#038;p=1921"},"modified":"2026-03-25T13:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:51:09","slug":"revolutionary-near-miss-how-the-rev-wars-first-battle-could-have-occurred-in-marblehead","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/essexheritage.org\/rev250\/event\/revolutionary-near-miss-how-the-rev-wars-first-battle-could-have-occurred-in-marblehead\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolutionary Near Miss \u2013 How the Rev. War\u2019s First Battle Could Have Occurred in Marblehead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this first of eleven <strong>FREE<\/strong> illustrated talks offered by the Marblehead 250 Committee and Marblehead&#8217;s Abbot Public Library in 2026, the United States\u2019 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 \u201cmarched through the town\u201d and on to Salem\u2019s North Bridge, instead of in Lexington and at Concord\u2019s North Bridge less than two months later, on April 19. That infamous \u201dfirst battle\u201d 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 \u201cGround Zero\u201d for the seven long years of war that followed.<\/p>\n<p><em>Judy Anderson is an independent social, cultural, and architectural historian who worked at the Marblehead Museum for 16 years<\/em><br \/>\n<em>as the organization\u2019s first administrative director in 1994 and the only specified curator of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion from 2001-2010.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this first of eleven FREE illustrated talks offered by the Marblehead 250 Committee and Marblehead&#8217;s Abbot Public Library in 2026, the United States\u2019 250th year, see and hear the&#8230;","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1956,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","_tribe_events_is_hybrid":"","_tribe_events_is_virtual":"","_tribe_events_virtual_video_source":"","_tribe_events_virtual_embed_video":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button_text":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_at":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_to":[],"_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_event":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_views":"","_tribe_events_virtual_url":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[],"class_list":["post-1921","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Revolutionary Near Miss \u2013 How the Rev. 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