Prospect Hill – Salina B Baker

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Henry Knox and His Noble Train of Artillery

In December 1775, twenty-five-year old Boston bookseller Henry Knox, led an expedition from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to retrieve 50 tons of artillery and bring it back to General George Washington. Hear the story of Knox’s noble train of artillery and this amazing journey.

Joseph Warren’s 1775 Boston Massacre Oration at Old South Meeting House

The pulpit today at Old South Meeting House

The patriots commemorated the anniversaries of the Boston Massacre, a bloody conflict that took place near the State House on March 5, 1770, between the citizens of Boston and British soldiers in which five civilians died. Hear the story of the circumstances surrounding Dr. Joseph Warren’s 1775 oration on the event.

Dr. Joseph Warren and Battle of Bunker Hill

The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on the Charlestown peninsula north of Boston on June 17, 1775. The peninsula was the original objective of both the colonial and British troops. Hear the story of Dr. Joseph Warren’s part in that pyrrhic battle.

Joseph Warren Funeral at King’s Chapel and Aftermath of Battle of Bunker Hill

After the Siege of Boston ended in March 1776 and the British withdrew, Dr. Joseph Warren’s remains were recovered from the Charlestown peninsula where he was hastily buried after the Battle of Bunker Hill. Hear the story of his honorable obsequies.

New Year’s Day raising of the Union flag on Prospect Hill

General George Washington proclaimed January 1, 1776 was the first day of “a new army, which in every point of view is entirely continental.” Hear the story of the celebration of that event.

Billopp House

The Billop House on Staten Island was the site of a peace conference between British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams during the Revolutionary War in September 1776. Hear the story of what transpired.

Battle of White Plains

The Battle of White Plains in New York was fought between General George Washington’s Continental Army and General William Howe’s British and Hessian armies on October 28, 1776. Hear the story of this important battle.

On New Year’s Day, Monday, January 1, 1776, British officers approached the American lines in Roxbury, Massachusetts under a flag of truce. At least one of the men was carrying copies of a broadside for distribution among the soldiers of the Continental Army. This was King George III’s speech, delivered before Parliament back on October 27, 1775. It had been published with the hope of putting the fear of God into the rebel army.

The king declared that the colonists’s “strongest protestations of loyalty to me” were both absurd and offensive given that they were presently engaged in a “rebellious war . . . carried for the purpose of establishing an independent Empire.” The colonists must either return to the British fold or admit that they were engaged in a war of independence.

The reaction among the army was rage and indignation. The speech was burned in public by the soldiers. Its charges of traitorous rebellion and its ominous reference to “foreign assistance,” assuredly ended any hope of reconciliation or a short war. The effect of the King’s speech on General George Washington was profound.

If nothing else could “satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry,” he wrote to his aide Colonel Joseph Reed, “we were determined to shake off all connections with a state so unjust and unnatural. This I would tell them, not under covert, but in words as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness.”

As it happened, Washington had already acted to strengthen the solidarity and resolve of his troops. January 1 was the first day of “a new army, which in every point of view is entirely continental.” He stressed the hope that “the importance of the great Cause we are engaged in will be deeply impressed upon every man’s mind.” Everything “dear and valuable to freemen” was at stake.

To celebrate this event, Washington replaced the large red flag previously raised by Israel Putnam on the heights of Prospect Hill. With the crash of a 13-gun salute, he raised a new flag — a flag of thirteen red and white stripes, with the British colors (the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew) represented in the upper corner. The works at Prospect Hill were the equal of any fortification in Boston being situated on a large outcropping with a commanding view of the Mystic River and all of Boston Harbor.

Soon after the Battle of Chelsea Creek, Israel Putnam’s men had transformed the British schooner Diana’s seventy-five foot mainmast into a flag pole, and it was from this tar-stained pine that the Union flag of the Continental Army proudly waved. When the British in Boston saw it flying from Prospect Hill, they at first mistook it for a flag of surrender.

e5e078302370a4ed890a7e54c4e878b6 — Prospect Hill and the Union Flag today.

It has been argued that the Somerville, Massachusetts annual New Year’s Day flag ceremony on Prospect Hill commemorates something that never really happened. There are others who claim it is accurate.

Resources:

https://patch.com/massachusetts/somerville/research-upholds-traditional-prospect-hill-flag-story

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Bunker Hill A City, A Siege, A Revolution. 2013: Penguin Books, New York, NY.

McCullough, David. 1776. 2005: Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.