15 June 1992: Boston, Massachusetts

The Motel 6 in Braintree, Massachusetts was in walking distance of a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority subway/commuter rail station, which allowed us to leave the car parked at the motel while we went into Boston for the day. First, though, we had a pancake breakfast at the family restaurant next to the motel.

We walked much of the 2.5 mile (4 km) Freedom Trail, a red-bricked path connecting seventeen historical sites in downtown Boston.

On our way to the starting point of the Trail, we walked past the Bull & Finch Pub, which is best known for providing the exterior of the bar seen in the television show Cheers.

We began our walking tour at Boston Common, a fifty acre public park that was once a cow pasture in the 1630s and later a camp for British soldiers prior to the Revolutionary War. From the Common, we could see the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House.

Massachusetts State House

Statue of Quaker martyr Mary Dyer on Boston Common

I remember we bought lemonade from a vendor on the Common. It was a hot and humid late spring day, and from earlier experience in Washington DC we knew lemonade was a good treatment for such conditions.

Then it was on to the Granary Burial Ground, dating back to 1660, the burial place of notables like Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Crispus Attucks, among others. It seemed incongruous to see such an old cemetery right in the heart of a bustling metropolis.

Granary Burial Ground

Grave of Paul Revere

Grave of Samuel Adams

Grave of John Hancock

Other sites I remember seeing include Old City Hall, Old South Meeting House (where the Boston Tea Party was organized in 1773), and the site of the Boston Massacre. So much important history occurred in Boston, and so many of the sites where it happened are still there.

Old City Hall

Statue of Benjamin Franklin outside Old City Hall

Interior of Old South Meeting House

Interior of Old South Meeting House

I later discovered ancestral links to Boston. My maternal 9th-great-grandfather Joseph Boude was an innkeeper and distiller in Boston in the 1650s and 1660s, and his grandson (my 7th-great-granduncle) Increase Gatchell was the schoolmaster at his own music and dance school there in the 1720s.

We did some shopping at the downtown Boston Woolworth, and also ate lunch in its cafeteria, which was the last time I was ever in a Woolworth's.

After a long day on our feet walking around the city, we took the subway back to Braintree. We drove to a local Italian restaurant for dinner, and then returned to the motel to get some sleep before our journey continued the next morning.