Women’s Liberty Monument
This is the Lexington Women’s Liberty Monument, officially titled “Something is Being Done” that was unveiled in May 2024 in the historic center of Lexington. The memorial was created by sculptor Meredith Bergmann and was commissioned by the organization LexSeeHer to recognize the women whose stories had been left out of Lexington’s public monuments.
The phrase engraved beneath where I am standing – Something Must Be Done – comes from the words attributed to Abigail Harrington on the morning of April 19, 1775. As British troops approached Lexington, she awakened her son, a fifer in Captain Parker’s militia, warning him,
“The regulars are out, and something must be done.”
What makes this monument powerful is that it tells women’s history across centuries. The bronze arch contains more than twenty figures representing women connected to Lexington history: abolitionist, enslaved women who fought for freedom, suffragists, educators, architects, scientists, activists and mothers of the Revolution.
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The First Meeting Houses of Lexington
While walking across Lexington’s historic town center, I stopped at this simple granite marker that identifies the site of the town’s first three meeting houses. It is easy to overlook, yet it marks one of the most important locations in Lexington’s early history. The first meeting house was built here in 1692, when Lexington was […]
“Stand Your Ground” Monument
On the Green in Lexington, there is this stone monument, low to the ground, a rough granite boulder. Carved into ts surface are words that carry the weight of a nation’s beginning: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” These words are […]
A 1777 Child’s Primer in Revolutionary
Inside Buckman Tavern in Lexington, I came across this remarkably small book. It is a children’s primer dating from 1777, only two years after the fighting at Lexington and Concord and just one year after the Declaration of Independence. On the first page, John Hancock is identified as a leader of the new nation. That […]
