We’re past Lughnasa now, and the days are noticeably shorter. At this time of year, I always look for a few plants with spectacular colors.
Lobelia cardinalis
The Cardinal Flower grows in wet ground — in swamps, or along streams, rivers and ponds. I don’t often find a cardinal flower blooming where I can get close enough to see the details of the flowers, but this one was growing in a wet place along one of the paths around Aaron River Reservoir. The vivid red color, and the dramatic structure of the flower, makes it especially memorable.
Danaus plexippus on Asclepias tuberosa
Butterfly Milkweed grows in open fields and meadows. The bright orange is pretty enough by itself, but when an orange and black Monarch Butterfly lands on it, it’s truly spectacular.
Cuscuta gronovii
At this time of year along one of the inlets of Cohasset Harbor, I always see marsh plants covered in strange-looking orange filaments. Common Dodder is a parasitic plant that has no chlorophyll; it gets all its nutrients by sucking the sap out of a host plant. Parasites always creep me out a little — though I suppose letting your food source live is better than killing it, the way we humans kill carrots and potatoes, or cows and chickens. Nevertheless, the showy orange stems of Common Dodder twined in among green leaves is quite a beautiful sight.
I started out this series by saying that sometimes the stories of Revolutionary War heroes and heroines have been partially forgotten, or details have been obscured. In this follow-up post, I’ll tell a little about how I researched the stories of Persis and Allen Lincoln, and the story of Briton Nichols. Maybe this will inspire other people to do some research into ordinary Revolutionary War veterans — a worthwhile thing to do as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution.
One place to start researching an individual is by looking through the local history of a given town or city. During the middle part of the 19th century, many municipalities from the 13 original colonies had local histories written. And in most cases, whoever wrote that local history would be sure to record any local traditions about those who served in the Revolution. So, for example, for the town of Cohasset where I live, Victor Bigelow wrote a history of the town in 1898, and he provided lists of those who served and told many stories of the town’s participation in the Revolution.
That being said, local histories may contain local traditions that have gotten muddled over time, and most local histories contain lots of small errors of fact. So the next step is to see if you can find corroborating evidence from other sources. Which can be a huge job. Cohasset is a small town, but there were more than 125 men from the town who did military service during the Revolution. Volunteer local historians like me don’t have time to research all 125+ individuals who served in the Revolution. You have to narrow your focus to research a few individuals in depth.
But how do you narrow your focus? Here are some strategies:
(1) Research a college graduate, who would be far more likely to appear in the written record than non-college graduates. For example, you can find brief biographies of Harvard graduates in the series Sibley’s Harvard Graduates.
(2) Research famous or semi-famous persons, or persons who are part of prominent families. For example, if you were researching persons from Braintree or Quincy, you could start with anyone related to John Adams; there are lots of published genealogies and published histories of the Adamses.
(3) To research ordinary people, start with unusual person names (such as Briton Nichols) and unusual place names (such as Cohasset). Those will be easiest to find information on.
(4) As you’re researching one person, you might run into a lead from someone else altogether (e.g., when researching Briton Nichols, I discovered Ambrose Bates kept a war diary). Keep note of those other leads so you can follow up later.
Next, here are some research strategies:
(A) Use the power of internet search. More and more 18th century documents are being digitized, making information easily available online. This works best with Search using several different search tools — I start with DuckDuckGo, first with the person’s name and place name along, then adding the following to the search string: site:.archive.org (which searches through the many books digitized by the Internet Archive) and site:.loc.gov (which searches the Library of Congress website). Next, I’ll search Google Books. Finally, I’ll try regular Google search (Google seems to turn up a lot of crap these days, which is why I leave it till last).
(B) Search genealogy sites. I use FamilySearch.org, which is free, although it does require you to set up a free account. Paid genealogy sites may give you more information, but FamilySearch.org is a good place to look for Revolutionary War military service records. Additionally, amateur genealogists may have done additional research on some individuals — but be cautious about trusting the work of amateur genealogists. Always click through to look at the sources they cite, and then click through and look at the actual digitized images for those sources (which is how I found out that Persis Lincoln and Allen Lincoln were married by Rev. John Browne of Cohasset).
(C) Don’t forget your local library. Many local libraries have local history sections. If there’s a librarian who has responsibility for the local history section, get to know that person, and ask for help when you need it.
EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT: For each little tidbit of information you find, make sure you record where you found it, including full bibliographic information. Footnote everything! You want other people to be able to review your research. You want citations for every single fact. If you don’t have citations for everything, others will assume you’re a sloppy researcher, and discount your work accordingly.
That’s a very brief overview of how you might begin to research individual people to find out their stories. Good luck — and don’t forget to share your research, so others can appreciate it, and correct any errors you might make, and generally help further our knowledge of Revolutionary War veterans.
[PLEASE NOTE: In this post, I draw a connection between Briton Hammon of Marshfield and Briton Nichols of Hingham/Cohasset. I based this conclusion on Robert Desrochers’s essay “‘Surprizing Deliverance’?: Slavery and Freedom, Language, and Identity in the Narrative of Briton Hammon, ‘A Negro Man,’” in Philip Gould and Vincent Carretta, eds., Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2021), p. 168-169. (I did not cite Desrochers in the original post, and I apologize for my inadequate footnotes.) However, in this comment local historian Ellen S. Miller cites documentary evidence that these are two entirely different people. I’m going to leave the post as originally written (I don’t want to hide my mistakes), but I’m injecting subtitles and notes to make it clear that documentary evidence does not support the conclusion that the two are the same person. More on Ellen S Miller.]
The second story of a Revolutionary War veteran is especially interesting because of the way historians have been able to connect separated facts in the historical record, and then tell a fuller story of one person. This is the story of Briton Nichols.
In the historical record, you can find a list dating from July 19, 1780, giving the names of nine men from Cohasset who began six month’s military service on that day.(10) One name on that list, the name of Briton Nichols, stands out for two reasons. First, he had a very unusual name; the written record shows no other man in Massachusetts with the first name of Briton. Second, Briton Nichols is identified as being Black, the only person on that list whose race is given, and (as near as I can tell) the only Black man from Cohasset who served in the American Revolution.
Because Briton Nichols had such an unusual first name, and because his race is given, historians have been able to trace his life in more detail.(11) Historians discovered that in 1760, he published a book in which he told of thirteen years worth of adventures.(12)
[N.B.: as noted above, the two are not the same person; therefore I’m inserting a subtitle here to show that the following is about Briton Hammon.]
Briton Hammon (Who Is Not Briton Nichols)
As a boy, he was enslaved by the Winslow family of Marshfield. At that time, he called himself Briton Hammond. On December 25, 1747, with the permission of his master, Briton left Marshfield to go on a sea voyage; perhaps his master hired him out as a sailor, taking a cut of his salary, a common practice in those days. Briton doesn’t say how old he was when he sailed, but later sources give his birth year as roughly 1740, so he may have been a boy or a young teen. The ship Briton was on sailed for Jamaica, took on a cargo of wood, and sailed north. Having struck a reef off Florida, the ship was attacked by Native Americans who killed everyone except Briton, and then set the ship on fire. After being held captive by the Native Americans for five week, he was able to make his escape on a Spanish schooner, whose captain recognized him, and took him to Havana, Cuba. The Native Americans followed and demanded the Governor of Havana return Briton to them, but the Governor paid ten dollars for him and kept him. A year later, Briton was caught by a press gang, but he refused to serve in the Spanish navy and was thrown in a dungeon.
Title page of the book written by Briton Hammond (later Briton Nichols), from a digitized version on the Library of Congress website.
Briton was finally released from the dungeon four years later, though he was still trapped in Havana. Then a year after his release from the dungeon, he managed to escape from Havana aboard a ship of the British Navy. It appears Briton served in the British Navy for some time thereafter, aboard several different ships, until 1759 when he was wounded in the head by small shot during a fight with a French ship. Briton was put in Greenwich Hospital, where he recovered from his wounds. After additional service on British Navy ships, this time as a cook, he managed to find a berth on a ship bound for New England. By coincidence, his old master, one General Nichols, was on the same ship. Through that chance meeting, Briton was finally able to return to his home in Marshfield after a thirteen year absence.
Soon after his return from Marshfield, Briton’s account of his adventures was published in Boston, perhaps the earliest published memoir written by an African American. Two years later, in 1762, Briton married Hannah, a Black woman who was a member of First Church in Plymouth (today this a Unitarian Universalist congregation). In the late 1770s, Briton left the Winslow family, possibly upon the death of his master, and moved to Cohasset to join the Nichols family; at this time he changed his last name from Hammond to Nichols.
[N.B.: At this point, I made a connection between Briton Hammon, who wrote the Narrative, and Briton Nichols of Hingham/Cohasset. As noted in the introduction, I based this on an essay by Robert Desroches. However, local historian Ellen S. Miller says this: “Nathaniel Nichols Sr. of Cohasset had an enslaved manservant Briton whom he bequeathed to his son Nathaniel in 1757, three years before Briton Hammon’s return. Both of the Nichols men died by the time the estate was settled in 1758. At the same time Nichols bequeathed Phebe, an enslaved servant whom Briton Nichols would later marry, to two of his daughters.” Thus, the documentary evidence from local archives does not support Desroches’s contention that Briton Hammon is the same person as Briton Nichols. However, Briton Nichols’s story is interesting enough by itself to remain here. Just remember that the documentary evidence does not support the conclusion that he’s the same person as Briton Hammon. Therefore, here’s another subtitle to clarify that this is a different person.]
Briton Nichols (Who Is Not Briton Hammon)
In 1777, Briton joined the Continental Army.(13) He must have been around forty years old when he enlisted. We can only speculate as to why he decided to enlist at that age. Most likely, enlisting in the military was a way for him to free himself from slavery. Ambrose Bates, who was one of Briton’s messmates, left a diary that tells a little about their military service.(14) Briton Nichols, Bates, and the rest of their contingent left Cohasset on August 27, 1777, and finally reached Saratoga, New York, in early September. There they joined the conflict between the Continental forces and General Burgoyne’s forces. Much of their military service was filled with boredom. Several days were filled with monotonous marching back and forth from one place to another. On other days, Bates simply records, “Nothing new today.” Those days of boredom were interspersed with days where they had more than enough excitement. To give just one example, on October 7, Bates recorded: “today we had a fight we were alarmed about noon and the fight begun, the sun two hours high at night and we drove them and took field pieces and took sum prisners.” The tide of battle was with the Continental forces, and Burgoyne finally surrendered on October 16. Soon thereafter, Bates and the other Cohasset men marched down to Tarrytown. Their service in Tarrytown was less exciting. Finally, on November 30 their term of military service ended, and they began marching home. They finally arrived back in Cohasset on December 7. So ended Briton Nichol’s first term of military service.
Briton Nichols enlisted again in 1780, giving his age at the time as forty years old.(15) I suspect he lied about his age, presenting himself as younger than he was. I could find no details of his 1780 military service. The next time I found him in the historical record was in the 1790 federal census. At that time, he was living in Hingham as a free Black man, along with his second wife Experience and one other household member, probably their child.
The story of Briton Nichols shows how we can recover some of the lost knowledge of Revolutionary War veterans. Briton Nichols was little more than a name on a list of soldiers, until historians were able to deduce that he was almost certainly the same person as Briton Hammond who had had such amazing adventures from 1747 to 1760.
Of special interest to those of us who are currently part of First Parish, Briton Nichols would have attended Sunday services right in our historica Meetinghouse. We can imagine him sitting upstairs in the balcony, where people of color and White indentured servants had to sit. We can imagine Briton sitting in that gallery on Sunday, August 24, 1777, a few days before he marched off to Saratoga. We can imagine the prayers of the entire congregation centering on the hope that all nine of the Cohasset men marching off as soldiers that week would return home safe and sound.
We today think of all those from this congregation who have served in the military. We think of all those veterans who are now members and friends of First Parish. We also think of those who grew up in this congregation and went off to join the armed services. And we think of those people from First Parish who died in military service. It is good for us to keep alive the memories of all those who served in our armed forces. It is good to keep those memories alive, because it reminds us of the bonds of love which transcend even death.
(10) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 308.
(11) An introduction to a narrative by Briton Nichols, who earlier in life was called Briton Hammond, gives an overview of what historians conclude about his life: “It is accepted that in 1762 Hammon married Hannah, an African American woman and member of Plymouth’s First Church, with whom he had one child. For many years this was all that was known of Hammon’s life after his return to New England. More recent research, however, has revealed that Hammon probably changed his name to Nichols some time in the late 1770s, after the family with whom he and his master were living when Winslow died in 1774. Briton Nichols is listed as having fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, as did many members of the white Nichols family…. In later census records, Briton Nichols is described as a free husband and father.” Derrick R. Spires, editor, Only by Experience: An Anthology of Slave Narratives (Broadview Press, 2023), p. 54.
[***As noted above, I neglected to include a citation here for Robert Desrochers, “‘Surprizing Deliverance’?: Slavery and Freedom, Language, and Identity in the Narrative of Briton Hammon, ‘A Negro Man,’” in Philip Gould and Vincent Carretta, eds., Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2021), p. 168-169. Please note that the documentary evidence cited by Ellen Miller does not support Desrochers’s conclusions. And to be fair, Desrochers presents his conclusions as tentative. Here is the relevant passage in Desrochers’s essay:
[“During the American Revolution a ‘negro’ named Briton Nichols enlisted at the rank of private at least four times between August 1777 and July 1780 for short stints in Massachusetts regiments out of Hingham and neighboring Cohasset. Nichols appears in the print record again in the federal census of 1790, according to which he was a free black, head of a household of three in Hingham, and also the only identifiably non-white man in the entire state with the forename ‘Briton,’ variously spelled. There is reason to believe that Briton Nichols of Hingham, Massachusetts, was in fact the man of shifting identities formerly known as Briton Hammon. When ‘good old Master’ Winslow died in April 1774 he resided at Hingham with his sister Bethia and her husband, Roger Nichols. At this point we can only speculate that sometime after Winslow’s death Hammon became tied to the family of his old master’s brother-in-law, relocated to Hingham, and adopted the Nichols surname to announce the change and perhaps a shift in his patriotic loyalties….
[“Other clues point to the common identity of Briton Nichols and Briton Hammon, and suggest that in some ways black freedom remained no less conditional at the end of the eighteenth century than it had been in the middle. The name of a white soman identified only as ‘Mrs. Hammon’ appeared in the Hingham census return just two lines above the aforementioned record for Briton Nichols. Was this Mrs. Hammon of the same family from which Briton Hammon’s surname derived? Since the pages of data compiled by the census takers on a door-to-door basis would resemble neighborhood grids if plotted on a map, we can presume that Briton Nichols and Mrs. hammon lived close to and knew one another. One wonders on what terms. Did Nichols not live near but actually with Mrs. Hammon, like the one in three ex-slaves in post-revolutionary Massachusetts who resided in a white household? In short, was Briton Hammon’s brief Narrative not the finished account of a black prodigal after all, but a chapter in an unfinished book of a pilgrim’s progress towards freedom? We are left for now with as many questions as answers. Perhaps it is only fitting, however, that Briton Hammon continues to elude us, nearly two-and-a-half centuries after his first and apparently only appearance on the public stage.”]
(12) In this paragraph, the details of the earlier life of Briton Nichols/Hammond are taken from his book, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man (Boston: Green & Russell, 1760); as reprinted on the Pennsylvanian State Univ. website https://psu.pb.unizin.org/opentransatlanticlit/chapter/__unknown__-9/ accessed 22 May 2025.
(13) Victor Bigelow, p. 208.
(14) Victor Bigelow reprints the text of this brief diary, pp. 299-303.
(15) Entry for Briton Nichols, 19 July 1780, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLLS-BBT3 accessed 22 May 2025.
It’s a stressful time in the world right now — what with brutal wars in Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, and elsewhere — and with economic uncertainty and political instability in the U.S. — and a host of other problems, like looming ecological collapse.
As a result of all these stress-filled events, there are lots of pundits telling us how we can reduce our stress. Recently, I’ve heard a number of pundits tell me that if I want to reduce my stress I should take a walk in the woods. (Before you get all snarky, yes I know this advice makes unwarranted assumptions: that I live in a bioregion where there are woods to walk in; that I live in a human place where enough woodlands remain to walk in; that if there are woods to walk in, they’re safe enough that you can walk in them; that I don’t have physical limitations that preclude walking in the woods. As it happens, I do live in a bioregion which does have woodlands, I’m fortunate enough to live near a 3,000 acre state park which is mostly wooded and mostly safe, and I am physically able to walk in the woods.)
I hate to tell those pundits, but taking a walk in the woods is not going to reduce my stress.
Yesterday, I took a walk in our nearby state park. In many places in that park, American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) are the predominant tree species. But our American Beeches are under attack, and most of the beech trees I saw appeared to be in poor health. To be blunt, beech trees are being killed off by invasive organisms.
First, there’s Beech Bark Disease (BBD):
“BBD is an insect-fungus complex that involves the beech scale insect (Cryptococcus fagisuga Lind.) and the fungi Neonectria faginata and Neonectria coccinea…. It is predicted that BBD will spread across the entire range of American beech in the United States in the next 40–50?years.” (Catalina Salgado-Salazar et al., G3 (Bethesda) [Genes, Genomes, Genetics]. 2021 Mar 9;11(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkab071 )
The scale insect, which arrived in North America in the early twentieth century, spreads the fungus. The fungus infects the tree causing unsightly canker sores on the bark:
Beech Bark Disease on an American Beech tree in Wompatuck State Park
There is no known cure for Beech Bark Diseases. It often proves fatal.
Second, beech trees are also under attack from Beech Leaf Disease:
“Symptoms of beech leaf disease (BLD), first reported in Ohio in 2012, include interveinal greening, thickening and often chlorosis in leaves, canopy thinning and mortality. Nematodes from diseased leaves of American beech (Fagus grandifolia) sent by the Ohio Department of Agriculture to the USDA, Beltsville, MD in autumn 2017 were identified as the first recorded North American population of Litylenchus crenatae (Nematology, 21, 2019, 5), originally described from Japan.” (Lynn Kay Carta et al., “Beech leaf disease symptoms caused by newly recognized nematode subspecies,” Forest Pathology, 27 Feb. 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/efp.12580 )
Here’s what the leaves look like after the nematodes have attacked them (I took this photo last May):
Curled leaves of American Beech, showing damage by Beech Leaf Disease
As I understand it, foresters and dendrologists are still learning about Beech Leaf Disease. But it’s very clear that Beech Leaf Disease causes trees to lose most of their leaves, and it’s equally clear that Beech Leaf Disease eventually leads to the death of the tree.
As with Beech Bark Diseases, there is no known cure.
The upshot is that we’re going to lose all, or nearly all, of our American Beech trees in the next decade or so — just as we lost nearly all of our American Chestnut trees in the early twentieth century (due to Chestnut Blight, an invasive fungus), and just as we lost nearly all of our American Elm trees in the mid-twentieth century (due to Dutch Elm Disease, an invasive fungus), and just as we lost nearly all of our ash trees in the early twenty-first century (due to Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive insect).
Invasive organisms are predicted to be one of the major causes of the calamitous decrease in biodiversity that we’re now facing. I suppose you could go for a walk in the woods and willfully ignore these evidences of global environmental disaster. If you’re going to do that, you might as well engage in one of those chic mindfulness practices that helps you forget that anything bad is happening. And what the hell, if you need to be in denial — if that’s what it takes to reduce your stress and keep your sanity — then I say, go for it. But please don’t tell me that I should take a walk in the woods to reduce my stress — what works for you doesn’t necessarily work for me.
Still haven’t finished the writing I’ve been working on, so you’re stuck with another photograph. This is an Atlantic Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus) partially buried in the sand of the Long Pasture Audubon sanctuary on Cape Cod. There are Atlantic Slipper Shells (Crepidula fornicata) attached to the top of the shell. This may have been a molted exoskeleton, but it appeared to be a living horseshoe crab that had partially buried itself in the tidal flats at low tide; I decided not to poke at it to see if it was alive.
We went to the New England Folk Festival, affectionately known as NEFFA, helf in a hotel in Marlborough, Mass. At NEFFA, there are a host of performances, demonstrations, and workshops, mostly relating to folk music or folk dance. Carol did some contra dancing and learned some Cuban dance. I heard a performance by some old folkies (sometimes pronounced “fogies”), attempted to keep up in a Renaissance music jam, and participated in a “pub sing” which was held in an outdoors tent.
On our way out, we happened across an actual pub sing, in the bar of the hotel. Now unlike English bars, American bars are often less than welcoming to singers. Besides, Americans tend to be consumers of music, not participants in music, and we in our bars we prefer to listen to either loud recorded music, or heavily amplified musicians. But this was NEFFA, so it was one of the rare occasions when you could go to an American bar where there was loud, live, unamplified, participatory music.
Today is April 19, 2025. Probably that doesn’t mean anything to you, unless you’re a U.S. history geek, or unless you grew up in Concord or Lexington, Massachusetts. But today is the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
While both the town of Concord and the town of Lexington have annual celebrations, with parades and reenactments, this year they both arranged special celebrations for the 250th anniversary. Fifty years ago, on April 19, 1975, I was in the parade in Concord, marching with my Boy Scout troop. Since I’m pretty sure I won’t be around for the 300th anniversary, I decided that I really had to attend this year’s celebration.
I wanted to watch the reenactment of the battle at the North Bridge, and I knew just where I wanted to stand — in the formal garden at the visitor center of Minuteman National Historical Park. From there you have a panoramic view of the North Bridge and the road down which the Minutemen and militia companies marched to confront His Majesty’s troops.
I should have read the information about the day more carefully. There was no reenactment this year. I was a bit disappointed. Still, I had a marvelous view of the crowds that gathered to watch the ceremonies, and the main events of the ceremonies themselves — the Concord Minutemen firing a salute from the bridge, and the 21 gun salute from a field on the other side of the river.
The view from the formal garden, with the North Bridge in the distance.
The crowd looked a little thin to me; there were not nearly as many people as I had expected. While we were waiting for the ceremonies to begin, I wound up talking with the people on either side of me. To my left was a man from Albany, N.Y., who had attended the reenactment of Paul Revere’s arrival in lexington the night before, spent the night in his car, watched the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington at sunrise, then taken the shuttle to Concord. On the other side of me were a couple who live in Concord, who were kind of interested in the 18th century historical garb that several of the parade units wore; I was able to tell them wheretheycouldobtain18th C. garb, but warned them that it could be expensive.
Congresswoman Lori Trahan and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey were the only two state or national politicians to show up. Both of them gave good brief speeches, both of which emphasized how important resisting tyranny was in 1775, and still is today. I thought it was a little disrespectful that neither of our U.S. Senators managed to put in an appearance. I’m not surprised that President Donald Trump didn’t show up — though President Gerald Ford showed up in 1975 — but then Trump is not especially patriotic, and has a fairly weak understanding of U.S. history. It’s probably just as well that Trump didn’t show up, because he wouldn’t have been happy with the remarks made by Healey or Trahan, nor with the signs carried by some of the spectators.
A spectator watching the ceremonies at the North Bridge.
Most of the signs that I saw opposed the tyranny of kings. We didn’t want King George in 1775, and we don’t want a king now.
After the ceremonies at the North Bridge concluded, I made my way to the center of town, so I could watch the parade. On my way there, I saw more homemade signs opposing the tyranny of kings. Most of the slogans I’ve seen opposing the Trump administration have been variations on “Hands Off.” I much prefer variations on the “No Kings” slogan, because it gets to the root of what bugs me about the Trump administration — that he’s acting like a king, and all his supporters are OK with that. But we fought the Revolution to get rid of kings — we don’t want any more kings, not now, not ever.
Sign along the road into Concord center.
This year, the reviewing stand for the parade was set up in Monument Square, right in front of Town Hall. The units that put on performances — the fife and drum corps, the bands — always put on a show in front of the reviewing stand. It was crowded there. I moved down the street and stood in front of First Parish of Concord, the Unitarian Universalist church in town (the church the Minutemen belonged to). It was still pretty crowded there, but at least I could see the parade.
The beginning of the parade.
Ever since COVID, I’m not a big fan of crowds. So I walked further along the parade route to where there weren’t that many people.
The Carlisle, Mass., Minutemen.
One of the flag-bearers from one of the Minuteman units was carrying a sign stating his opposition to kings. While this was not historically accurate, it seemed very much in keeping with the sentiments the 18th century Minutemen would have held.
The Stow, Mass., Minutemen.
Again, it’s a good thing Trump the wanna-be-king didn’t come. Popular sentiment was definitely against him. It would have been as if King George showed up in Massachusetts in 1775. Massachusetts then and now is one of the leaders against tyranny. While there were Massachusetts Tories in 1775, and while there are Massachusetts Trump-ites in 2025, in both eras the majority of Massachusetts residents were and are Patriots who don’t want kings lording it over them.
Speaking of Patriots, I was also pleased to see the Town of Concord Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commission marching in the parade. They carried a banner that read, “Building a Welcoming Community.” I’m old enough to remember the mini-race riot that took place at Concord Carlisle High School on the last day of school in 1978 (I was a senior that year, so I had already graduated and didn’t see the riot myself, but I heard about it). I’d like to pretend that we solved all those race problems and that now everything is hunky-dory, but I guess I have a grimmer view of human nature than that. Human beings find it way too easy to hate one another, so we actually do need organizations that keep us from hating on other people.
One last photo — this was one of my favorite units in the parade, the Assabet Village Minutemen. This unit is from Maynard, Mass., which wasn’t a separate town in 1775, it was a village known as Assabet Village. I like that they’re not wearing a uniform, which seems more historically accurate. I like that a couple of the men are wearing knit caps, not the stereotypical tricorn hat — again, this diversity of headgear seems more historically accurate. The Minutemen and militia of 1775 were ordinary citizens; they were not yet a trained army — and I like that the Assabet Village Minutemen capture this important aspect of the Battle of Concord.
The Assabet Village (Maynard, Mass.) Minutemen.
It makes me want to go out and buy myself a suit of 18th century clothing. Not that I can afford it, but it’s fun to think about.
I was buying books online from Seminary Coop Bookstore when I stumbled across a 2021 biography of Kurt Godel. My one exposure to higher mathematics was an undergraduate course in mathematical logic where the professor took us through the proof of the first of Godel’s two incompleteness theorems. Although I got a mediocre grade in that class, it was one of the highlights of my undistinguished undergraduate career. Maybe it would be fun to read a biography of Godel.
The biography was Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Godel by Stephen Budiansky. I looked it up on Kirkus Reviews, which gave it a good review, calling it an “outstanding biography of a man of incomprehensible brilliance.” I ordered the book.
The biography opens with a kind of cheesy prologue telling of Godel’s conversations with a psychiatrist he was seeing towards the end of his life. The prologue ends on page 7 with Godel’s death. I didn’t think much of the proluge, but I wanted to know about Godel, so I decided to plow on with the rest of the book.
From page 7 to page 42, I learned nothing about Kurt Godel. Instead of telling us about Godel’s childhood, Budiansky gives a precis of the political and intellectual history of Austria and central Europe in the early part of the twentieth century. Then there are a few pages devoted to the ostensible subject subject of the biography — before the author turns away from Godel once again to write about early twentieth century central Europe. Thus, we learn almost nothing about Godel’s childhood.
Well, I thought, maybe there just aren’t that many sources about Godel’s childhood. That’s a common problem for biographers. Once Godel enters college, surely Budiansky will spend more time writing about Godel. But we actually get very little about what Godel was like in college, and a great deal about the people Godel met in college. I began to feel as though Budiansky either didn’t know anything about Godel, or maybe preferred not to write about Godel for some personal reason.
By page 97 — after a somewhat pointless digression about Ludwig Wittgenstein that went on for several pages, while again telling me nothing about Godel — I was growing bored. I skipped ahead to see what Budiansky had to say about Godel at the time he came up with his incompleteness theorem. Once again, it felt to me as though Budiansky wasn’t telling me about Godel himself, nor about Godel’s thought, but instead only about the milieu around Godel. It was also clear that Budiansky knew about as much as I did about Godel’s most famous theorem (i.e., not much), so I wasn’t even going to get an insight into the man’s intellectual achievements.
I’m giving up on the book, at least for now. Perhaps what I’m really looking for is more of an intellectual biography. Two of my favorite biographies are Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music by Judith Tick, and Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography by Jean Grondin; both these biographies were written by people who had expertise in their subject’s field, and could write intelligently about their subjects’ accomplishments. But additionally, both these biographies also center their focus on their subject. Budiansky doesn’t seem to know much about mathematical logic, nor does he seem to be able to keep his biography centered on Kurt Godel.
All this goes to show that you can’t always trust Kirkus Reviews.
