WALK IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF WORCESTER'S REVOLUTIONARIES

From Worcester’s Meetinghouse, near the site of today’s City Hall to what we now know as Lincoln Square, Worcester patriots led Massachusetts and later the country toward Revolution. Auspiciously in September 1774, patriots from across the region assembled along Main Street to reject rule under Parliament’s Massachusetts Government Act, close the county courts, and shame their loyalist elite neighbors. Now you can join Worcester Historical Museum and walk in their footsteps, as they forced wellborn local defenders of royal government to walk a gauntlet of common men intent on defending their liberty or as they spread their revolutionary ideas between the town’s taverns and meetinghouse. Read more About Us

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As Worcester County’s shire town (county seat), Worcester was where the Court of Common Pleas and Court of General Sessions of the Peace were held four times a year. When Court Week was in session, people from all over Worcester County came to sue or…

Four times a year the Courts of Common Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace were held in the town of Worcester. By the summer of 1774 the Whig Party (Patriots) in the western counties of Massachusetts had created a solid resistance to royal rule.…

The King’s Arms Tavern, on the corner of Main and Elm streets, was established by Thomas Stearns in 1732. Stearns operated the tavern for 40 years. When he died in 1772 his widow, Mary, became proprietress and continued the business until 1784. Her…

In the days and weeks following the battles of Lexington and Concord, militiamen from all parts of New England formed a siege around the British army garrisoned in the town of Boston. When George Washington, the newly named commander of the…

Born in Worcester in 1739, blacksmith Timothy Bigelow became not only a local leader of the Whig resistance to British rule but took on a larger role on the provincial and national levels. He was a member of the Worcester Committee of Correspondence,…

The Heywood Tavern, located at the site of the current deadhorse hill restaurant, was owned and operated by Daniel Heywood, whose family had operated the tavern since 1722. Its clientele was mostly Tory in outlook. It was one of the oldest taverns in…

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