The Site of Hannah Winthrop's House
Hannah Winthrop was patriot and a keen observer of The Revolutionary War, and her letters give us a great insight into what life was like for a citizen in Cambridge at the time. One of Winthrop’s letters describes what The Battle of Lexington and Concord was like for a Cambridge resident:
“Not knowing what the event would be at Cambridge at the return of these bloody ruffians, and seeing another brigade dispatched to the assistance of the former, looking with the same ferocity of barbarians, it seemed necessary to retire to some place of safety till the calamity was passed…We were directed to a place called Fresh Pond, about a mile from the town, but what a distressed house did we find it, filled with women whose husbands had gone forth to meet the assailants, seventy or eighty of these with numbers of infant children, weeping and agonizing for the fate of their husbands.”
In 1777, after their loss at The Battle of Saratoga, General Burgoyne and his British and Hessian troops were sent to Cambridge to await passage back to Europe. Hannah Winthrop’s letters also give us insight into what this was like. In one of her letters she describes the arrival of the Convention Troops, “poor, dirty, emaciated men, great numbers of women, who seemed to be beasts of burthen…some very young Infants who were born on the road…”
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