Judy Anderson
Facing Colonel Leslie: How & Where the Revolution’s “First Shots” were nearly fired in February 1775
Find out how and where the “first” shots of the American Revolutionary War could have taken place in Marblehead and/or at Salem’s North Bridge on February 26th in 1775, less than two months before Lexington and Concord, in the exact same scenario. Who was “Leslie”? — Where did all that take place? — Who were the key figures? — Who WASN’T there? — And, to get to Salem, why did the British Lt. Colonel choose to march his Regular Army troops straight through the sixth most populous metropolis in British North America (and second largest in Massachusetts at that time), with its gritty and notoriously volatile residents? This illustrated program will show and discuss the broader geographical and human aspects of the near-miss episode that much later became known as “Leslie’s Retreat.”
Judy Anderson (MarbleheadTours@aol.com, MarbleheadTours.com) is a social and cultural historian with a focus on architecture, daily life, and women’s and family history. She was Curator of Marblehead’s outstanding Jeremiah Lee Mansion for a decade and worked with it for 16 years. Her book, Glorious Splendor (MarbleheadArchitecture.com), documents the house and its magnificent original English hand-painted wallpaper from the 1760s. These rare 18th-century murals are the only ones in the world like them still in place—covering the walls in several rooms and in the mansion’s soaring stair-hall. Only one other suite of similar English wallpapers survives—in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She gives popular talks about the Mansion, Marblehead’s early architecture and history, decorative arts, and historic interiors.
