Buckman’s Tavern, Lexington, MA - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

April 19, 1775 is a date that looms large in the annals of American history. It began with the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere through the countryside warning the local militias that a British expeditionary force was marching to Concord to capture/destroy a cache of American weapons that had been hid there. (Most of the weapons had been moved prior to the British raid though.) Tensions had been building between the Massachusetts Bay colonists and the British military for some time but open conflict had been avoided up to this point.

At about 9:30 in the morning, a contingent of British soldiers encountered several companies of local American militiamen just north of Concord at an arched bridge spanning the Concord River. Shots rang out and a certain Major Buttrick ordered his militia unit to fire on the British regulars. This clear act of treason is considered to be the official beginning of the War for American Independence and was immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as the “shot heard ‘round the world” in his poem “Concord Hymn.”

But these weren’t the first shots fired that day. Several hours earlier at Lexington (about 7 miles east of Concord) a small group of American militiamen confronted the approaching British troops on the town green. The assembled militiamen were told to disperse and though no orders to fire were given, shots nevertheless rang out and when the smoke cleared, eight Americans had been killed. Today, Lexington and Concord are almost always mentioned together as the place where the American Revolution began.

Perhaps sensing the historic nature of the events that had just taken place, sketches were made (within weeks of their occurrence) of the various locations involved in the confrontations. Later artists made use of these early sketches to create paintings, engravings and lithographs for more widespread distribution or as memorials. One of these was a rather large, somewhat romanticized 1886 painting by Canadian artist/illustrator Henry Sandham depicting the skirmish at Lexington. It was used for the design of two US postage stamps commemorating the Battle of Lexington: one for the sesquicentennial in 1925 and again in 1975 for its bicentennial.

The painting shows three structures present in 1775: the meeting house used for church services and other town meetings, a wooden bell tower used to summon folks to those meetings, and Buckman’s Tavern, a popular meeting place for the local militia and its leaders. The meeting house and bell tower are long gone. (There are memorial tablets and stone markers denoting their approximate location on the town green.) But Buckman’s Tavern still stands and can be visited to this day. Though cropped off the 1975 stamp, Buckman’s Tavern with its two large chimneys and distinctively shaped roof can clearly be seen in the background of the 1925 stamp.

The structure was originally built around 1710 as the first public house (pub for short) in Lexington. Today it is owned by the Lexington Historical Society who like to say that it spent its first hundred years as a tavern, its second hundred years as a private residence and its last hundred years as an historical site. The tap room has been restored to its 1775 appearance and the original door (with a hole in it possibly caused by a musket ball) is on display too.

The stamp is one of a set of three stamps issued in 1925 commemorating the sesquicentennial of the battles of Lexington and Concord and the beginning of the American Revolution. The other two stamps show Daniel Chester French’s Minuteman statue at the North Bridge in Concord and George Washington taking command of the Continental Army at Cambridge on 3-July, 1775.

By the way, the original Sandham painting can be seen in the lobby of the Isaac Cary Memorial Building in Lexington.

Stamp Issuing Country: United States Date of Issue: 4-April-1925 Denomination: 2 cents Color: carmine rose Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
To post a visit log for this category, you must visit the actual site of the waymark. Post at least one photo that you personally took of the site if at all possible. If you cannot provide a photo for some reason, your visit will still be welcome.

You do NOT need to be a stamp collector to visit the waymark site, nor do you have to provide a photo of the stamp. Just having a copy of the stamp in question, however, is not sufficient; you must personally visit the site.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   09/25/2017 RickAnn visited it 03/26/2016 petendot visited it

View all visits/logs