Photo: Emma Friedman/WBZ NewsRadio
SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The City of Somerville and the Somerville Museum celebrated its 250th grand union flag raising on Thursday.
Revolutionary reenactors with flags and drums in tow and Somerville community members gathered at the City Hall Concourse at 11:30 a.m. and marched to the three-story Prospect Hill Monument.
Mayor Katjana Ballantyne spoke at the monument, commemorating what happened here all those years ago. Executive Director for the Somerville Museum Stephanie Marlin-Curiel explained what exactly that was, in the town originally named Charlestown.
“It is the day that George Washington raised the first American flag,” she said. “It was a grand union flag, so it looks a little different. It's got the British flag centered in the corner surrounded by the 13 red and white stripes.”
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Marlin-Curiel further said that this flag-raising acted as a reset of sorts for the continental army at that time during the Revolutionary War.
“This was an important moment in the Revolution because the Continental Army was reconstituted and kind of reborn and reinjected with morale,” Marlin-Curiel said.
Despite such a landmark moment in the formation of the United States, Marlin-Curiel said that people tend to forget about Somerville when recounting that time in history.
“This is a really significant place and people don't know it because it was called Charlestown at the time and now it's called Somerville,” she said. “We are left out of the story so often; We hear about Cambridge, Boston, Lexington, Concord…”
More about the flag-raising can be found here.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Emma Friedman (@EmmaFriedmanWBZ) reports.