ABSTRACT
Mellen Chamberlain served as librarian of the Boston Public Library from 1878 to 1890 and added significantly to the library’s Revolutionary Era collections. A good part of what he acquired—or donated from his own documentary trove—was connected to the massacre. One of the items that Chamberlain donated is the diagram of King Street, showing the position of the soldiers and the killed and wounded in the moments immediately following the massacre. Local historian Charles Bahne has studied the drawing and mulled over the meaning of Revere’s symbols. The prostrate figures closest to the soldiers, marked A1 and G2, no doubt represent Attucks and Gray, he concludes, as have many others. As Bahne suggests, the circle by P6, below Attucks and Gray, and the circle by P7, nearer the town house, could stand for Robert Patterson and David Parker.
