ABSTRACT
For many of Boston’s historically minded, November 14, 1888, was a momentous day. It marked the dedication of a monument to the massacre, a granite shaft erected on Boston Common that stands over twenty-five feet high. A proud Governor Oliver Ames noted that this was the state’s first commemorative edifice to any event in its long and illustrious history. As part of the same project, the remains of the slain, which lay in the unmarked graves where they had originally been buried, were to be reinterred. Their new resting place would eventually be topped by a headstone noting their place in Revolutionary iconography as martyrs in the cause of freedom.
