Paul Revere's House

We visited Paul Revere's house--it was built in the 1680s and is still standing. The house has low ceilings on the main floor, a huge kitchen fireplace you could easily lie down in, and one room that’s furnished in gorgeous (Jacobean?) seventeenth-century furniture, the style of the original homeowner’s. The other rooms on display are furnished in late eighteenth-century style, as they were in Revere’s time. The attic is off-limits; it was the many children’s sleeping quarters. Revere was married twice; his first wife had nine children, and after she died, he married again, and his second wife also had nine children. I suspect one or both of them died in childbirth.

Bell made by Paul Revere. If he had made the Liberty Bell, it probably wouldn't have cracked. Inauspicious.

We got lost walking from Paul Revere’s house to the North Church where he sent out a signal. But eventually we found it, a simple white wooden structure with a tall belfry in front. It appears to still be in use as a church. The pews are separated by white paneled boxes with doors on which are plaques describing who is allowed to sit there, such as “Wards and Guests.”

Touring Boston, we passed a couple more graveyards--called burial grounds--from the seventeenth century. Paul Revere and other famous people are buried in them.

 Old North Church, where Paul Revere sent out a signal because the British were coming

I just realized Jane Austen would have had a field day writing satire based on my parents. For that matter, so would have Charles Dickens. But they're both dead, so I'll have to do it myself.