Charlestown Neck

Charlestown Neck was the narrow isthmus joining the Charlestown peninsula to the mainland, roughly where Main Street runs today toward Sullivan Square. In 1775 it was, in Richard Frothingham's description, an artificial causeway so low that the tides often flowed over it, and Main Street ran from the Neck down to the ferry. It was the only way on or off the peninsula by land, and twice in 1775 that made it the place everything funnelled through. On the evening of 19 April the British column returning from Concord came almost at a run down the old Cambridge road to the Neck, making for the cover of the warships' guns. General William Heath stopped the pursuit at the Charlestown Common beyond it, and a 14-year-old Charlestown boy, Edward Barber, was killed as the troops came through. The regulars spent the night on Bunker Hill with a guard posted across the Neck. On 17 June the frigate Glasgow and the transport Symmetry, moored up the Charles River, raked the causeway with fire to stop American reinforcements reaching Breed's Hill. Some companies would not cross. John Stark brought his New Hampshire regiment over between two and three o'clock at a walk, refusing to tire his men, and after the fighting had ended Major Andrew McClary of New Hampshire was killed on the Neck by a shot from a frigate. The marshes on either side were later filled, the Middlesex Canal reached the Charlestown mill pond beside the Neck in 1803, and the causeway disappeared into the city.