Lechmere Point

Lechmere Point in East Cambridge is where the British column bound for Lexington and Concord came ashore on the night of 18 April 1775. About 800 grenadiers, light infantry and marines under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith had embarked at about ten o'clock at the foot of Boston Common, in the boats of the warships in the harbour, and were rowed across the Back Bay to what was then Phipps Farm, a low point of upland that was almost an island at high tide. In Richard Frothingham's account they landed just as the moon rose, then took an unfrequented path over the marshes, wading through water in places, before reaching the old road out of Charlestown. The crossing cost the expedition time it could not spare. Lieutenant John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote that the men were wet up to the knees, and that they then stood on the road until two o'clock in the morning waiting for provisions to be brought up from the boats. The march went on west through thinly settled farmland toward Menotomy and Lexington. The point took its name from Richard Lechmere, a Loyalist whose land was confiscated when he fled to England. In 1775 it changed hands in the other sense: the Americans fortified it in December and by March 1776 had guns there firing into Boston. The marsh has long since been filled. A tablet set up in 1897 at Second and Otis Streets was rededicated in April 2025 in Centanni Park nearby.