The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

[26] the events that occurred in Cambridge on the 19th of April, 1775, which might arouse our sympathy and stir up our pride. This work has been performed with great fidelity by the historian of Cambridge, and to his pages readers must turn if they would learn the particulars of what our citizens did and suffered on that day. It will be sufficient for our purposes if we note that the path of the British troops, both going to and coming from Concord, lay through our territory. Twenty-six lives were lost within the boundaries of what then constituted Cambridge, six of which were of inhabitants of the town. The militia who followed the British troops in their retreat were marched to Cambridge, and were then ordered to lie on their arms.

For eleven months from that time Cambridge was occupied by the American army. The college buildings were made use of as barracks. The library and apparatus of the college were first removed to Andover, and then to Concord, where for a time instruction was given. The Episcopal church was converted into barracks, and many private houses were taken for the same purpose, or for hospitals. The headquarters of General Ward were in the house which stood nearly in front of the present Austin Hall, and was long familiarly known as the Holmes House. There the movement was planned which resulted in the battle of Bunker Hill. Cambridge was in close touch with that event, but the story of the battle must be sought in Frothingham's ‘Siege of Boston.’ The details concerning the life and death of Colonel Thomas Gardner, whom Cambridge was called upon to mourn that day, will be found fully set forth in Paige's ‘Cambridge.’ No man in Cambridge had been more completely identified with the several steps taken by the town in protest and defiance of parliamentary oppression. No man could more fittingly have exposed his life in defense of the local government, in the formation of which he had assisted, and of which he had from the beginning been a part. No life that was lost in that battle better conveys the lesson of devotion to principle and the cheerful surrender of life in its behalf.

On the 3d of July, General Washington assumed command of the army in Cambridge. His first headquarters were in the President's House, still standing in the college yard, on Massachusetts Avenue, and sometimes called the Wadsworth House.