LECTURES

Captain John Parker commanded the Lexington militia on April 19th, 1775. Just down the road, Patriot minister William Emerson watched the battle at North Bridge from the banks of the Concord River behind his home. Many years later, their grandsons abolitionist minister Theodore Parker and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson were part of one of the most influential philosophical movements in American history—Transcendentalism. Jayne Gordon and Kathleen Barker of the Massachusetts Historical Society Education Department examine the influence of these Revolutionary War leaders on the ideas and actions of their famous descendants.