Old South Meeting House ~ Nursery and Sanctuary of Freedom

Old South Meeting House ~ "Nursery and Sanctuary of Freedom"
Thursday, March Twelfth

This morning we pushed ourselves to get a somewhat earlier start than usual, and had everything packed and ready to go. We checked our bags at the hotel, and went for some morning coffee and breakfast. Once again, my order for a caramel mocha confused the lady. Apparently they aren’t common drinks around here, because I had to tell her my order three times. She insisted that what I really wanted was a caramel latte, because you can’t put caramel in a mocha. Fortunately, the barista turned around and informed the cashier that caramel mochas are normal, and she certainly could make one for me. Good thing, since that’s what I ordered the two other times we went to that exact coffee shop!

We planned out the few hours we had until we would have to get on the train for Philadelphia, while we ate our breakfast. There was only enough time to visit the King’s Chapel and Burying Ground (the oldest cemetery in Boston) and the Old South Meeting House. I especially enjoyed seeing the Meeting House and learning its history. It also had a cool audio feature, where you could scan the barcode with your phone and hear snippets of dramatized audio about its history as you went. We sat in the pews a couple times to listen to the audio.

 

 

The Old South Meeting House was even used as a meeting place right before the Boston Tea Party occurred, and still is used for some meetings today. We also learned that Dr. Joseph Warren had to climb through a window of the Meeting House when he was going to be delivering a speech, because it was so crowded. The Meeting House was to be torn down in 1872, but after many other efforts to save it, a group of women led by Mary Hemenway raised enough money (over $400,000) to buy Old South. Hemenway donated $200,000 of her own money in order to save it. To think that we might not have been able to see the Old South Meeting House today, had these brave women not raised the money to save it.