If you visit the site of the Hartwell house today, you’ll find only the central chimney still standing, an intricate stack of brick and stone that once carried heat to multiple fireplaces throughout the home. It was the warm core of the house, and on the tense nights leading up to April 19, 1775, it kept Mary Hartwell steady as musket shots echoed along the Battle Road.
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| Hartwell House Chimney Fall 2025 |
Just down the road stood the family-run Hartwell Tavern, where Mary had plenty of chores; bringing in wood, tending the kitchen, helping guests settle. But on certain nights, those chores quietly went unattended. Mary would slip upstairs to a small room where three unlikely women met in secret: Prudence Wright, Abigail Adams, and Mary herself, the small, discreet network we call "The Needle Guard" in the Broadside universe.
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| Walk from Hartwell House to Hartwell Tavern |
Prudence had the steadiest needle, Abigail the sharpest mind, and Mary the most important resource of all: access to cloth, buckram, and whalebone, the materials that let them hide Dr. Joseph Warren’s messages inside petticoats and corsets. Mary wasn’t the most precise seamstress, but she was the one who could get what the mission required, even if it meant leaving a stack of tavern tasks undone.
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| Mary Hartwell, witness to the shot heard round the world |
Standing beside the lone chimney today, it’s easy to imagine British soldiers marching past on the same road, their bayonets glinting just as Mary remembered. The house and tavern are quiet now, but the story remains, a reminder that revolutions aren’t just launched by heroes with muskets. Sometimes they begin with a woman slipping away from her chores to stitch a secret in the dark.
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| The British Grenadiers form a column |
