Forget July 4. For Cambridge, July 3 is the claim to fame

By Beth Folsom, 2025

While the rest of the country was preparing to celebrate Independence Day on July 4, 1875, Cantabrigians were gearing up for the day before – July 3 – when they would commemorate the 100th anniversary of general George Washington taking command of the Continental Army on Cambridge Common in 1775. 

As Cambridge prepared to mark the anniversary of this event to which it alone could lay claim, it stood at a unique moment in its history – looking backward and forward and trying to reconcile its colonial past with its place in a nation dedicated to progress.

Cambridge’s biggest competition for a seat at the table of Revolutionary commemoration was, of course, the nearby towns of Lexington and Concord, where the “shot heard round the world” was fired on the morning of April 19, 1775. British officers had chosen to sail from Boston to East Cambridge because it was the shortest and least conspicuous route to their destination. They marched from Boston Common, sailed from near Arlington Street and landed at Lechmere’s Point, named for the Tory Cambridge property owner Richard Lechmere. From East Cambridge the troops marched across the city, through North Cambridge and on to Lexington and Concord, where they encountered armed militia that included men from Cambridge. Following the battle, continental soldiers from all over New England assembled on Cambridge Common; by April 21, more than 10,000 men had arrived to join the patriot cause as they prepared for the British response.

About two months after the action at Lexington and Concord, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia officially created the Continental Army as a unified military force, drawing on the large assemblage of troops already in residence on Cambridge Common as one of its major pillars and allowing the city to lay claim to the title “Birthplace of the American Army.” Shortly after that, on July 3, Washington took command of the army and settled into his new headquarters at 105 Brattle St. – abandoned the previous year by original owner John Vassall Jr. in fear of the Cambridge “mob” because of his Loyalist tendencies. 

Washington was in residence in Cambridge from early July 1775 to early April 1776, when he moved with the army to New York following the evacuation of the British from Boston several weeks earlier. For the remainder of the revolution, Cambridge – and, indeed, all of Massachusetts – saw no further military action, although men from Cambridge remained active in the army throughout the war.

Because of this narrow window of direct involvement in Revolutionary action, Cambridge had long emphasized the early months of the war, arguing that the events that took place then had set the course for American independence. It was only natural, then, that the city sought to stake its claim on the centennial commemorations happening April 18-19, 1875. The City Council voted to appropriate modest funds to support the celebration in Concord, on the understanding that Cambridge’s contribution to the battle be highlighted.

An indignant letter writer told the Cambridge Chronicle in a March 6, 1875, letter titled “Concord Not a Beggar” that “the town of Concord takes pride in paying its own bills and for the entertainment of its guests,” and that no assistance was needed from Cambridge in this regard.

Try as it might, Cambridge would never be recognized as one of a trio of towns involved in the Battle of Lexington and Concord and, even by the centennial, many Cantabrigians were advising the city to save most of its energy and money for the upcoming July 3 commemorations. This sentiment is echoed by a reporter for the Chronicle, who wrote in February 1875:

“On the third of July next Cambridge will have a centennial, as important to us, as that of Concord and Lexington is to them. On that day of the month one hundred years ago, there occurred in Cambridge one of the greatest events of American history, for George Washington then took command of the continental Army under the ‘Washington Elm.’ … In these times of economy and retrenchment, we think a smaller appropriation should be made to answer for the ‘Concord fight,’ that a suitable sum may be expended in an anniversary nearer and more important to us as a city.”

When it came time to prepare for July 3, 1875, Cambridge was ready. During the winter and spring of that year, newspapers opined about the best way to celebrate and announced various meetings and preparations for the big day. 

The Chronicle told readers that the city should “show our gratitude, and that we are worthy of the heritage bequeathed to us, by a public celebration of this hundredth anniversary of the day on which Washington here assumed the command of the army of victory, which through fire and blood, by the blessing of a kind Providence achieved our National Independence.” Here, the author is placing Washington’s assumption of military command at the center of the Revolutionary story, and thereby placing Cambridge itself in that same central role – one it did not have to share with any other neighboring towns as had been the case with Lexington and Concord.

The city turned out in force for the July 3 parade, with veterans’ groups, social clubs, and religious and ethnic societies taking part in the display. Cambridge’s numerous industries, too, marched in the parade, highlighting their wares and staking a claim to the city’s dual status as the birthplace of the Revolution and of innovation. At the Centennial, when so many were worried about how the city could look backward and forward at the same time, the integration of these companies into the Revolutionary celebrations assuaged fears that Cambridge would forget its past in the pursuit of its industrial future. 

At this pivotal moment in the city’s history, the efforts of Cantabrigians to place the “true” origin point of the Revolution on July 3, 1775, allowed them to simultaneously celebrate their unique role in the nation’s origin story and its place in the country’s industrial future.

This article originally appeared in Cambridge Day.