Headquarters of a Revolution: The 250th Anniversary of Washington’s Arrival in Cambridge

Saturday, July 5, 2025
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site
105 Brattle Street
10 am-3 pm
Free

Join History Cambridge for this special National Park Service event!

We are excited to participate in this special event at one of Cambridge’s most historic spaces.

Explore the people, ideas, and questions that shaped General George Washington’s first revolutionary headquarters 250 years ago this July. Choose your path through this free, all-ages event featuring historic house and outdoor walking tours with J.L. Bell; family activities; talks by historians; living historians portraying George Washington, William Lee, and Martha Washington; Cambridge Open Archives, a Story Walk, and more. 

The house at 105 Brattle Street, now Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, served as Washington’s first military headquarters of the American Revolution from July 1775-March 1776. Headquarters was a testing ground for many of the ideals, institutions, and questions that still define our country. This event will reveal Cambridge Headquarters as a complex hub of revolutionary activity, where generals, enslaved people, paid laborers, poets, Indigenous diplomats, politicians, self-emancipated families, and soldiers shaped history.

Scheduled Talks

All talks take place indoors (Carriage House)

10:15 am “Get Ready with Me” 1775, Sandy Spector (living historian, Martha Washington)

11:00 am The Revolutionary War Diary of Moses Sleeper, Kate Hanson Plass (Longfellow House Archivist)

12:30 pm Indigenous Diplomacy at Headquarters, Dr. Ben Pokross

1:15 pm Household Management at Headquarters, Sandy Spector (living historian, Martha Washington)

2:00 pm Phillis Wheatley and George Washington, Dr. Nicole Aljoe

2:45 pm Cambridge’s Black Community, 1775, Dr. Caitlin DeAngelis Hopkins

Scheduled Tours

Neighborhood Walking Tours

10:30 am Children of the Revolution: Boys & Girls in Cambridge during the Siege of Boston, J.L. Bell 

1:30 pm Cambridge as a Seat of Civil War, J.L. Bell

Historic House Tours

11:30 am, 2:30 pm Deep Dive: Headquarters of a Revolution