Boston's Revolutionary Women Tours

The 90-minute tour delves into four centuries of history, highlighting figures from early religious rebels Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer to activists in the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements. Stops include the Boston Common, Granary Burying Ground, Old Corner Bookstore, Old South Meeting House, and Faneuil Hall. Among the women spotlighted is Phillis Wheatley, who was brought to Boston as an enslaved person and became the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Despite her talent, Wheatley had to defend her authorship in court in 1772 before a panel of Boston luminaries. Her book, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," was published in London in 1773 after she couldn't find a publisher in the colonies. Another key figure is Mercy Otis Warren, a poet, playwright, and historian from Massachusetts who became a leading intellectual of the American Revolution. Warren anonymously published satirical plays and poems that criticized British authority and urged colonists to resist, helping to build the Patriot movement. In 1805, she published one of the first histories of the conflict, "History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution." The tour also features Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams and a vital confidant and advisor to him during the founding of the United States. From their home in the Boston area, she witnessed events like the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Her extensive correspondence with her husband includes her famous plea to "remember the ladies" when drafting new laws for the nation.