Local Militia Parade Ground

It’s not always about fireworks or magnificent and aging monuments, or parades. Sometimes our most profound remembrance of the sacrifices of the rebels in the Revolutionary War can be found on old parade grounds like this. This is Agawam in western Massachusetts.

Agawam, settled first by discontented Englishmen leaving England of Charles II, was part of the Springfield Plantation. Some generations later, her men and boys gathered their local militia here and practiced firing percussion musket volleys to make ready for their armed rebellion on the world’s greatest military power. This was no battlefield during the Revolution, only a practice for the horrors that lay ahead, if such a thing can ever be prepared for, and perhaps it cannot.

Happy Independence Day. Remember the ones who gave it to us.