The Town That Remembers

Marblehead is a small town. You can walk from one end to the other in twenty minutes. The streets are narrow and winding because they follow paths laid out when this was a fishing village, and in some ways it still is.

At the Marblehead Museum, we tell a story that most Americans do not know. They know the painting — Washington crossing the Delaware. Very few know who was rowing. When we tell them it was fishermen from this small town on the Massachusetts coast, it changes what they see in that painting.

The Marblehead Regiment was remarkable in ways that go beyond the famous crossings. It was integrated — Black and white fishermen served together at a time when most of America was rigidly segregated. The regiment brought this maritime egalitarianism to the army, and it sometimes caused friction. Other units complained. Glover did not care. He needed men who could handle boats, and he would take them regardless of color.

We have artifacts from the regiment here in the museum. Not many — Marblehead fishermen were not the type to preserve memorabilia. But we have muster rolls, pension records, letters. These documents tell us who these men were: not gentlemen farmers or educated merchants, but working men whose practical skills happened to be exactly what the army needed.

The hardest part of our story to tell is the cost. Marblehead lost more men per capita than nearly any town in Massachusetts. The fishing fleet was destroyed. The town's economy collapsed and never fully recovered. When visitors walk through the old town and see its beautiful harbor, they are looking at a place that sacrificed its prosperity for a nation's independence.

We do not exaggerate this. We let the facts speak. The facts are enough.