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Watertown Is No “Sleepy Town”
WATERTOWN, Mass. If you watched Friday's manhunt unfold on Twitter or TV, you might think it was the most exciting thing to ever happen in Watertown. A Chechen teenager suspected of bombing the 117th Boston Marathon ditched a stolen car and fled into this relatively unknown suburb, bringing 9,000 city, state and federal officers with him. The officers one for every three Watertown residents filled the town's streets, ordering residents to "shelter in place" for nearly 12 hours. There was a tense search, a tenser standoff, and a thrilling conclusion. You might assume this was the biggest story to ever hit the sleepy, sleepy town.
But then you'd be laughed at by the town's librarians.
They don't mean to belittle Friday's events or the work of those 9,000 officers, "but Watertown has over 375 years of history," one librarian told BuzzFeed, speaking anonymously, in compliance with library policy. "There's the Revolutionary War, for starters."
Watertown was founded in 1630, one month before Boston though they were named on the same day, the librarian pointed out. When the British Army seized Boston in 1775, the Massachusetts government relocated to Watertown. The general court convened inside a house five blocks away from where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding. Sam Adams lived here. Paul Revere lived here. George Washington passed through here. One of the earliest versions of American currency used to pay soldiers was printed here.
Watertown was one of the first American towns to protest taxation without representation in 1632, its citizens refused to pay a tax benefiting neighboring Cambridge. The United States' first international treaty was signed here with the Mi'kmaq Indian nation, 15 days after the Declaration of Independence.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/watertown-is-no-sleepy-town
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Watertown Is No “Sleepy Town” (Original Post)
jakeXT
Apr 2013
OP
longship
(40,416 posts)1. Thanks for the history lesson.
This kind of stuff is always interesting.
R&K
freshwest
(53,661 posts)2. From the video of an 'illegal' search in V & MM, it's a lovely neighborhood.
Great history lesson in this OP.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)3. Good find, thanks for posting.
Cha
(295,909 posts)4. thanks jakeXT
for the history!