Wilderness battlefield vs WalMart

[Embalmer]

actually gettysburg over the years has siezed and razed a few buildings to restore the battlefield. Like the hotel that used to be on emmitsburg rd, the tower, and there were a few other places recently as above has said. Honestly think that area is one of the most beautiful areas ive ever visited and had lived at for a few years.

[John Sukey (Deceased)]

Matt, I don't really care about Bunker Hill since the battle actualy took place on Breed's hill.

In any case if there are really such things as ghosts, it would be a good time for them to put in an appoearance on the building site. That would do more to block any building than all the lawyers.

[jon_norstog]

This is a very slippery slope. If the property is privately owned and zoned for commercial use, and the owner wants to develop the land, Who thinks the Government should be able to say no?

Red,

This is a good point. The action really should be taken beforehand, when the community updates its comprehensive plan. If the battlefield is zoned AG or something, keep it that way. If it was previously zoned for some kind of development, then the right thing to do is take a position in the Comp Plan that the County/township/whatever is adopting as a goal,preservation of the battlefield.

Then do the right thing: either buy the property outright, or buy the development rights. Or you can set up a transfer of development rights (TDR); the owner can sell his rights to someone somewhere else in the same jurisdiction.

Really, though, this is an area where the Park Service should be able to step in and pay up.

jn

[Capt Quahog]

John . . . psssst . . . psssst . . . get closer to the screen so nobody else can see this message . . . F.Y.I. . Breeds Hill and Bunker Hill are the same clay drumlin hill with one lump sticking up a little higher. Maybe that's where the fable originates. Over the decades self proclaimed experts, probably hanging around the bars in City Square, Charlestown, won free drinks with that Breeds Hill - Bunker Hill fish story.

Have a big framed 1868 reproduction of a 1775 dated map of Boston Bay up on the living room wall. Thing is super detailed with lots of data. The original was from the mapping expedition carried out by the British 23rd Regt. of foot, Royal Welsh Fusiliers which happened to be a key English military engineering outfit of the era.

Anyway, the area of Bunker Hill is clearly shown on that map including the entrenchments dug by the colonial rebels in June of that same year 1775. The whole area where the battle took place is marked as "Bunkers Hill".

Nothing mentioned or noted with the name, "Breeds Hill". There was a Breeds farm in the area and perhaps that's where the name was derived along the way. Don't believe that the formal name of Breed's Hill shows up until much later. .

Have about five chapters tucked away along with folders full of field notes for a book that I started awhile ago on the Battle of Bunker Hill. Lots of interesting stuff in the area that has and is totally overlooked by modern tourists, tour companies and most so-called historians.

There were multitudes well done Boston and Massachusetts histories published in the 19th Century that today are obscure and mostly forgotten. Have dozens of them, with some crumbling from age, sitting on book shelves. Have the most fun blasting holes through modern misconceptions and wrong information put forth as fact. Truth is much more interesting than ignorant embellishment any day of the week.

By the way, the over development of Bunker Hill right up to that grotesque monument started around 1850. Back in the late 1960s, my wife and I were contemplating buying the big brick Victorian edifice across from the monument known as "Bunker Hill House". It was some sort of tourist hotel back in the late 1800s. Learned then, that the place and most others around Monument Square were constructed after the Civil War around 1870. Until then, Bunker Hill was still mostly open rolling farm land as it was back in 1775.

Should have bought that red brick, marble fireplaced monstronsity and had the means then too. My wife then worked in the mortgage department of the Charlestown Saving Bank. She used to write and qualify mortgages. The two sisters who owned the "Bunker Hill House" then were "asking" . . . . . $68,000. Last that I heard, the same property sold for $1.2 million bucks! . . . What price for a building on a sacred battlefield? . . .

[mike113]

What's next for wal-mart? How about a floating store where the Arizona lies at rest?

[Embalmer]

there have been reports about bunker hill on the news here,t hat some historians want to search for alot of the unaccounted for mass graves of british soldiers, and in traditional m******* style, property owners are all against it....

[Vern Humphrey]

How is it good for the government to take private property like that?

If the government or the people opposing such projects don't want private developers, let them out-bid the private developers for the land and pay for it.

[Capt Quahog]

there have been reports about bunker hill on the news here,t hat some historians want to search for alot of the unaccounted for mass graves of british soldiers, and in traditional m****** style, property owners are all against it....

Matt:

Yeah . . . . those people looking for post-battle British graves on and around Bunker Hill in Boston are misguided at best and probably just more self appointed authorities. Boston is full of those over-schooled and under educated axeholes already with most of them not knowing shick from shinola.

In the aftermath of the Bunker Hill Battle of June 17, 1775, British dead were removed from the field and taken to Boston for proper burial. That fact is well documented. Soldiers of the King killed in battle were not randomly tossed into an enemy entrenchment and covered with dirt. The explanation provided by an “expert” from a Virginia tourist theme park is simply stupid.

Shurtleff’s 1870 published, “History of Boston”, tells of British soldiers killed at Bunker Hill being buried on Boston Common in wooden boxes, with proper Christian ceremony soon after the battle. It was nearly summer and due to the heat burial needed to be quickly done. A large number of coffins, containing as many as 200 bodies, were stacked in maybe two layers within a mass grave located near the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets.

During construction of the Tremont Street trolley car subway in the 1890s, workers came upon a large grave site containing the remains of many bodies. As described. . “It was a large amount of bones”. Newspaper accounts of the period pondered the origins of the large unknown grave. Bits of rotted wood and iron nails were located within the pit along with other relics unspecified. Work on the "cut and cover" subway was halted until the bones could be removed. The British soldiers were interred at a cemetery reportedly in the city of Boston.

Most likely, if human remains are discovered at the foot of Bunker Hill, then they are that of the rebel colonial defenders. The 1775 British map made by the 23rd Regt. of foot, actually shows the positions of those trenches and earthen fortifications on Bunker Hill. The locations could probably be figured out to close proximity. Bunker Hill however is today packed shoulder to shoulder with 19th Century erected buildings. Whatever open land there is now, consists of small backyards with patios.

It is quite possible that British military did use a trench or two as already dug graves for enemy dead. If so, then that place, if it does exist, is most hallowed ground. That is where forgotten patriots sleep at the place where they fell during our first great battle of America’s war for Independence. . . . .