Shrewsbury and General Artemas Ward

Shrewsbury was settled in seventeen twenty-two and incorporated five years later, its settlers coming mainly from Sudbury and Marlborough. Its most significant native son was born here on November twenty-sixth, seventeen twenty-seven: Artemas Ward, whose father was one of the town's founders. When the Revolutionary War erupted in April of seventeen seventy-five, Ward was the senior American general on the field.

He took command of the colonial forces besieging Boston and directed the Siege of Boston, including the period of the Battle of Bunker Hill, holding the army together until George Washington arrived in July to take overall command. Ward is often remembered as the man who held the line before Washington, the commander of the New England army that became the core of the Continental Army. His house in Shrewsbury is now a museum administered by Harvard University.