Three rods west of this spot
stood, from 1718 until 1785,
The Town House.
Here Governor Burnet convened
The General Court in 1728 and 1729,
a Town Meeting held here in 1765
protested against The Stamp Act,
and another in 1769,
denounced the tax on tea.
Here met, in 1774, the last General Assemby
of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay,
which, June 17, in defiance of Governor Gage,
chose delegates to
The First Continental Congress.
The House of Assembly was thereupon dissolved,
and the election of a new house, to meet at Salem,
as ordered by the Governor, but this,
by later proclamation, he refused to recognize.
In contempt of his authority the members met
in this town house, October 5,
and after organizing resolved themselves to
A Provincial Congress,
and adjourned to Concord,
there to act with other delegates as
The First Provincial Congress of Massachusetts.
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