GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —The 250th celebration of American independence began in the tiny town of Alford on Saturday morning. 

 

Later that afternoon, a small contingent of re-enactors, community members and officials marched from the Great Barrington Historical Society to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center to recognize the Berkshire towns that were part of that significant event in the nation's history.

 

State Sen. Paul Mark, as the highest ranking Massachusetts governmental official at the Alford crossing, was presented a ceremonial linstock flying the ribbons representing every New York State county that Henry Knox and his team passed through on their 300-mile journey from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in the winter of 1775-76. 

 

"The New York contingent came to the border. We had a speaking program, and they officially handed over the linstock, transferring control of the train to Massachusetts," said Mark, co-chair of Massachusetts' special commission for the semiquincentennial. "It was a great melding of both states, a kind of coming together."

 

State Rep. Leigh Davis called Knox "an unlikely hero, he was someone that rose up to the occasion. ... this is really honoring someone that stepped into a role because he was called to serve, and that is something that resonates."

 

Gen. George Washington charged 25-year-old bookseller Knox with bringing artillery from the recently captured fort on Lake Champlain to the beleaugured and occupied by Boston. It took 80 teams of horses and oxen to carry the nearly 60 tons of cannon through snow and over mountains. 

 

Knox wrote to Washington that "the difficulties were inconceivable yet surmountable" and left the fort in December. He crossed the Hudson River in early January near Albany, crossing into Massachusetts on what is now Route 71 on Jan. 10, 1776. By late January, he was in Framingham and in the weeks to follow the artillery was positioned on Dorchester Heights.