The Old North Bridge Hounds meet at The Old Manse, home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his forebears, adjacent to the North Bridge, their namesake. / Elizabeth Goldsmith photo

In an earlier story, we read of the Old North Bridge Hounds (MA) meeting at historic Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in nearby Sudbury. This drag pack, established in 1969 and recognized by the MFHA in 1973, boasts connections back to Colonial days, and hounds hunt routinely across some of our nation’s most hallowed ground.

The hunt was organized in Concord, Massachusetts, the town that inhospitably hosted several companies of British regulars on the 19th of April, 1775. On that fateful day, the first British casualties of the War of Independence were shot and killed at the Old North Bridge spanning the Concord River. The redcoats were driven back to Cambridge by scores of Minute Men from surrounding towns who had assembled there, having been rousted by Paul Revere the night before.