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Approximately 24,000 to 25,000 British soldiers are estimated to have died over the course of the American Revolution. While about half of the British forces were loyalists who lived in the colonies, the other half was composed of soldiers who had traveled overseas. Considering the impossible cost and logistics of sending the deceased soldiers home, British Army regulations called for the dead to be buried onsite at the battlefields. Throughout New England, there are examples of this phenomenon, from mass graves in Arlington and Boston to single burial sites along Concord’s Battle Road.

The sites in Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area reflect the casualties of the fighting in Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, and Menotomy (present day Arlington) on April 19, 1775. But it’s the stories of how these graves were treated — whether they went unmarked or memorialized, honored or ignored — that shed light on how feelings about British soldiers have changed with the zeitgeist.

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