In 1909, William Sumner Appleton learned of plans to significantly alter the eighteenth-century Jonathan Harrington House, which overlooks the green in Lexington, Massachusetts, and was the site of a dramatic incident during the confrontation with the British troops on April 19, 1775. Outraged at the historic structure’s potential loss, in 1901 he founded the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, known today as Historic New England.

Building on Appleton’s legacy, Historic New England is the oldest and largest regional heritage organization in the nation and remains the national leader in collecting, preserving, and using significant buildings, landscapes, archives, stories, and objects from the past to today. The organization saves and share New England’s past to engage and inform present and future generations. More than more than 200,000 visitors each year to historic properties in five New England states.