In June of 1949 Colonel Edward Fletcher and his wife visited Littleton, Massachusetts where he had been born in 1872. While Fletcher, a noted San Diego businessman, land developer, civic leader, and California State Senator, made his fortune in the West, he retained family ties and a deep affection for his hometown.

While on a tour of the town’s parks with his cousin, Ethel Prouty Conant, Fletcher noticed there were no memorials honoring those who fought in the American Revolution. He decided to remedy this by funding a monument to dedicate Liberty Park, formerly known as ‘Liberty Square Training Grounds,’ to commemorate the brave men from Littleton who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

As noted by Fletcher in his memoir, published by Pioneer Printers in 1952, he reached out to the town’s selectmen who graciously accepted his offer. A monument honoring Fletcher’s great-great-grandfather, Captain Eleazer Fletcher, was erected in 1949 and dedicated the following spring.

Shortly thereafter, Fletcher offered to present the Town with a second, larger memorial to honor 148 Revolutionary War heroes from Littleton and the surrounding vicinity by name and requested his dear friend and distant cousin, Ralph W. Conant, take charge of the project. Crafted of Vermont granite, it was dedicated just over a year later, on September 16, 1951.

Fletcher’s two sisters, including 90-year-old Susie, represented him at the dedication. U.S. Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Lowell was the principal speaker.

According to the September 18, 1951 issue of The Lowell Sun, “Many of those in attendance were direct descendants of men whose names are etched on the monument for posterity and those descendants also look with pride on members of their own families who, like their forbearers of Colonial days, had taken up arms to preserve the freedom so dearly won at Concord, Lexington, Bunker Hill and subsequent battles by the Continental Army during the trying days of the Revolutionary War.”

This story is featured in How We Remember: Monuments, Memorials & Markers in the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area, part of our semiquincentennial initiative, Freedom’s Way 250, made possible with support from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and the National Park Service.