Forbes House Museum
Holds Hutchinson Retreat Reenactment
By J. Michael Whalen
Times Staff
10/6/11
The Forbes House Museum celebrated the departure of early Milton Hill resident Gov. Thomas Hutchinson on Sept. 25.

Hutchinson was the last royal governor of the Massachusetts colony, and lived for several years at his summer home on Adams Street.

The re-enactment and cocktail reception was held in conjunction with Hutchinson’s departure and included a fife-and-drum procession down to Milton Wharf, where the governor’s neighbors and friends gathered to greet him. The governor (portrayed by Richard Howe) and his wife (Howe’s wife Jane) were accompanied to the wharf by a Colonial regiment (The Gardner Regiment of Charlestown) that fired a musket salute upon his arrival. After mingling with his friends and neighbors on the terrace of 88 Wharf St., he delivered his farewell remarks.

At the conclusion of the governor’s remarks, he and his wife were escorted to the water’s edge by the fife and drummers and the Gardner Regiment and boarded an open vessel to be transported down the Neponset River toward Dorchester Point to sail back to England aboard the Minerva. As the vessel began to pass from view, the regiment fires a final musket volley as guests drank a “Colonial grog” toast to their departing Milton neighbors.

Here are some images captured that day by Times Publisher Pat Desmond.