Betsy Ross and the Making of America

That Boston Paul Revere knew is so completely gone, it is almost useless to hunt for it. The cutting-down of of hills and building-out of new land has gone on for a century and a half. When in 1756 his artillery train trundled into Boston, they entered over ‘The Neck.’ It was the only land approach to the town. On his right was Roxbury Harbor, to his left the Back Bay, and for a mile he followed an ill-paved, desolate cart path over mudflats. The first sign of civilization was the gallows and around it the graves of criminals and suicides marked with heaps of stone.