About 242 years after the Battle of Lexington sparked the Revolutionary War, a resident of the Massachusetts town where it took place realized with childlike enthusiasm that the 250th anniversary would be coming in no time. Huzzah!
Obsessed with her hometown’s role in America’s origin story, the resident, Sabrina Bhattacharjya, began planning early for 2025. Very early. Even earlier than the town’s elders, since she had the foresight to lock up the internet domain for Lexington250.com with $53 provided by her financial advisers — her parents.
That’s because Sabrina’s full-time position as a first-grader at Bridge Elementary School did not produce a steady income. She was, after all, only 7 years old.
But a motivated 7, as resolute as the midnight rider Paul Revere himself to alert other kids in town to the history breathing all around them. It galled her that some children thought Revere was a fictional character, a colonial-era Paul Bunyan.
Within five years, Sabrina was using her website to sell T-shirts with historically sassy sayings intended to spark youthful curiosity, but also causing some in town to cough up their mulled cider. Among the phrases was the name of the town — Lexington — followed by a social media abbreviation evoking an emphatic expletive.
Like its creator, the site has matured, becoming an inviting resource for all things Lexington, providing history as well as places to eat, sleep and shop. In preparing for this weekend’s semiquincentennial — which sounds like a medical procedure, but simply means 250th anniversary — Sabrina posted an entry with the headline, “For People Who Think The Battle of Lexington Re-enactment Is Coachella: A Perfect Patriots’ Day Weekend.”
