We were happy to help provide a little entertainment enhancement in our hometown of Malden, MA for this one.  Members of Malden’s Historical Society participated with Murray Hill Talent’s Fife and Drum group in the reenactment and dressed in period-appropriate costumes.  The event began in the Converse Memorial Building where the original and the digitized version of Malden’s town records from the Revolutionary war period were displayed. This was followed by local Historian and period actor Tom Coots performing the Third Annual Reading of the town “Instructions.”

The May 27, 1776 document entitled “Instructions of the Inhabitants of Malden, Massachusetts to their Representatives in Congress” was unanimously voted on by the townspeople of Malden to be delivered to the Second Continental Congress via their representative Ezra Sargeant. In the 1776 communication, the voting citizens of Malden renounced the Colony’s ties to the Kingdom of Great Britain and set forth their wish to become an independent “American” republic. The document is credited as a precursor to the Declaration of Independence written in July of 1776 when the Continental Congress formally declared their independence from England.