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County Commissioners to hold regular weekly meeting at the Olde Colonial Courthouse on Wednesday, September 25th

Published on: September 24, 2019

Celebrating Barnstable County Independence Day this week, the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners will hold their regular weekly meeting tomorrow, open to the public, at the Olde Colonial Courthouse at 10:30 A.M.

The Olde Colonial Courthouse is located at 3046 Main Street, Barnstable, MA 02630

About Barnstable County Independence Day

September 27, 1774 – Tales of Cape Cod estimates as many as 1,500 ordinary citizens from across Cape Cod gathered in front of Barnstable’s Olde Colonial Courthouse on September 27, 1774 – nearly two years earlier than when America declared independence from Great Britain – to protest the Intolerable Acts decreed by the British to punish Colonists for the Boston Tea Party. Until then the Province of Massachusetts enjoyed nearly complete local autonomy under its 1691 royal charter. The Intolerable Acts changed this by taking away the colonists’ rights to elect their government officials, choose jurors locally and hold town meetings.

Counties across Massachusetts moved to shut down their courthouses before the new Crown-controlled courts could sit for the fall session in 1774. In Barnstable County, protesters demanded that the County desist from all government business until the mind of the continental, or of a provincial, Congress shall be obtained and ended with County officials signing a document that conceded to the cancellation of the court’s fall session.  By the end of that week in September, Cape Cod was in every respect rid of British control, and by the end of that year, British control had ended in all of Massachusetts except Boston. In response, the next April, British dispatched troops to Concord to secure munitions stored there — and with the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Revolutionary War began.

The first Barnstable County Independence Day was celebrated on September 27, 2018, when the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners convened for their regular weekly meeting at the Olde Colonial Courthouse.  A reconstructed document listing the 13 original signatories was signed by the three County Commissioners.