In 1775, America had more than three thousand churches, representing eighteen denominations, but none was more important on this April night than Christ Church in Boston’s Salem Street. Known as Old North, the church featured eight great bells cast in England, a magnificent quartet of hand-carved wooden angels perched above the nave, and a towering steeple, long used as a landmark by navigators entering the harbor and featured in a Boston panorama engraved by Revere the previous year.
