@izzythepush,
During Revolutionary times, the first armed resistance in this-country to British authority, was made by a party of Salem patriots at the North Bridge in this city on Feb. 26, 1775. By raising the draw bridge, they prevented Col. Leslie and his British troops from seizing patriot army stores and ammunition, hidden in North Salem.
St. Peter's (Salem) most famous rector was Alexander Viets Griswold (1766-1843) who was Bishop of the Eastern Diocese (all of New England exept for Connecticut). St. Peter is an Anglican church, and the clergymen there highly respected during the Revolutionary War.
But many people locally believe that the War for Independence actually began here in Salem in the First Church, in the In February of 1775. (The First Church is one of America's oldest churches, from 1629, founded by Puritans).
This churche's Rev. Bentley was an ardent Republican (i.e., Jeffersonian), he translated letters for Jefferson from and to Arabian. (Later, when Jefferson had completed his term and was setting up the University of Virginia, he offered the Presidency of the new school to Rev. Bentley.)
On Jefferson's advice, Rev. Bentley made arrangements for a young Catholic priest to say mass at a local social hall and thereby helped found Salem's first Roman Catholic Church, what is today the Immaculate Conception Parish.
All that and a lot more about the Revolutionary War in Salem and Massachusetts can be seen in Salem's (really worth visiting!)
Peabody Essex Museum and within other places of this former centre for privateering (these about 800 ships from Salem destroyed about 600 British ships).
