It’s a fair question. Here are three reasons.
#1. More Source Material
Advances in online search technology have made it easy to obtain virtually any resource referenced in prior research as well as new material: War pension applications, probate records, old newspaper clippings, British army regiment lists, and countless other resources that once took researchers years to locate, if they ever could at all, now pop up instantly in even the clumsiest search query.
Where we might have once contented ourselves to know a participant’s name, we can now connect that name across different documents to glean some sense of who these people were.
Also turning up: Important details of the fight published by survivor’s families in the 1800s that haven’t found their way into any narrative in the past century, if ever.
#2. A Focus on Lexington
The world does not need another book about Sam Adams or Paul Revere. But no deep dive into the events in Lexington exists. Many of its citizens, and the British who found themselves on the common that morning, have never had their stories told.
After 250 years, the “Common Men” deserve to be heard.
#3. A Reconciliation Mindset
The goal of this project is to reconcile all eyewitness statements about the fight, American and British, into one cohesive “best fit” narrative regardless of when they were written down. Statements taken within the week, or fifty years later, or by a descendant claiming to have heard what the eyewitness said are all fair game. Not all are 100% correct, and none are 100% complete, yet all are valuable nonetheless.
If every witness did their best to tell the truth, just not all of it, then we might be able to reconstruct the full story from what everyone said, with nothing left over. For details on how, read this.
The Lexington Fight 