Through Augmented Reality, CA Senior Hannah Crozier ’25 Offers a Modern Take on Concord’s Revolutionary War History
“There’s a lot more to small old towns than I think is generally seen,” says Hannah Crozier ’25. “I think it’s important to learn about where you are, especially if you’re going to school here. I’m being educated in a place that has so much history around it—and so many people live here and don’t know about it.”
Hannah is helping to bring some of that history to light during Concord250, the Concord, Mass., celebration of the 250th anniversary of the battles of Concord and Lexington on April 19, 2025. Drawing on the research she conducted online and in local archives, the Concord Academy senior has completed a project that allows anyone with a smartphone to experience some of the town’s Revolutionary War history right where it happened. Through augmented reality, at designated waysides around the town, plaques and videos Hannah created tell stories from the Old North Bridge and several of the town’s Witness Houses—homes that stood close by as the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.
Here’s how the self-guided tour works. Residents and visitors can download the augmented-reality app Hoverlay at the Concord Visitor Center. There, they can plan a walking route between the Old North Bridge and seven nearby historic houses, each bearing a Witness House flag. Some of the properties, such as the Old Manse, the Colonial Inn, and The Wayside, are open to the public; others, including the Bullet Hole House, Jonathan Prescott House, and Benjamin Barron House, are privately owned. At each stop, scanning a QR code in the app will bring up a virtual plaque with information about each residence and the events that transpired there on April 19, 1775. Two of the locations—the bridge and the Reuben Brown House and Saddler’s Shop—present brief, engaging videos.
These aren’t typical historical reenactment scenes: Hannah says the videos “have a bit of a modern aspect.” They present historical accounts through an Information Age sensibility, with some deliberate anachronisms for immediacy. For example, Hannah based her script for the Old North Bridge on the witness account of Amos Barrett, who fought in the battle there. Longtime CA mathematics teacher Howie Bloom P’08 ’09 ’14 performs as Barrett, taking some liberties with the language as he records a TikTok-style get-ready-with-me video.
Barrett wrote his reflection on the 50th anniversary of the battles. “He’s writing 50 years afterward, and he says he can remember this event better than things from five years ago,” Hannah says. “That line of his really interested me. It’s a reminder of how things like that stick—it was a war, it was intense.”
Similarly, Hannah based her video for the Reuben Brown House and Saddler’s Shop on a historical account by Martha Moulton, who witnessed British soldiers ransack the town, seizing and destroying hidden military supplies and setting fire to several buildings, among them her home. “When this happened, she was an old woman,” Hannah explains. “I really wanted to incorporate young people somewhere to appeal to a lot of ages.” The scene she directed is narrated by two school-aged kids, who she says “got hold of their older sibling’s phone and are running around making a vlog—they have just witnessed Martha stopping these fires, and they’re out-of-their-minds excited.”
Hannah’s interest in researching Concord history began when she took the U.S. Public History: Tour Guide class with Kim Frederick in spring 2024. As they learned about Concord’s local history—which is national U.S. history too—CA students also became certified to work as town tour guides.
“That class was a lot of fun for me,” Hannah says. “I really enjoyed combining two things I love: talking to people and history. And as someone who does a lot of performing, it really appealed to me to try to present information in an interesting and fun way, both for the person giving it and the person receiving it.”
As part of that class, she researched the Concord Academy houses along Main Street, learning about their architecture and the people who built and inhabited them. The class also ventured out to many historic sites, and Hannah found it instructive to visit the places they were reading about. At the end of the 2023–24 school year, Frederick, who serves on the Concord250 Executive Committee’s History and Education Subcommittee, suggested Hannah might extend her research on antique homes to the Witness Houses through a departmental study.
Hannah says she jumped at the opportunity. “Kim is very knowledgeable about the town of Concord, and that’s awesome because there’s just so much to learn,” she says.
Throughout this fall, Hannah looked at primary sources to develop narratives. She and Frederick met weekly to review the research and refine the stories, and Hannah continued to prepare her materials into the spring. Computer science teacher Ben Stumpf ’88 helped her work with Hoverlay. In March, Hannah had an opportunity to present her plans at First Parish in Concord to Witness House owners—the individuals who have long stewarded these historic properties.
While their release was timed to coincide with the Concord250 celebrations, the augmented-reality waysides will remain active in Concord over the next year. So residents and visitors alike can look forward to more deeply engaging with some of Concord’s remarkable stories for some time to come.
