BILLERICA — A persistent rain fell over much of Massachusetts Saturday, including in Billerica, but that did not stop dozens of people from lining the sides of Boston Road and the Town Center for the town’s annual Yankee Doodle Homecoming celebration. Through the rain dozens of marchers and floats traveled through the center representing Billerica’s law enforcement, firefighters, elected officials, local businesses and schools, all under this year’s tagline, “Billerica the Beautiful.” In keeping with that theme, the parade’s grand marshals were volunteers from Billerica Clean Up Green Up, who marched down Boston Road with only a cart filled with their usual cleanup buckets.
Local vendors set up shop in the Billerica Memorial High School parking lot, nearby where the annual reenactment of the tarring and feathering of Thomas Ditson Jr. unfolded. Ditson, portrayed this year by his sixth-great-grandnephew and Billerica resident Matthew Ahern, was himself a Billerica resident who was tarred and feathered by British troops in 1775 in the weeks leading up to the American Revolutionary War.
This incident would later be referenced in a verse in a version of the revolutionary tune, “Yankee Doodle,” which led to Billerica being recognized by the Massachusetts Legislature as “America’s Yankee Doodle Town” in 1999. “Yankee Doodle came to town, for to buy a firelock, we will tar and feather him, and so we will John Hancock,” Billerica Historical Society member .