Cambridge has a dozen elementary schools, all with names reflecting a complex history of people deserving honors – sometimes replacing people we decide do not – that might come after moves, divisions or mergers.

Throughout Cambridge’s history, women have led the charge in creating change, progress and growth for the city. Their contributions have inspired individuals and moved Cambridge forward.

In preserving some almost-lost pieces of Necco history, the founder of the Candy Wrapper Museum became convinced it should be shared with the world in a book – a piece of New England’s confectionery legacy composed of Necco candy wrappers and ephemera.

The Irish community’s first U.S. celebrations honoring St. Patrick were described in Cambridge papers as an excuse for drunkenness, violence and other unsavory behavior. It wasn’t long before the events were filled instead with breakfasts, lectures and concerts – all very publicly devoid of alcohol and on the path to mainstream acceptance.

There may not be many Filipinos in Cambridge, but it seems that the Philippines mattered enough to the community to place a woefully misguided monument to a war there on Arsenal Square, at Garden Street and Concord Avenue in Neighborhood 9.

Contemporary art and Black history are unexpected on Brattle Street, but History Cambridge intends to install temporary public art this spring on the front lawn of its Hooper-Lee-Nichols House to raise awareness of Black history in West Cambridge.

Many teens and young adults who have grown up in Cambridge and go to school here still don’t know or understand the city’s rich history or that news of global import has a local relationship or correlation.

At Binney and First streets in East Cambridge, a man named Adolph Sommer lived and died for his business – a liquid “leather-grease” manufactured until the late 1930s.

After the slaveholders at 105 Brattle St. fled the oncoming George Washington and his army in the run-up to the Revolutionary War, the enslaved people were treated little better by their liberators – but managed to thrive nonetheless.

Only the oldest Cantabrigians will remember when Memorial Drive ended at Hawthorn Street, and the riverfront that stretched from there to Gerry’s Landing was a parkland where children played and climbed trees and adults enjoyed the views and breezes.