New Delhi, April 23 -- No matter where you come from," Steve Cole told the people gathered on Lexington's Battle Green Tuesday morning, "here you belong."

Cole wore a blue wool coat with white tassels on the shoulders and a tricorn hat - the 76th Captain Commanding of the Lexington Minute Men, he is the man who, at the annual reenactment, plays Captain John Parker, who led the first battle of the American Revolution on that same patch of grass.

Two hundred and fifty-one years later, on a picture-perfect spring day, 49 people stood on the Green and prepared to take the Oath of Allegiance to the nation born on that battlefield.

Their origins, read aloud in turn, ran nearly the length of the alphabet - Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Colombi...