Gunshots in the Countryside

On 7 Sept 1774, 250 years ago today, Henry Vassall was riding in Lincoln when he heard a gunshot.

The only Henry Vassall I was able to find on the family tree at this time was a nineteen-year-old son of William Vassall, discussed yesterday.

Henry was either visiting or staying with his cousin Elizabeth, wife of Dr. Charles Russell (1739–1780, shown here). I wonder if he was studying medicine.

Later that month Henry Vassall told the Charlestown committee of correspondence about his experience. He then wrote out an account for two Middlesex County magistrates, Henry Gardner of Stow and Dr. John Cuming of Concord:

Passing between the House of Mrs. Rebecca Barons [?] & Doct. Russell’s between the Hours of 7 & 9 in the Evening of the 7 instant [i.e., this month] & to the best of my Knowledge as I rose [?] a little Hill a little a past the first Canopy [?] I heard the report of a Gun saw the light and a Ball Enter’d the Carriage which I was in being Doct. Russells.

I immediately step’d out of the Carriage & stood about five or six Minutes & then stepp’d into the Carriage Again & road in haste to the Doctor when I had gone a small Distance from the Place where the Gun was discharged I met a person on Horse back

when I had past a small Distance further I met several Persons riding on two Horses,

whether the Ball was aim’d at the Carriage I can’t say I further declare I do not know or even suspect who the Person was that Discharg’d the Gun as above mentioned . . .

NB. The above affair I declar’d to no person in Lincoln but the Revd. Mr. [William] Lawrence & desired him to keep it secret—Till the Friday Following.

Gardner and Cuming also gathered statements from a local man named Joseph Peirce and Luck, enslaved to Dr. Russell. Both declared that they had been traveling near young Vassall and had heard no gunshot.

Three members of the Lincoln committee of correspondence then wrote back to Charlestown agreeing that they detested “the Crime of Assassination” but casting doubt on Vassall’s complaint:

We shall only add that as the evening on which this event was said to have happened was very calm it is the general opinion here that it is very improbable if not utterly impossible that a gun should be Discharged at that time & place without being heard by many persons, you have Doubtless seen the impression in the Carriage & are able to judge & Declare whether it is the efect of a Bullet Discharged from a Gun or Not as well as any person in this town

This incident provided yet another reason for members of the Vassall family to seek safety surrounded by the king’s soldiers. (And on the same day that the magistrates wrapped up their investigation, people in Bristol, Rhode Island, threw stones at the chaise of Henry’s father and stepmother, William and Margaret Vassall. Newspapers reported that “next morning [they] set out for Boston.”)

This shot in Lincoln is only the second example I’ve found of someone in Massachusetts firing a gun at a supporter of the royal government. The first had occurred a couple of weeks earlier in Taunton.

According to Daniel Leonard, a veteran of the last war named Job Williams came to his house with a warning that “the People were to assemble” to protest how he had joined the mandamus Council. Leonard left, thinking that would head off the problem. Instead, on 22 August , or perhaps make it clear he wouldn’t be welcomed back. That crowd did arrive. Leonard wrote:

about five hundred persons assembled, many of them Freeholders and some of them Officers in the Militia, and formed themselves into a Battalion before my house; they had then no Fire-arms, but generally had clubs. . . .

My Family supposing all would remain quiet, went to bed at their usual hour; at 11 o’Clock in the evening a Party fixed upon the house with small arms and run off; how many they consisted of is uncertain, I suppose not many; four bullets and some Swan-shot entered the house at the windows, part in a lower room and part in the chamber above, where one Capt. Job Williams lodged. The balls that were fired into the lower room were in a direction to his bed, but were obstructed by the Chamber floor. . . . I conclude it possible that the attack upon the house was principally designed for him.

Back in 1769–1770, there had been three increasingly notorious incidents of government supporters shooting at crowds of protestors: the “Neck Riot,” Ebenezer Richardson killing Christopher Seider, and of course the Boston Massacre. But even in that period Massachusetts protestors had never shot at royal officials or their supporters.

These untraceable gunshots in the late summer of 1774 show that some people in Massachusetts were starting to think it was acceptable to use that level of violence against Loyalists.

How Many British Soldiers Are Buried beside the North Bridge?

How many British soldiers are buried beside the North Bridge in Concord?

On some night late in 1891, George R. Brooks and other local worthies took a cranium given up by the Worcester Society of Antiquity and interred it in the patch of ground beside the bridge long marked as the grave of two redcoats.

In doing so, they believed they were restoring one of two skulls that had been removed from that grave decades before.

That would have left slightly less than two British soldiers buried there.

Those men were convinced that the phrenologist Walton Felch had dug up those skulls with the permission of the Concord selectmen back around 1840, shortly after the town had erected its obelisk monument to the fighting on 19 Apr 1775.

They were also convinced that the skull they had failed to return was damaged, based on a series of musts:

• If the two skulls were unearthed in Concord, they must have come from the grave beside the North Bridge because that was the only grave of British soldiers in town with two bodies.
• If the skulls came from the grave at the North Bridge, they must have belonged to the soldiers killed at that bridge, including the one Ammi White hit in the head with a hatchet.
• If one of those skulls came from a man killed by a hatchet blow to the head, that skull must have shown severe damage.

And thus, even though no one reported actually seeing a damaged second skull in the latter half of the 1800s, people became convinced that it was “demoralized.”

But what if the initial premise of that logical chain was wrong? Because that’s what the evidence from ante-bellum Concord says.

First of all, in 1840 schoolboy Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., went to hear the phrenologist Walton Felch at the Concord Lyceum. Right afterward, Edmund wrote in his diary that the man had the top part of the skull of a British soldier with a bullet hole through it, and that cranium had been “dug up in Lincoln,” not Concord.

Second, in 1850 Henry David Thoreau spoke with William Wheeler, who described seeing Felch dig up two skulls years before in an “almost unused graveyard in Lincoln.” Wheeler’s description of a bullet hole through one cranium matched young Edmund’s.

Third, in 1836 the town of Concord chose to erect its monument near where two soldiers had been shot and buried. Lots of people paid attention to that spot, including the Rev. Dr. Ezra Ripley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other town leaders. There was also a contingent in Concord who had wanted the monument built elsewhere. The selectmen couldn’t have authorized opening the soldiers’ graves without people in town knowing, and at least some of them criticizing the idea. There would have been no secrets.

In contrast, Lincoln had had a lot more British soldiers to bury back in April 1775. So many that local men simply carted those bodies to the town burying-ground and placed them in a single grave in the paupers’ section. By the 1830s that old cemetery was largely ignored. Lincoln didn’t put up any marker for those bodies until 1884. In sum, few people in Lincoln probably cared whether those bodies were disturbed.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lincoln’s town records from the late 1830s show the selectmen granting Felch permission to explore the cemetery. And I wouldn’t be surprised if those records say nothing about Felch’s request; the selectmen may not have cared enough to take formal action. Unlike in Concord, how to treat the remains of British soldiers in Lincoln wasn’t a monumental decision.

In the following years Felch described his skulls as those of soldiers killed in the “Battle of Concord.” Some listeners heard, or remembered, that as meaning the soldiers had died in the town of Concord. By the time Albert Tyler and Daniel Seagrave were asking his widow about the skulls, Felch wasn’t around to correct that idea. So those men and their Worcester Society of Antiquity colleagues understood the skulls as having come from Concord.

That mistaken belief led to museum labels and newspaper articles about the remaining skull from Concord—reportedly unearthed with the selectmen’s approval. Men from Concord started to whisper about how that reflected on them and their forefathers. They constructed the logical chain above. And ultimately we reach the moment in 1891 when Concord antiquarians were secretly digging in the dirt beside the North Bridge, not to investigate but to partially rectify a breach of etiquette from fifty years before.

But that wasn’t really necessary. The last time that skull had been in Concord, it was still healthy, even if its owner might have come under fire. That soldier didn’t die until a bullet pierced his brain in Lincoln. In 1891 the rest of that man’s body was still in Lincoln, and whatever remains of it is there now.

Buried in the grave beside Concord’s North Bridge are slightly more than two British soldiers.

G. F. Hoar and “stories of the Battle of Concord”

George Frisbie Hoar (1826–1904, shown here) was born in Concord. His father, Samuel Hoar, represented the area in the U.S. Congress and contributed to the wording of the town’s monument at the North Bridge.

In his autobiography Hoar wrote fondly about growing up in Concord, and particularly about living reminders of the Revolutionary War:

Scattered about the church were the good gray heads of many survivors of the Revolution—the men who had been at the bridge on the 19th of April, and who made the first armed resistance to the British power. They were very striking and venerable figures, with their queues and knee-breeches and shoes with shining buckles. Men were more particular about their apparel in those days than we are now. They had great stateliness of behavior, and admitted of little familiarity.

They had heard John Buttrick’s order to fire, which marked the moment when our country was born. The order was given to British subjects. It was obeyed by American citizens. Among them was old Master [Thaddeus] Blood, who saw a ball strike the water when the British fired their first volley. I heard many of the old men tell their stories of the Battle of Concord, and of the capture of Burgoyne.

I lay down on the grass one summer afternoon, when old Amos Baker of Lincoln, who was in the Lincoln Company on the 19th of April, told me the whole story. He was very indignant at the claim that the Acton men marched first to attack the British because the others hesitated. He said, “It was because they had bagnets [bayonets]. The rest of us hadn’t no bagnets.”

One day a few years later, when I was in college, I walked up from Cambridge to Concord, through Lexington, and had a chat with old Jonathan Harrington by the roadside. He told me he was on the Common when the British Regulars fired upon the Lexington men.

He did not tell me then the story which he told afterward at the great celebration at Concord in 1850. He and Amos Baker were the only survivors who were there that day. He said he was a boy about fifteen years old on April 19, 1775. He was a fifer in the company. He had been up the greater part of the night helping get the stores out of the way of the British, who were expected, and went to bed about three o’clock, very tired and sleepy. His mother came and pounded with her fist on the door of his chamber, and said, “Git up, Jonathan! The Reg’lars are comin’ and somethin’ must be done!” . . .

A very curious and amusing incident is said, and I have no doubt truly, to have happened at this celebration. It shows how carefully the great orator, Edward Everett, looked out for the striking effects in his speech. He turned in the midst of his speech to the seat where Amos Baker and Jonathan Harrington sat, and addressed them. At once they both stood up, and Mr. Everett said, with fine dramatic effect, “Sit, venerable friends. It is for us to stand in your presence.”

After the proceedings were over, old Amos Baker was heard to say to somebody, “What do you suppose Squire Everett meant? He came to us before his speech and told us to stand up when he spoke to us, and when we stood up he told us to sit down.”

In Concord, George F. Hoar became lifelong friends with Henry David Thoreau. They met as schoolboys at different grades, and George later attended the Thoreau brothers’ Concord Academy for a while. It’s unclear whether he overlapped with Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr.

However, in an 1891 letter Hoar wrote that as a boy he attended a lecture in Concord where the speaker exhibited the skull of a British soldier killed in 1775. That could only have been Walton Felch at the town’s lyceum in the spring of 1840.

After the obligatory years at Harvard, George F. Hoar went into the law, establishing his practice in Worcester. Then he went into politics. He served in the Massachusetts General Court, then the U.S. Congress after the Civil War, and finally the U.S. Senate from 1877 to 1904.

Back home, Hoar helped found what became the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and served as president of the American Antiquarian Society. He also sat on boards of the Smithsonian Institute and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, so he didn’t have a complete aversion to museums holding human remains.

But Sen. Hoar didn’t like the idea of the Worcester Society of Antiquity holding that skull of a British soldier killed on 19 Apr 1775.

TOMORROW: A private arrangement.

“The most prominent addition made to the cabinet”

On 2 Feb 1877, the Boston Daily Advertiser took note of “an exhibition of antiquarian relics” temporarily open “in the rooms of the National History Society of Worcester.”

The article didn’t provide the name of the group that had organized the exhibit, the Worcester Society of Antiquity, which received its state charter that year.

All the objects on display were probably owned by members. Most were items on paper, including books, deeds, commissions, newspapers, and autographs unfortunately clipped out of documents of greater interest. 

The exhibit did include “Spurs worn by General [Artemas] Ward in the Revolutionary war.” And:

the skull of a British soldier from Concord, April 19, 1775.

The Worcester Natural History Society, founded in 1825 as the Worcester Lyceum of Natural History, went on to open the New England Science Center, now called the EcoTarium.

Meanwhile, the Worcester Society of Antiquity started renting its own space in the building of the Worcester National Bank for its meetings and growing collection. On 6 Apr 1881 the Worcester Evening Gazette reported on the group’s monthly gathering, saying:

The most prominent addition made to the cabinet was the skull of a British soldier, shot at Concord Bridge in the first fight of the Revolution. Two were killed and buried where they fell. In 1844 [sic], by permission of the Selectmen, the bodies were exhumed by a resident, whose widow, who is in reduced circumstances transferred the relic to the Society. The members made up quite a collection of money for the donor. The other skull is in possession of Dr. J. N. Bates of this city.

The soldier’s skull had actually been dug up before 1840 because Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., saw Walton Felch display it that year. Sewall also heard that the skull had been dug up in Lincoln, not Concord, and Henry David Thoreau recorded the circumstances later in his journal.

The 1881 article suggests that Daniel Seagraves had just formally donated the skull to the society. As discussed yesterday, Dr. Joseph N. Bates died in 1883, and no one could find the second skull among his effects.

Folks might uncover other newspaper mentions of the British soldier’s skull on display in Worcester in the late 1800s. These are the only two I came across. Notably, they show no squeamishness about displaying human remains.

After a generous gift from a member and some fundraising, the Worcester Society of Antiquity opened its own building on Salisbury Street in 1892. The organization became the Worcester Historical Society in 1919 and the Worcester Historical Museum in 1978. Ten years after that, it moved into its present building on Elm Street.

But the British soldier’s skull was never exhibited in those museums.

Some people didn’t like the thought of that British soldier’s skull being separated from his body.

TOMORROW: Back to Concord.

“Mr Felch is delivering a course of Phrenological Lectures”

Walton Felch was born in Royalston, Massachusetts, in 1790, youngest in a large family. Eventually his parents and some siblings moved to Vermont, forming the village of Felchville in Reading.

Walton Felch appears to have gone to work in one of Rhode Island’s early industrial mills as a teenager. Ambitious and eager for knowledge, he rose to management ranks. He then did something even more unusual, turning his experience into poetry.

In 1816 Felch published The Manufacturer’s Pocket-Piece, or, The Cotton-Mill Moralized: A Poem, with Illustrative Notes. The notes about how mills of this time really operated appear to have had more lasting value than the poetry.

Felch continued to write poetry his whole life. He composed verses on fire, the stars, his ancestors, and other topics. When he died, a big part of his legacy to his family was hundreds of unpublished poems.

The year before The Manufacturer’s Pocket-Piece appeared, Felch married Lydia Inman of Smithfield, Rhode Island. He was then listed as living in Attleboro, and the couple may soon have moved to Medway. Walton and Lydia had at least three children: Hiram (house builder and assessor who stayed in Massachusetts), Walton Cheever (trained as a printer, moved to California in the Gold Rush), and Sarah (married a man named Dunbar).

Walton Felch was living in Hubbardston in 1831 when he married again, to Mrs. Nancy Sullivan. By 1840 he was in the area of Oakham called Coldbrook Springs, and he was living there at the end of his life—but didn’t necessarily remain there the whole time.

Felch was certainly intellectually restive. He enjoyed the lyceum movement of the time, particularly the Barre Lyceum, right over the town line. He spoke there in 1834 on the subject of geology. The next year, he participated in a debate: “Does the strength of temptation lessen the turpitude of crime?” In 1837 he spoke on the costs and benefits of government-sponsored South Sea exploration.

One of Felch’s most consuming interests was grammar. In December 1834 he lectured on his “Architectural System of the English Grammar.” He then published A Comprehensive Grammar, Presenting Some New Views of the Structure of Language (1837) and Grammatical Primer: Comprising the Outlines of the Compositive System (1841). The Norfolk Democrat credited Felch with “a very amusing and instructive Lecture” on the topic in January 1840.

The Barre Gazette of 23 Feb 1838 signaled a new interest:

Oakham Lyceum Meets on Monday evening, the 26th inst. Lecture by Mr Felch on Phrenology.

Phrenology was a relatively new scientific pursuit—diagnosing people’s personalities, strengths, and deficits from the bumps on their skulls, usually as felt through through hair and skin. By the next year, Felch felt he had mastered it enough to publish A Phrenological Chart: And Table of Combinations.

On 15 Nov 1839 the Christian Freeman and Family Visitor of Waltham published this item:

Phrenological Lectures.

Mr Felch is delivering a course of Phrenological Lectures in Rumford Hall [shown above]. We perceive from letters in his possession, that he shares the confidence of Mr [George] Combe, and has given great satisfaction where he has lectured. He has not only read extensively on the science upon which he lectures, but is a close observer of mankind, and an original thinker. We were pleased and instructed by his lecture last Tuesday evening, which was the first of a course of six, to be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Admission 12 1-2 cents each evening.

That expertise seems to have been enough to persuade the selectmen of Lincoln to let Felch take the skulls of two British soldiers killed on 19 Apr 1775 from the town’s old burying-ground. Indeed, according to Henry David Thoreau’s understanding, Felch actually had those skulls “dug up” particularly for his phrenological investigation.

TOMORROW: When Felch took his skulls to Concord.

“Dug up–and took away two skulls”

In the summer of 1840, shortly after twelve-year-old Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., got to see part of a British soldier’s skull with a bullet hole through it, his teacher John Thoreau proposed marriage to his sister, Ellen Sewall.

The Rev. Edmund Quincy Sewall, Sr., opposed that union. Then Edmund’s other teacher, Henry David Thoreau, proposed marriage to Ellen as well. And the Thoreau family drama built from there.

In the decade that followed, John Thoreau died of tetanus. Henry moved in with the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson, then moved out to a cabin in Walden Woods, then moved back in. He became a published author. He spent time in jail for protesting the Fugitive Slave Act by refusing to pay his taxes.

During those years, Henry David Thoreau kept a diary. In the late spring of 1850 he wrote this entry:

I visited a retired–now almost unused graveyard in Lincoln to-day where (5) British soldiers lie buried who fell on the 19th April ’75. Edmund Wheeler—grandfather of William—who lived in the old house now pulled down near the present—went over the next day & carted them to this ground—

A few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up–and took away two skulls

The skeletons were very large—probably those of grenadiers. Wm Wheeler who was present–told me this—He said that he had heard old Mr. Child, who lived opposite–say that when one soldier was shot he leaped right up his full length out of the ranks & fell dead. & he Wm Wheeler–saw a bullet hole through & through one of the skulls.

There were multiple families named Child in Lincoln around 1775, so it’s hard to identify which one gave that description of the dying redcoat to Wheeler.

The skull with the bullet hole was undoubtedly the same one that young Edmund Quincy Sewall had seen at the Concord Lyceum in 1840. The schoolboy had even recorded that it had come from Lincoln. Perhaps another of the skulls put out for the phrenologist was also from a regular’s body.

Concord had built a large monument near the gravesite of the first two British soldiers killed on 19 Apr 1775. Those weren’t the only redcoats buried in that town, but those two bodies were the most significant because they showed the Americans effectively fighting back.

In contrast, more regulars had died on 19 April in Lincoln, but that town was less concerned about memorializing them. Some soldiers were buried near where they fell, or near the houses where they died days later. Those graves weren’t marked, even with “rough stones” as originally in Concord. It was up to men like William Wheeler to pass on the increasingly vague knowledge of where those bodies lay.

As for the British soldiers in the town burying-ground, Abram English Brown’s Beneath Old Roof-Trees (1896) would quote Mary Hartwell of Lincoln about the aftermath of the battle:

I could not sleep that night, for I knew there were British soldiers lying dead by the roadside; and when, on the following morning, we were somewhat calmed and rested, we gave attention to the burial of those whom their comrades had failed to take away.

The men hitched the oxen to the cart, and went down below the house, and gathered up the dead. As they returned with the team and the dead soldiers, my thoughts went out for the wives, parents, and children away across the Atlantic, who would never again see their loved ones; and I left the house, and taking my little children by the hand, I followed the rude hearse to the grave hastily made in the burial-ground.

I remember how cruel it seemed to put them into one large trench without any coffins. There was one in a brilliant uniform, whom I supposed to have been an officer. His hair was tied up in a cue.

In 1884 the town of Lincoln installed a marker in that cemetery stating simply:

FIVE
BRITISH SOLDIERS
SLAIN APRIL 19, 1775
WERE BURIED HERE

The approximate locations of other soldiers’ graves along the Battle Road in Lincoln have also been marked now.

But the diaries of Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., and Henry David Thoreau tell us that parts of the soldiers’ bodies were removed from the Lincoln burying-ground over forty years before the town marked the remains.

TOMORROW: To advance the cause of science.

The Death of Daniel Thompson

Yesterday I quoted Maj. Loammi Baldwin’s diary noting the death of Woburn militiaman Daniel Thompson on 19 Apr 1775.

The published Woburn vital records say Daniel Thompson was born on 9 Mar 1734, making him forty-one years old at the Battle of Lexington and Concord (unless that’s an unlabeled Old Style date). He and his wife Phebe had three children, born 1761–1765.

According to a family history, The Memorial of James Thompson, of Charlestown, Mass., 1630-1642, and Woburn (1887), this was the story of Thompson’s death:

He was a man of ardent temperament, full of activity and enterprise. Previous to the Revolutionary war he was one of the guards of the royal governor [most likely the horse guard], and yet, in the troubles which preceded that event, he ever zealously espoused the cause of his native country.

On the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, hearing of the march of the British toward Concord, he mounted his horse and hurried to the north village, a mile distant, for the purpose of rousing his friends to oppose the march of the enemy. There is a tradition that of all the men he met only one hesitated, and when that one asked him if he were not too hasty and likely to expose himself to great danger, he instantly replied, “No! I tell you our tyrants are on their march to destroy our stores, and if no one else opposes them to-day, I will!” Immediately hurrying away to the scene of action, he boldly took his position and poured his fire into the ranks of the British.

On the retreat of the enemy, he took a station near the road. Stepping behind a barn to load, and then advancing round the corner of the building, he fired diagonally through the platoons of the enemy, so as to make every shot effectual.

A grenadier, who watched his movements, was so enraged that he ran around the corner of the barn and shot him dead on the spot, while he was in the act of reloading his gun. Tradition says that a well directed ball from another Woburn gun prevented the grenadier from ever rejoining his comrades.

I’m skeptical about that quotation, though the aggressive attitude seems to fit with going too close to the road and being cut down by a flanker. Abram English Brown’s Beneath Old Roof Trees (1896) added the comforting claim that one of Daniel Thompson’s own brothers killed that grenadier and brought his firelock back home to Woburn.

More certainly, we know that Thompson died within the borders of Lincoln. His body was brought back to Woburn. On 21 April there was a joint funeral with Asahel Porter, detained by the regulars in the early hours of the 19th and killed in the shooting on Lexington common.

Thompson’s gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave. It says:

Here lies Buried the Body of
Mr. DANIEL THOMPSON who was
slain in Concord Battle on ye. 19th.
of April 1775. Aged 40 Years.

Here Passenger confin’d reduc’d to dust,
lies what was once Religious wise & Just.
The cause he engaged did animate him high,
Namely Religion and dear Liberty.
Steady and warm in Liberties defence,
True to his Country, Loyal to his Prince.
Though in his Breast a Thirst for glory fir’d,
Courageous in his country’s cause expired.
Although he’s gone his name Embalmed shall be,
and had in Everlasting Memory.

The phrase about “Loyal to his Prince” suggests the Thompson family erected this stone in 1775 when most Americans still professed allegiance to King George III and saw themselves as fighting corrupt British ministers rather than the whole British constitutional system. If the Thompson family had had to wait another year for the stonecarving, the elegy would surely have praised Thompson’s loyalty to his country but not to his “Prince.”

Daniel and Phebe Thompson’s daughter, born in 1762 and also named Phebe, married Josiah Pierce in 1787 and settled in Maine. Josiah was a younger half-brother of Benjamin Thompson, who by then had moved from Woburn to Europe on his way to becoming Count Rumford.

“A ball came thru the Meeting house near my head”

Yesterday we left Maj. Loammi Baldwin and his Woburn militiamen skedaddling east from Brooks Hill in Concord with the withdrawing British column on their tail.

Baldwin’s account in his diary, as transcribed in this copy with line breaks for easier reading, continues:

we came to Tanner Brooks at Lincoln Bridge & then we concluded to scatter & make use of the trees & walls for to defend us & attack them—We did so & pursued on flanking them—(Mr Daniel Thompson was killed & others[)]. till we came to Lexington. I had several good shots—

“Tanner Brooks” referred to the tannery owned by the Brooks family. Analysts of the battle say the Woburn companies engaged the British troops somewhere around the Hartwell Tavern within the borders of Lincoln.

The Enemy marched very fast & left many dead & wounded and a few tired I proceeded on till coming between the meeting house and Mr Buckmans Tavern with a Prisoner before me when the Cannon begun to play the Balls flew near me I judged not more than 2 yards off.

I immediately retreated back behind the Meeting house and had not been there 10 seconds before a ball came thru the Meeting house near my head.

I retreated back towards the meadow North of the Meeting house & lay & heard the ball in the air & saw them strike the ground I judged about 15 or 20 was fired but not one man killed with them. They were fired from the crook in the road by Easterbrooks—

The picture above, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, shows a “small cannon ball, said to have been found on the side of the road near Lexington” at some point. The webpage for this artifact says: “It is made of lead and was the type of projectile fired from a smooth-bored cannon.”

In The Road to Concord I argue that the presence of cannon in Concord, and particularly the brass cannon of the Boston militia train, was crucial to Gen. Thomas Gage’s decision to order an expedition there.

But the provincials moved most of those cannon further west in the days before that march. They probably weren’t all equipped for use, anyway. On the British side, the expedition under Lt. Col. Francis Smith marched with no artillery for maximum speed.

But Col. Percy’s reinforcement column did come out with field-pieces, and those were the cannon that Loammi Baldwin and his Woburnites ran into. By deploying heavy weapons for the first time that day, Percy was able to make time for the combined British forces to regroup in Lexington, tend their wounded, and set off for Boston.

As for Maj. Baldwin, his diary stops as quoted above. The transcripts don’t resume until May, when he was an officer in the provincial army. Baldwin probably decided that having marched into Concord and back, fired “several good shots,” and taken a prisoner, his unit had done their dangerous duty for the day. He and his men may have followed the British column east for some more miles, but they stayed out of cannon range.

“Soon heard that the regulars had fired upon Lexington People”

For Loammi Baldwin of Woburn, 18 Apr 1775 was not a good day.

As he wrote in his diary, “My Brother Ruel departed this life after a short illness of 5 or 6 days, Pleurisy fever.” Loammi was there, along with his parents.

Reuel Baldwin was twenty-seven years old. He left his wife Keziah and three young children—Reuel, Ruth, and James—with another child on the way, eventually named Josiah.

The next day, Loammi Baldwin had to muster as a major in the Middlesex County militia. An officer in a horse troop, Baldwin rode instead of marched.

I don’t know if Loammi Baldwin’s diary still exists, but there are two handwritten transcripts of select dates in the Harvard libraries, and much of his entry on 19 Apr 1775 was published in the first volume of D. Hamilton Hurd’s History of Middlesex County in 1890.

There’s an old joke that a man with a watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two watches never does. Likewise, with one transcript we’d feel confident about what Baldwin originally wrote, but with three there are some reasons for doubt about the details.

Here’s how Maj. Baldwin described his experience of the start of the war according to this transcript, with line breaks added to make reading a little easier:

April 19. Wednesday

This morning a little before break of day we was allarmed by Mr. Ledman [probably Ebenezer Stedman] Express from Cambridge—Informd us that the Regulars were upon the move for Concord—

we musterd as fast as possible—The Town turned out extraordinary & proceeded towards Lexington & Rode along a little before main body and when I was nigh Jacob Reeds I heard a great firing proceeded on soon heard that the regulars had fired upon Lexington People & killed a large Number of them

we proceeded on as fast as possible and came to Lexington and saw about 8 or 10 dead & Numbers wounded was informed that the Regulars rushed upon our Lexington men and hollowed damn you Disperse Rebels & fired upon the Lexington Company

we proceeded to Concord by way of Lincoln meeting house come to Concord ascended the hill & pitched & refreshed ourselves a little

about [blank] o’clock the People under my command & also some others came running of the East end of the hill while I was at a house refreshing myself & we proceeded down the road & could see behind us the regulars following

A transcript with a more modern handwriting but more alternative spellings and the name “Stedman” starts at seq. 15 in this document. I can’t tell if this is more accurate to what Baldwin originally wrote. Fortunately, none of the discrepancies so far seriously affect his meaning.

TOMORROW: Cannon fire.

Elijah Sanderson of Lexington and Salem

Elijah Sanderson has appeared on Boston 1775 several times, but usually as a source on other people’s experiences of the April 19 battle.

Several years back, Donna Seger highlighted Sanderson’s memories of that day and his subsequent career on her Streets of Salem site.

In 1775 Sanderson signed off on a brief account of his experience for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. But he had much more to say in Elias Phinney’s History of the Battle of Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th of April, 1775, published in 1825.

Seger wrote:

Phinney took oral histories from participants who were still alive, published in the form of sworn affidavits in the book’s appendix, and the very first account was that of Elijah Sanderson, who was at the end of a long career as one of Salem’s most successful cabinetmakers. Sanderson’s testimony was given just weeks before his death in early 1825, and published not only in Phinney’s account but also in the regional newspapers that year, when historical consciousness of the importance of the Battles of Lexington and Concord seems quite well-developed.

Elijah Sanderson and his younger brother Jacob were among the most prolific and consequential cabinetmakers of Salem, who spread the city’s craftsmanship and style far beyond New England through an expansive export trade in alliance with their partner Josiah Austin and several prominent merchants and shipowners.

That’s the same Josiah Austin quoted in this document describing how he moved ammunition out of Concord. Since that account seems incredible, perhaps Austin was spurred to invent his tale after hearing his partners talk about their presence at Lexington. Or perhaps someone else thought that if one Salem cabinetmaker was in the thick of the fight, another could be inserted into that action as well.

…in 1775 the Sanderson brothers were living in Lexington, in the home of their elder brother Samuel…on the main road from Boston. . . . relatively late on the evening of the 18th Elijah noted the passing of a party of British officers “all dressed in blue wrappers”. He decided to discern what was up, so made his way to John Buckman’s tavern where an older gentleman encouraged him to “ascertain the object” of these officers, so he did so, on a borrowed horse in the company of two other comrades. . . .

Elijah’s party was stopped by nine British officers a few miles down the road in Lincoln, and they were detained and examined, along with two other “prisoners”, a one-handed pedlar named Allen and Col. Paul Revere. After “as many question as a Yankee could” ask, the entire party mounted and made their way to Lexington, where [fellow detainee John] Loring observed “The bell’s a ringing, and the town’s alarmed, and you’re all dead men” but [the officers] let them go, after cutting the bridle and girth of Elijah’s horse.

We hear no more of Revere, but Elijah made his way to the tavern in Lexington and there promptly fell asleep! Yes, he fell asleep in the middle of the opening act of the American Revolution.

But then came the drums signalling that the British column was in sight. To follow Sanderson through what happened next, visit Streets of Salem.

(The picture above is a secretary bookcase from the Sanderson brothers’ shop, now the property of the U.S. Department of State.)

Heading into Patriot’s Day 2024

With yesterday’s posting, Boston 1775 has entered the Patriot’s Day season for 2024.

It’s hard to find a complete posting of Patriot’s Day events because so many towns and organizations have their own celebrations. But a good place to start is the calendar on the front page of Revolution 250.

Among the new commemorations this year is Tavern Week in Arlington, known as West Cambridge or Menotomy in 1775. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee on safety and supplies met in the Black Horse Tavern on what’s now Massachusetts Avenue on 18 April. Three members planned to spend the night but bolted out the back door when the redcoat column approached.

The Arlington Historical Society is also offering tours of the Jason Russell House, site of the bloodiest fighting of the day, on Saturday, 13 April, and Monday, 15 April, noon to 4 P.M.

Also on 13 April, Michael Lepage will portray Paul Revere at the Paul Revere House in Boston while the Minute Man National Historical Park hosts its annual big tactical demonstration and reenactment of events along the Battle Road.

Some of the towns planning local Patriot’s Day remembrance events include Billerica, Danvers, Somerville, Hanover, and Lynnfield. Others will send traditional contingents to the event in Minute Man Park.

All outdoor events of course depend on welcoming weather. We had snow last week, and flooding forced the cancellation of an event at James Barrett’s farm in Concord today. So let’s hope for sunshine and cool breezes for the next two weeks!

The Hive Symposium, 17–18 Feb.

On the weekend of 17–18 February, Minute Man National Historical Park will host its annual symposium for living history interpreters, The Hive.

Cosponsoring organizations include the Friends of Minute Man, Revolution 250, Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area, and the Massachusetts Army National Guard, which will host the gathering.

Though this series of presentations and workshops is designed primarily for people who participate in the park’s colonial reenactments, including the Battle of Lexington and Concord, they offer valuable information for anyone interested in local Revolutionary history.

The schedule of presentations includes:

Overview of the Minute Man 250 Thematic Framework with Park Rangers Jim Hollister and Jarrad Fuoss: The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is well underway! The staff at Minute Man have developed an interpretive framework that carry our program through the next several years.

1774: The Empire Strikes Back, and Resistance Becomes Revolution with Prof. Bob Allison of Suffolk University: Parliament responded to Boston’s destroying the tea by closing the port and suspending the 1691 charter. The people of Massachusetts would no longer have control over their municipal governments. Instead of silencing the local resistance, these moves brought the other colonies into an alliance with Massachusetts to begin a revolution against Parliament's authority. Find out what went wrong for the Empire in 1774.

By His Excellency’s Command: General Gage, the British Army and the People of Salem in 1774 with Dr. Emily Murphy: In June of 1774 the newly appointed royal governor of Massachusetts, Gen. Thomas Gage, was eager to escape the political turbulence of Boston. Therefore, he took the drastic step of removing himself and the provincial legislature to the seemingly calmer waters of Salem. Two regiments of British regulars came with him. That summer the people of Salem came into direct contact with a display of royal power on a scale they had never before experienced. What was the social and political landscape of the town like in 1774? How did the people deal with their new neighbors?

Lives of the Embattled Farmers: The Towns of Lexington, Lincoln and Concord in 1775, a panel discussion with Alex Cain, Don Hafner, and Bob Gross: The towns of Lexington, Lincoln and Concord were farming communities. Many of the families who called these towns home had been there for multiple generations. In this panel discussion we will look at the social and economic dynamics of these three towns, their similarities and their differences.

Practical, often hands-on workshops will cover these topics:

• “Techniques for Informal Visitor Engagement” with Park Ranger Jarrad Fuoss
• “Too Clean!: Incorporating Appropriate Levels of Garment Distress into Your Historical Impression” with Adam Hodges-LeCaire
• “A Pressing Matter: Media Literacy & 18th Century Newspapers” with Michele Gabrielson
• “Women’s Hair Styles and Cosmetics” with Renee Walker-Tuttle
• “Men’s Hair Styles” with Neils Hobbs and Sean Considine
• “‘Fitted with the Greatest Exactness’: The Material Culture of Appearance of the 18th-Century British Soldier” with Sean Considine and Niels Hobbs
• “Pinning Gowns & Filling Pockets: How to Wear Women’s Clothing Well & Have Fun Pulling from Your Pockets!” with Ruth Hodges

Plus, the program includes time for sewing circles, infantry drill, consultation on kit, and lunchtime conversations.

The 2024 spring season at Minute Man will includes some events about the crucial year of 1774 in addition to the traditional Patriots Day battle reenactment. That event will be practice for the Sestercentennial in 2025, which may very well be insane.

Register to attend the 2024 Hive symposium through the Friends of Minute Man Park.

Emerging Revolutionary War Bus Tour of Battle Road, 11–13 Oct.

The Emerging Revolutionary War team are planning their fourth annual bus tour of historic places, and this year they’re coming to Massachusetts.

On 11–13 October, historians Phillip Greenwalt, Rob Orrison, and Alex Cain will lead “The Shot Heard Round the World: Battles of Lexington and Concord Bus Tour.”

This tour will consist of:

• an overview lecture on Friday night.
• all-day tour of battlefield sites in Lexington, Concord, and other towns on Saturday.
• a half-day tour of more sites on Sunday morning.

The tour bus and Saturday lunch are included in the $250 cost.

Other meals and lodging are separate, not included in the ticket fee. The host hotel is the Courtyard Marriott in Waltham, with a block of rooms set aside at $239 a night.

Alex Cain is the author of We Stood Our Ground: Lexington in the First Year of the American Revolution and a proprietor of Untapped History.

Phil Greenwalt and Rob Orrison are coauthors of A Single Blow: The Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Beginning of the American Revolution, April 19, 1775. (I wrote the foreword to that book.)

For more information, check out Emerging Revolutionary War. To sign up, go to this page.

“Returning from Lexington before day light”

When Paul Revere described his ride with William Dawes to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap in 1798, he wrote: “We were overtaken by a young Docter Prescot, whom we found to be a high Son of Liberty.”

Revere wrote nothing about why Dr. Samuel Prescott was out on horseback in west Lexington after midnight.

In his 1824 History of the Battle of Lexington, Elias Phinney quoted Elijah Sanderson on how British army officers “attempted to stop a man on horseback, who, we immediately after understood, was Dr. Prescott’s son.”

Again, no reason given for young Prescott being out on the road at that time.

The first printed explanation for Prescott’s late night that I’ve found appeared that same year in the 24 Apr 1824 Concord Gazette and Middlesex Yeoman. In a 49th-anniversary retrospective on the opening battle of the Revolutionary War, that hometown newspaper stated:

The approach of the British army from Lexington, was known to the people of Concord at an early hour of the morning. This information was brought by Dr. SAMUEL PRESCOTT who was returning from Lexington before day light, (as was the custom on such occasions in those days) from a visit to the lady who afterwards became his wife.

He was met by the British advance guard near Mr. [Ephraim] HARTWELL’s in Lincoln, and in attempting to stop him a scuffle ensued, during which he had the reins of his horse’s bridle cut off; but being acquainted with the way, he jumped his horse over the fence, adjusted the bridle and came to Concord. Others who endeavored to get to Concord for the same purpose were stopped by the enemy.

Those unnamed ”others” included Revere, Sanderson, and their companions.

In recounting the British army search of Concord, the same article states:

One party went down the road to the house owned by the late ASA HEYWOOD, then occupied as a tavern. Suspicions were excited that young Dr. PRESCOTT was in the house; and as they considered him the principal cause of defeating the execution of their plan to take the town by surprise, they sought his life. He was aware of their intentions and secreted himself in a hole beside the chimney in the garret, and eluded their search. They broke the windows of the house and left it.

That anecdote is obviously based on the experience of Samuel Prescott’s older brother Abel, as recounted here. Both brothers had been physicians and impromptu alarm riders who died decades earlier, so it’s understandable for local lore to conflate them.

(I’m not sure if Asa Heywood, who had died earlier in 1824, ever owned the house where Jonathan Heywood’s widow Rebecca was living in 1775, or whether it was then a tavern, but I’m just not up to sorting through real estate records of Heywoods in Concord.)

There were other errors in the newspaper’s account, such as a claim that Lt. Col. Francis Smith was wounded in the fight (true) and “died in a few days” (false).

Nonetheless, this article is significant as the earliest statement that Dr. Samuel Prescott was out late visiting his fiancée on 18 April.

TOMORROW: More details emerge.

Getting to Know Dr. Samuel Prescott

One of the questions after my online talk for the Army Heritage Center Foundation last week led me to discussing Dr. Samuel Prescott and how little we know about him. So I decided to look into what we do know.

Dr. Prescott is remembered for joining Paul Revere and William Dawes on their ride west from Lexington center in the small hours of 19 Apr 1775. Revere’s 1798 account is largely responsible for that clear identification. The silversmith wrote: “We were overtaken by a young Docter Prescot, whom we found to be a high Son of Liberty.”

Some authors have claimed that Prescott was already active in the Patriot resistance, carrying messages. I’ve never seen evidence of that beyond the fact that Revere called him “a high Son of Liberty.” But look at how that clause began, “whom we found…” Revere and Dawes, who were active in the network and in Revere’s case had been out to Concord before, didn’t know Prescott. They had to get to know him.

Note also how Revere, aged forty, recalled this rider as “a young Docter Prescot.” Samuel Prescott was only twenty-three years old. In fact, he was the fourth Dr. Prescott in Concord, after his father, Dr. Abel Prescott (1718–1805), and his brothers, Benjamin (1745–1830) and Abel, Jr., who had just turned twenty-six. (Their mother had died the previous July.)

(I’m following the dates that appear in The Prescott Memorial, published by a family member in 1870. Find-a-Grave gives a different date in 1749 for Abel, Jr.’s birth without citing a source. The family doesn’t appear in Concord’s published vital records.)

Revere warned his companions that there were British army officers on the road that night, so they should be prepared. And:

I likewise mentioned, that we had better allarm all the Inhabitents till we got to Concord; the young Doctor much approved of it, and said, he would stop with either of us, for the people between that & Concord knew him, & would give the more credit to what we said.

The elder Dr. Abel Prescott had treated people in that region for decades, succeeding his own father and elder brother. He had probably brought his sons along on calls for training.

In Lincoln, while Prescott and Dawes visited a house together, Revere spotted two riders up ahead. He thought they were behaving like the army officers who had nearly stopped him in Charlestown. He called for his companions to join him, thinking three Patriots could handle two officers. Instead, “in an Instant I was surrounded by four.”

Revere continued:

The Docter being foremost, he came up; and we tryed to git past them; but they being armed with pistols & swords, they forced us in to the pasture;—the Docter jumped his Horse over a low Stone wall, and got to Concord.

Revere had nothing more to say about Prescott. Concord sources confirm that he reached his home town with the Bostonians’ warnings and then continued on west to Acton and Stow.

Meanwhile, Dr. Abel Prescott, Jr., mounted and carried the same news to Framingham and Sudbury, south of Concord. Later in the morning he tried to return to Concord over the South Bridge, only to find regulars from the 10th Regiment of Foot guarding that position.

TOMORROW: Wounded and hiding.

More 2023 Patriots’ Day Events

The Patriots’ Day 2023 events in Minute Man National Historical Park are just one set of commemorations coming up in the area.

They’re just the easiest to keep track of since there’s a government agency to do so.

Many other events are organized at the town level by historical societies or reenacting groups. Some organizations proudly maintain traditions tied to particular days, regardless of when the holiday falls. And some sites have programs for school vacation week as well.

This is a varied sample of other Patriots’ Day–related events this month.

Saturday, 8 April, 10:30 A.M.
Bedford Parade and Pole Capping
Wilson Park, Bedford

I think the Liberty Cap on a Liberty Pole was a symbol that developed during the Federalist–Jeffersonian rivalry of the 1790s. Liberty Poles in the early 1770s featured variations on the British flag. But this is a beloved local commemoration.

Saturday, 15 April, 1:00 to 3:00 P.M.
A Visit with Paul Revere
Paul Revere House, Boston

Michael Lepage portray’s the house’s most famous owner welcoming visitors. Included in regular admission.

Sunday, 16 April, 2:00 to 3:30 P.M.
Lincoln Salute: Festival of 18th-Century Fife & Drum Music
Pierce Park, 17 Weston Road, Lincoln

The Lincoln Minute Men host the fife and drum groups who come for the next day’s parades in outdoor musical performances. Bring a picnic basket, blanket, and lawn chairs. (The picture above comes from a Lincoln Salute so many years ago this drummer is probably practicing law now.)

Monday, 17 April, all day
Lexington Patriots’ Day Events
Various sites around town

Events include Revere’s midnight arrival at the Hancock-Clarke House, the alarm from the belfry, the fight on Lexington common (starting at 5:30 A.M.), the regathering of the local company (8:30 A.M.), and battle demonstrations in Tower Park (4:00 P.M.). The historical society’s Buckman Tavern, Munroe Tavern, and Hancock-Clarke House will be open for tours, and the film “First Shot” will be shown at the Depot.

Monday, 17 April, 9:00 A.M. to noon
Patriots’ Day Parade in Boston
From City Hall Plaza to “The Prado” on Hanover Street

The description says, “After a flag-raising ceremony at City Hall, the parade stops at King’s Chapel Burying Ground to lay a wreath on the tomb of Major William Dawes [actually that’s the grave of his father; the rider’s remains are at Forest Hills], who was a member of the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company of the Massachusetts Militia [this company wasn’t part of the official militia in 1775], and continues to Granary Burying Ground to lay a wreath at the grave of Paul Revere.”

Monday, 17 April, 9:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.
William Dawes’ Ride
From Eliot Square in Roxbury to Lexington Green

A mounted Royal Lancer portraying Dawes is expected to visit Brookline’s Devotion School about 10:00 A.M., Hill Memorial Church in Allston about 10:30 A.M., Cambridge about 11:00 A.M., and Arlington Town Hall around noon.

Wednesday, 19 April, 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.
Mix & Mingle with Rachel Revere
Paul Revere House, Boston

Judith Kalaora of History at Play portrays the silversmith’s second wife. Included in regular admission.

Thursday, 20 April, 1:00 to 3:00 P.M.
Patriot Fife & Drum
Paul Revere House, Boston

David Vose & Sue Walko play and discuss period music for everyone visiting the museum.

Tuesday, 25 April, 7:30 P.M.
A. Michael Ruderman on “The Battle of Menotomy”
Masonic Temple, 19 Academy Street, Arlington

The Arlington Historical Society’s provocative description says: “Battle Green was an accident. Concord Bridge, a skirmish. But in the most brutal and deadly warfare of April 19, 1775, nearly 6,000 combatants fought hand to hand and house to house, the length and breadth of Menotomy.”

The Patriots’ Day 2023 Season at Minute Man Park

The Patriots’ Day 2023 season starts this upcoming weekend, well before Patriots’ Day (17 April this year), much less the actual anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord on 19 April.

The Friends of Minute Man Park has a good rundown of events planned in and around that national park, all of them free. Check the park’s own site for updates. Here are some highlights.

Saturday, 8 April, 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.
Meriam Open House
Nathan Meriam House, 24 Old Bedford Road, Concord
Parking is available at the Meriam’s Corner Lot at 751 Lexington Road in Concord.

Saturday, 8 April, 1:00 to 2:00 P.M.
Meriam’s Corner Exercise
Meriam’s Corner, 24 Old Bedford Road, Concord

Saturday, 8 April, 3:00 to 4:00 P.M.
Paul Revere Capture Ceremony
Paul Revere Capture Site, 180 North Great Road, Lincoln
Additional parking at the Minute Man Visitor Center at 210 North Great Road, Lincoln.

Saturday, 15 April, 9:30 to 11:45 A.M.
Hartwell Tavern and Smith Open House
North Great Road, Lincoln

If you had to leave your home in a hurry, uncertain of your return, what would you take with you? Learn about the locals who struggled to save their families and belongings from the path of war.

Saturday, 15 April, 11:15 to 11:45 A.M.
Trepidation, Fever and Rushing to Arms
Captain William Smith House, North Great Road, Lincoln

See alarm riders in action, militia marching to the scene of battle, and civilians preparing to leave home. The Ladies Association of Revolutionary America will tell the stories of the common people who experienced the horrors of war first-hand.

Saturday, 15 April, 12:45 P.M.
Battle Road Tactical Demonstration
Meet at the Minute Man Visitor Center, North Great Road, Lexington

Watch hundreds of British and Colonial Reenactors engage in a battle demonstration showing the running fight that took place along this deadly stretch of road on the border of Lincoln and Lexington.

Parking is available in the Hartwell Tavern and Minute Man Visitor Center parking lots. There’s about a mile and a half between those sites, so people planning to attend this whole series of events should be ready to walk twice that distance.

Saturday, 15 April, 2:30 to 3:30 P.M.
Explore the Elm Brook Hill (Bloody Angle) Battle Site
Meet at Hartwell Tavern, 136 North Great Road, Lincoln

Edmund Foster, a militiaman from Reading, Massachusetts (portrayed by park volunteer Ed Hurley), will lead a tour to this key battle site where he fought on 19 April 1775, joined by Lincoln historian and author Don Hafner.

Sunday, 16 April, 1:30 to 4:30 P.M.
The Search of the Barrett Farm
Colonel James Barrett House, 448 Barrett’s Mill Road, Concord

Talk with costumed park rangers and volunteers about colonial military preparations. Around 3:30 P.M. British soldiers will arrive to search the property, as they did in 1775.

Monday, 17 April, 8:30 A.M.
North Bridge Fight Commemoration
North Bridge, Monument Street, Concord

This dramatic battle demonstration involving colonial minute men, British regulars, and musket fire marks what R. W. Emerson dubbed the “shot heard ’round the world.” The roads in Concord close at 8:30 A.M.

Tuesday, 18 April, 7:45 P.M.
Patriot Vigil
Lantern light procession from the North Bridge Visitor Center, 174 Liberty Street, Concord, to the North Bridge

As darkness descends upon the North Bridge battlefield, reflect on the events of 1775 and the meaning of liberty. This ceremony will feature a lantern-light procession, poetry, music, and a recitation of the names of the men who gave their lives on that “ever-memorable” 19th of April.

To participate in the procession, leave weapons at home and bring your own enclosed candle lantern–real candles only, no flashlights or LED lights.

Winter Is Coming at Minute Man Park, 15 Oct.

On Saturday, 15 October, Minute Man National Historical Park will host a day of special programming on the theme of “Preparing for Winter, Preparing for War.”

The event description explains:

Autumn in Colonial New England was a time of change and transition when many gathered to share the fruits of summer labor and prepare to survive the coming winter. In 1774 it was also a time of preparation for the coming conflict; Colonial Militia mustered to train their soldiers and scrambled to secure military supplies. As Colonists ferried weapons and goods into Concord, local families brought in their harvests to be preserved as food sufficient to feed their family through the coming year.

October 1774 was a couple of months after the arrival of the Massachusetts Government Act from London, which produced massive resistance in the countryside. It was weeks after the “Powder Alarm” changed the de facto balance of power in the colony, and the same month when the Provincial Congress started to meet.

On the local level, at least some towns were ahead of that shadow legislature. Westborough had already voted to ramp up militia training and acquire artillery. Worcester had put actual money toward bringing cannon out of Boston, but its meeting balked later that month at buying powder and shot. In sum, there was a lot for people to talk about.

“Preparing for Winter, Preparing for War” will take place at the park’s Hartwell Tavern site in Lincoln from 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on Saturday. It is free for all visitors, supported in part by the Friends of Minute Man Park.

A version of this event was scheduled for last fall before a more contagious variant of the Covid-19 virus spread. Since then, we’ve allowed yet more variants to evolve. So now’s the time for us to prepare for winter by getting up-to-date inoculations against both Covid and the flu. If there’s one species-changing lesson western civilization learned in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it’s how inoculations save millions of lives.

“History Camp America 2022” Coming in November

I spent a couple of days last week traveling along the Battle Road between Concord and Menotomy to prepare a video talk to be shared in History Camp America 2022, scheduled for 5 November.

Organized by the team behind the regional History Camps, America’s Road Trip, and last year’s inaugural History Camp America, this will be a collection of more than forty online lectures, behind-the-scenes tours, cooking demonstrations, and other presentations exploring the past.

Registration costs $149.95 for access to all those videos on the day of the event and afterward, and registrants will also receive a box of souvenirs and artifacts celebrating American history.

My talk will be:

Looking for the Shot Heard ’Round the World

Travel the Battle Road to and from Concord as J. L. Bell, proprietor of Boston 1775, explores the start of the Revolutionary War

In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson coined the phrase “the shot heard ’round the world” for what he deemed to be the most important gunfire of the Revolutionary War. Emerson was a son of Concord, and it was only natural for him to view the shooting that took place within sight of his grandfather’s house as crucial.

But was that gunfire the start of the Revolutionary War? If we define the war as beginning when organized military units confront each other with lethal force, then it had actually started four months before and more than sixty miles away. If we look for the first shot on April 19, 1775, that was definitely fired in Lexington—though British army officers reported it came before their soldiers even arrived at the town common.

This video talk visits more than half a dozen sites, famous and little-known, from Menotomy to Concord and back, to discuss when and how the Revolutionary War began, according to different perspectives. It traces how both sides tried to show restraint at dawn but, in seeing the worst of the enemy, went all-out by the end. Examining the events of April 18–19, 1775, (and earlier) illuminates what it really means to go into a war.

As the History Camp America 2022 schedule develops, I’m seeing speakers I always enjoy hearing from and places I’ve wondered about visiting, plus other topics and places that are totally new. Check out the quick video preview.

What Towns Fought in the Battle of Lexington and Concord?

Twice in the past few weeks I’ve found myself discussing the question of which towns’ militia companies were actually in the fighting on 19 Apr 1775.

That’s not the same question as which towns saw fighting. There were fatal exchanges of fire in (west to east) Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, Cambridge, and Charlestown.

Later the west Cambridge village of Menotomy became the town of Arlington, and the west Charlestown area formed Somerville, so those modern municipalities are also on the Battle Road, but they didn’t exist as legal entities in 1775.

Scores of other towns mobilized their militia companies that day. Indeed, the “Lexington Alarm” continued to spread, so even more towns got the word the day after, and the day after that. Within a week there were men from western Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut on the siege lines around Boston.

But because of geography, timing, and the way Lt. Col. Francis Smith and Col. Percy directed the British army column as it withdrew to the east, only some militia companies came close enough to exchange fire with the redcoats.

All the militia companies that turned out in April 1775 could apply to the Massachusetts government for pay for the days they were active. The surviving pay records, now in the state archives, offer data on the companies, commanders, and men. They’re often reprinted in local histories. But those documents don’t differentiate between the units that saw combat and those that were ready to but didn’t.

To identify the towns that did exchange fire, therefore, we have to turn to news accounts (especially casualties), memoirs, anecdotes, and lore. Frank Warren Coburn set out to do this in The Battle of April 19, 1775 (1912), particularly the special edition with a long appendix of muster rolls, digitized here. Derek W. Beck retraced that research in Igniting the American Revolution, 1773-1775 (2015), appendix 14.

The towns with men killed or wounded were, in alphabetical order: Acton, Bedford, Beverly, Billerica, Brookline, Cambridge, Concord, Charlestown, Chelmsford, Danvers, Dedham, Framingham, Lexington, Lincoln, Lynn, Medford, Needham, Newton, Roxbury, Salem, Sudbury, Stow, Watertown, and Woburn.

However, the man from Salem who died, Benjamin Peirce, appears not to have marched with the Salem companies. The commander of that regiment, Col. Timothy Pickering, was bitterly criticized for not moving fast enough to engage the British. Peirce died in the fighting at Menotomy along with several men from Danvers and Lynn, so he had probably mustered in the company of a neighboring town.

Likewise, although two people from Charlestown were shot and killed—septuagenarian James Miller and teenager Edward Barber—that town’s militia company may never have officially mustered and entered the fight. According to Jacob Rogers:

In the afternoon Mr. James Russell [a town official and appointee to the mandamus Council] received a letter from General [Thomas] Gage, importing that he was informed the people of Charlestown had gone out armed to oppose his majesty’s troops, and that if one single man more went out armed, we might expect the most disagreeable consequences.

Since the most populated part of Charlestown was well within range of British army and naval artillery, town leaders had good reason to keep the militia company out of action. Miller and a friend were apparently shooting at the redcoats on their own in west Charlestown. Barber was a non-combatant looking out a window of his family home.

Thus, while the list of towns that suffered casualties is a good guide to which towns’ companies were in combat, it’s not the same.

TOMORROW: Coburn and his honorable mentions.