Paul Revere's Ride (82 page)

7
. Elijah Sanderson, Deposition, Dec. 17, 1824, Elias Phinney,
History of the Battle at Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th April 1775
(Boston, 1825), 31—33

8
. Samuel Cooper Diary, April 19, 1775; Brenton H. Dickson and Homer C. Lucas,
One Town in the American Revolution: Weston, Massachusetts
(Weston, 1976), 86.

9
. Arthur B. Tourtellot,
Lexington and Concord
(New York, 1959), 199; Experience Wight Richardson Diary, April 1775, MHS.

10
. French,
Day of Concord and Lexington,
204—5.

11
. Amelia Forbes Emerson (ed.),
Diaries and Letters of William Emerson, 1743-1776
(Boston, 1972), 73.

12
. G. Frederick Robinson and Ruth Robinson Wheeler,
Great Little Watertown: A Tercentenary History
(Watertown, 1930), 63.

13
. Vincent J. R. Kehoe, “We Were There!” mimeographed typescript, 2 vols., (n.p., n.d.), I, 271.

14
. Harold Murdock,
The Nineteenth of April, 1775
(Boston, 1925), 128.

15
. Josiah Temple,
The History of Framingham
(Framingham, 1887), 275.

16
. Hurd,
History of Middlesex County,
II, 624.

17
. A history of this episode was published by the Daughters of the American Revolution,
Prudence Wright and the Women Who Guarded the Bridge
(n.p., 1899; rpt. 1979). A modern investigation is Francine A. Stracuzzi, “Prudence Wright: A Heroine of the American Revolution,” unpublished paper, History 151a, Brandeis University, Spring 1992. According to legend, Capt. Whiting approached the bridge in company with another Loyalist, who
was none other than Prudence Wright’s Tory brother Thomas Cumming. He took one look at his determined sister, and galloped the other way. A local poet Annie Cuthbertson commemorated that encounter in a verse:

One who rode with Whiting cried

“Tis my sister Prue! Alas,

She would never let me pass

Save when her dead body fell!

I turn back from Pepperell.”

For other sources, see Hurd,
Middlesex County,
II, 231. A memorial to Prudence Wright and her company was erected in 1889.

18
. John Tudor Diary, April 19-20, 1775, MHS.

19
. John Greenleaf Whittier,
Prose Works
(Boston, 1866), II, 116.

20
. John Jenks Diary, April 20-23, 1775, Pickering Family Papers, MHS.

21
. Thomas F. Waters,
Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
(Ipswich, 1905-17), II, 320; Christopher Jedrey,
The World of John Cleaveland
(New York, 1979), 137; Arlin I. Ginsberg, “Ipswich, Massachusetts, During the American Revolution,” dissertation, Univ. of California at Riverside, 1972, pp. 112—13.

22
. Hezekiah Smith, Diary, April 19, 1775, MHS; I owe this source to the kindness of Brenda Lawson.

23
. Experience Wight Richardson, Diary, April 19—24, 1775, microfilm, MHS.

24
. David Hall, Diary, April 30, 1775, MHS.

25
. “The Conduct of Vice Admiral Graves in North America, in 1774, 1775 and 1776,” Dec. 11, 1776, signed G. G[efferina], Graves’s, flag secretary], BL; copy in Graves Papers, Gay Transcripts, MHS.

26
. Mr. Grosvenor preached from the first verse of Lamentations: “How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” Paul Litchfield, Diary, May 11, 1775, MHS; published in part in
MHSP
19 (1882): 377.

12.
The Rescue

1
. Elizabeth Clarke to Lucy Ware Allen, April 19,1841, LHS
Proceedings
4 (1905—10): 91— 93; Tourtellot,
Lexington and Concord,
141—42; Vincent J. R. Kehoe (ed.), “We Were There!” mimeographed typescript, 2 vols, (n.p., n.d.), I, 274—75. Watertown Public Library.

2
. Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott, conversation with William H. Sumner, “Reminiscences by General William H. Sumner,”
NEHGR
8 (1854): 187.

3
. William Munroe, Deposition, March 7, 1825, Elias Phinney,
History of the Battle at Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775
(Boston, 1825), 17, 34.

4
. Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott, conversation, 187; Tourtellot,
Lexington and Concord,
140-41.

5
. Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott, conversation, 187.

6
. Revere to Belknap,
ca.
1798, RFP, microfilm edition, MHS; Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott, conversation, 187.

7
.
Ibid.

8
. Jonas Clarke, “Narrative of the Events of April 19, 1775.”

9
.
Ibid.

10
. On William Diamond, see manuscript notes and materials in the Worthen-Diamond Correspondence, LHS.

11
. Long afterward Dorothy Quincy Hancock gave the trunk to the American Antiquarian Society, and that Society in turn deposited it in the Worcester Historical Museum, where it rests today.

12
. Peter Oliver, “American Rebellion,” Hutchinson Papers, BL.

13
.
Much later, John Hancock sent his Spartan hostess a cow as a gift of thanks for her Yankee hospitality. The source is a narrative by Samuel Sewall, in Kehoe (ed.), “We Were There!” I, 272-73.

14
. William Gordon,
The History of the Rise, Progress and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America
…, 4 vols. (London, 1788), I, 479; Richard Frothingham,
Life and Times of Joseph Warren
(Boston, 1865), 459. Gordon based his account of this event on personal interviews immediately after the battle. The authenticity of this conversation is supported by evidence in John C. Miller,
Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda
(Boston, 1936), 332.

13.
The First Shot

1
. Sutherland to Kemble, April 27, 1775, Gage Papers, WCL, pub. in Wroth
et al.
(eds.),
Province in Rebellion,
doc. 721, pp. 2024-29; for other editions of this letter, which is often identified as written to General Gage, see Bibliography.

2
.
Ibid.

3
. Barker,
The British in Boston,
32.

4
. Richard Pope testified of Major Mitchell’s party, “They took three prisoners, one, the noted Paul Revere, who assured them that the country was alarmed, and that he saw the embarkation, which was then publick. This information was soon after confirmed by the Firing of Alarm guns; the bells rang, and drums beat to arms in Concord.”

The identity of Pope is in doubt. From internal evidence, he was not in Smith’s column, but marched with Percy’s brigade. Harold Murdock identified him as a private or noncommissioned officer in the 47th Foot, but no soldier named Pope appears on the muster roll of that regiment. Richard Pope’s Book, April 18, 1775, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; published in Murdock,
Late News from New England
(Boston, 1927).

5
.
Ibid.

6
. The immigrant Congregational minister from East Anglia, William Gordon, noted that these were “only small-sized bells (one in a parish), just sufficient to notify to the people the time for attending worship.” Gordon, “An Account of the Commencement of Hostilities Between Great Britain and America, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay,” May 17, 1775,
AA4,
II, 625.

7
. “We got into the road leading to Lexington. Soon after the country people begun to fire their alarm guns, and light their beacons, to raise the country.” Ensign Jeremy Lister, Narrative, published as
Concord Fight
(Cambridge, 1931), 63—67.

8
. Sutherland to Kemble, April 27, 1775. Pitcairn wrote: “Near Three in the morning, when we were advanced within about Two miles of Lexington, Intelligence was received, that about 500 Men in arms were assembled, determined to oppose the King’s troops and retard them in their March.” Pitcairn to Gage, April 25, 1775, Gage Papers, WCL; also in Military Dispatches, CO5/92-93, PRO; printed in French,
General Gage’s Informers,
52—54.

9
. Sutherland to Kemble, April 27, 1775; letter from a “private soldier at Boston to his relatives,” Aug. 20, 1775, Willard,
Letters on the American Revolution,
187-200.

10
. He cut across the country to the meetinghouse and arrived soon after Bowman; see Phinney,
Battle at Lexington,
19; for a brief sketch, see Hudson,
Lexington,
255.

11
. James Marr, Recollection, as recorded in Gordon, “Account”; also Pitcairn to Gage, April 25, 1775; Smith to Gage, April 22, 1775; and Gage, “Circumstantial Account.” The British commanders later made much of this episode as evidence that they did not fire the first shot.

12
. Ensign Jeremy Lister wrote that, “about 4 o’clock, the five front companies were ordered to load, which we did” (Lister, Narrative,
Concord Fight,
64-67). The American militiaman William Munroe later went to the place where the British were “when they first heard our drum beat, which was about 100 rods [1650 feet] below the meeting-house, and saw the ends of a large number, I should judge 200, of cartridges, which they had dropped,
when they charged their pieces.” Munroe, Deposition, March 7, 1825, in Phinney,
Battle at Lexington,
34.

13
. Major W. Soutar, as quoted in Reginald Hargreaves,
The Bloodybacks; The British Serviceman in North America and the Caribbean 1655-1783
(New York, 1968), 219.

14
. Galvin,
Minute Men,
129; on drummer William Diamond, see Coburn,
Battle of April 19, 1775,
6in;
Boston Globe,
Sept. 23, 1903.

15
. For a physical description of Lexington Common in 1775, see Charles Harrington, “Memoir of Levi Harrington, an eyewitness” (1846), LHS. The Common was bigger in 1775 than it is today, when modern roads have reduced its dimensions. The meetinghouse appears to have stood a little to the east of the present marker stone, perhaps in what is now an asphalt intersection of two busy suburban roads. The terrain is much changed as well. In 1775, it was rough and broken ground. Since the mid-19th century, the Common has been graded at least three times. Harrington remembered there was a large oak stump near the meeting house and a growth of brush on the south side. The place itself was called interchangeably a “Common” or “Green,” with the former term predominating in the 18th century (when the Common was not very green), and the latter increasing in the 19th century (when the Green was not very common). Elias Phinney, for example, referred to it as the “triangular green or common” in his
History of the Battle at Lexington
(Boston, 1825), 10.

16
. Revere, Deposition,
ca.
April 24, 1775, RFP, MHS.

17
. Sutherland thought he saw three companies of militia; Sutherland to Kemble, April 27,1775.

18
. Barker,
British in Boston,
32; Pitcairn to Gage, April 25, 1775; De Berniere estimated the number at “about 150.” Another British officer, Edward Gould, got the number right: “a body of provincial troops armed, to the number of about 60 or 70 men.” But this estimate was reported after he was captured and had talked with men on the other side; cf. De Berniere,
Narrative of Occurrences, 1775
(Boston, 1779); rpt.
2MHSC
4(1816): 204—15; Gould, Deposition, April 25, 1775,
AA4,
II, 500—501.

19
. “1200 or 1500 was the number we then supposed the Brigade
[sic]
to consist of.” Jonas Clarke, “Narrative of the Events of April 19,” an estimate of true strength is computed from data in Appendix K below.