As part of a trip that Mom and I made to Boston in the fall of 2000, our day tour to Lexington and Concord started in Cambridge, Massachusetts — home of both MIT and Harvard. Harvard was not actually founded by John Harvard. It was named after him because he died and left them a lot of money in 1638. We walked around the campus a bit and drove by the building that George Washington had used as his headquarters when he was commander of the Continental Army as we headed out of town on our way to Lexington.
When Paul Revere galloped off from Boston to warn people of what was about to happen, he was not the only rider. A fella named William Dawes was also sounding the alarm. They didn’t say “the Redcoats are coming”, but “The Regulars are out!” I guess the first one just sounded more dramatic than what they really said, so that was what was passed down. Just shows that there were folks who played a little fast and loose with the facts even back then.
Here is my account of what happened on April 19, 1775, interwoven with what we did on our tour of Lexington and Concord:
When Paul Revere alerted the Militia men at Lexington, they sent out a couple of riders to confirm that what Revere had said was true. The first one returned saying that it was a false alarm, so the Militia (Lexington didn’t have any Minute Men — they were all regular Militia) discharged their weapons before entering Buckman Tavern to wait for the second rider to return (and have a couple pints while waiting). Our first stop at Lexington was Lexington Green. Buckman Tavern was right next to the Green, so this is where we went next.
At the time, you could only see the interior of the tavern on a guided tour. Our timing was not good. We had just missed joining a tour and wouldn’t be there long enough for the next one, so we missed seeing the interior entirely.
Revere had also visited the Hancock-Clark House where John Hancock and Samuel Adams were hanging out and suggested that they relocate themselves elsewhere. We walked down to this house after Buckman Tavern. Here too, there were guided tours only once per hour to see the interior. So we missed out on that too. We returned to Lexington Green.
After leaving Lexington, Paul Revere met up with William Dawes in Lincoln. There, they also met a Doctor Samuel Prescott, who decided to ride with them to Concord. Shortly after setting off, they encountered a patrol of Regulars. Prescott and Dawes escaped, but Revere was captured. He was released a short time later, minus his horse. So he walked back to Lexington. There he found Hancock and Adams still debating at the Hancock-Clark House and encouraged them once again to leave town. This time they did as he suggested.
Shortly after Hancock and Adams left Lexington, a man named Lowell alerted Revere to the fact that Hancock’s trunk, with all sorts of important papers, was in the attic of Buckman Tavern. Revere and Lowell arrived at the Tavern at about the same time as the second rider with the news that Revere had been correct.
On the Regular’s march up from Boston, roughly 279 of them had taken a wrong turn at the fork in the road and had headed straight for Lexington Green instead of taking the Concord Road. This wayward group arrived in Lexington just as the Militia Men were coming out of Buckman Tavern and gathering on the Green. At that same moment, Revere and Lowell were high-tailing it out of the Tavern with the trunk, across the edge of the Green and into the woods.
Only about 36 of Colonel John Parker’s 77 Militia Men were there and Colonel Parker realized they were greatly out numbered. So when the Regulars told them to disperse, he ordered his men to do so. As they were dispersing, someone shot off a pistol and the Regulars began firing at the Militia. Eight were killed and nine more wounded (the wounded were taken to Munroe Tavern, which was used as a field hospital). Then the commander of the Regulars regained control of his troops and they set off for Concord.
Meanwhile, back with the riders, Dawes and Prescott: on the way to Concord, William Dawes fell off of his horse. So he never made it there either. It was a very good thing that he and Revere had been joined by Doctor Prescott as he was the only one of the three to actually make it to Concord and sound the alarm there.
When Prescott reached Concord, he rode to the Old Manse and informed William Emerson (a minister and grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson) of what was happening. Emerson then alerted Colonel James Barrett, who gathered his Minute Men, who waited on the hills while the Regulars explored the town. The Regulars set a fire that generated a great deal of smoke and the Minute Men thought they were burning the town. So they came down from the hills and lined up on the north side of the North Bridge.
We took the same route from Lexington to Concord that the Regulars had taken and made a small tour of the town before arriving at the North Bridge. We saw The Wayside (which was owned by author Nathaniel Hawthorne and rented by the Alcott family when Louisa was a girl), Orchard House (where Louisa May Alcott wrote “Little Women”), Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house, the “bullet hole” house, and the Old Manse. The North Bridge was a very short walk from the Old Manse.
The Regulars lined up on the south side of the North Bridge and that was where “the shot heard ‘round the world” took place.
After we viewed the North Bridge, we went up into the hills above, where the Minute Men had been waiting while the Regulars explored the town. Then we explored Colonel Barrett’s house, which was much as it had been in 1775. He had a farm there up above the town.
While at Lexington, the skirmish had been quite one-sided with the Regulars only losing one person, Concord was a different story. It was the official first battle of the American Revolution and the Regulars were outnumbered and out maneuvered by the Minute Men, who were pretty much stunned by their own victory. The Regulars decided to retreat to Boston.
All the way from Concord to Lexington, the Militia and Minute Men used guerilla tactics and trounced the Regulars. However, back in Lexington, re-enforcements were waiting. Otherwise, the Regulars likely would have been wiped out. The re-enforcements got the rest of them back as far as Bunker Hill, where another battle took place two months later.
Some of the events of the pre-dawn hours of April 19, 1775, are rather comical — some of the British Regulars took a wrong turn; William Dawes fell off his horse; neither one of the main riders made it to Concord (it was a guy they picked up along the way who completed the ride); Paul Revere and a fella named Lowell were hot-footing it out of Buckman Tavern with a chest full of important papers just as the errant Regulars arrived in Lexington (instead of Concord where they were supposed to go). But this is history. These were real people and this is what happened.
To me, it’s absolutely fascinating to stand at Lexington Green, knowing where the Militia Men were standing and from where the Regulars were arriving, and envision Revere and Lowell hauling that trunk from the tavern into the woods and picturing everything else that was happening at the same time. Then, at Concord, we could stand up on the hill and imagine what the Minute Men could see as well as stand down at the bridge at each end, and imagine what was going on for both the Minute Men and the Regulars.
All in all, the colonial Militia Men and Minute Men had 49 killed, 39 wounded and 5 missing, while the Regulars had 73 killed, 174 wounded and 53 missing. In hindsight, perhaps the Regulars should have just called it a day and returned to England right then and there. But there was a lot more that needed to happen and it was still another year before the Declaration of Independence would be written.
