1. Some versions of this event report that the stable boy ran to William Dawes, who carried the news to Revere. In other accounts, the stable boy ran directly to Revere himself. Cf. Forbes, Revere, 252; Holland, Dawes, 9; Ellen Chase, The Beginnings of the American Revolution, 3 vols. (New York, 1910), II, 342.
2. Jeremy Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp and the observations I made there,” Oct. 25, 1775, MHSP 4 (i860): 77-86.
3. Jane Van Arsdale (ed.), Discord and Civil Wars, Being a Portion of a Journal Kept by Lieutenant Williams of His Majesty’s Twenty-Third Regiment While Stationed in British North America During the Time of the Revolution (Buffalo, 1954), 5 (June 12, 1775).
4. Mackenzie, Diary, I, 18 (April 18, 1775).
5. Jeremy Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp…,” 77-86; Samuel A. Drake, Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex (Boston, 1873), 354; French, Day of Concord and Lexington, 76; Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, III, 68.
6. “The Boats of the Squadron, by desire of the General, were ordered to assemble alongside the Boyne by 8 o’clock in the evening, and their officers were instructed to follow Lt. Bourmaster’s direction.” See “The Conduct of Admiral Graves,” British Museum, add. ms., 14038, 81; French, General Gage’s Informers, 36; E. E. Hale, in Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, III, 68n; Alden, Gage, 244, 249, uses this story in attempting to prove that Margaret Gage could not have been the informer, but it is certainly false. Alden has no other evidence to support him on this question. It should be remembered that “evening” was used to indicate afternoon in 18th-century speech.
7. John Cary, Joseph Warren, Physician, Politician, Patriot (Urbana, 111., 1961), 182—83.
8. Jeremy Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp…,” 77—86.
9. Richard A. Roberts (ed.), Calendar of Home Office Papers of the Reign of George III, 177 3-177 5 (London, 1899), 4795 Alden, Gage, 249; Shakespeare, King John, III, i, 326. In an earlier speech, Blanche says to her husband: “Upon my knees, I beg, go not to arms.” Ill, i, 308.
10. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, I, 497—98.
11. William Gordon, History of the Independence of the United States, 4 vols. (London, 1788), I, 321; quoted in Alden, Gage, 247.
12. Henry Clinton, note, n.d., Clinton Papers, WCL; quoted in Alden, Gage, 244.
13. Charles Stedman, History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War, 2 vols. (London and Dublin, 1794), I, 119; Frothingham, Warren, 456.
14. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, I, 476; Alden, Gage, 249—50. Historians have divided on this question. Alden, Gage’s biographer, asserts that “only the strongest evidence should lead us to suspect that the wife betrayed her husband.” But he does not hesitate to convict the spouse of a private soldier of having conveyed the same information! As we shall see, Gage’s soldiers had no secrets to betray. Even company and field-grade officers were kept ignorant of the mission’s purpose and destination until they reached Lexington Common.
Others have argued that the source was an agent who worked for money. The only evidence is a passage in Jeremy Belknap’s diary that Dr. Warren’s informer was “a person kept in pay for that purpose.” But this was merely a rumor he heard in the American camp six months later. Cf. Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp…,” 77-86.
On the other side there is no direct proof, but much circumstantial evidence in Gage’s cry to Percy that he had confided to one person only; testimony of Gordon, Clinton, Stedman, and Wemyss; Margaret Gage’s own statement of divided loyalties, her husband’s decision to send her away from him after the battles, and the failure of their marriage.
15. Revere’s Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775, RFP, MHS, was more specific: “I was sent for by Doctor Joseph Warren about 10 o’clock that evening, and desired, ‘to go to Lexington and inform Mr. Samuel Adams and the Hon. John Hancock Esqr. that there was a number of Soldiers composed of Light troops and Grenadiers marching to the bottom of the Common, where was a number of boats to receive them, and it was supposed, that they were going to Lexington, by the way of Watertown to take them, Mess. Adams and Hancock or to Concord.’” Probably, Revere went to Doctor Warren a little before 10, given the chronology of events that followed; hence the estimate in the text of 9 to 10.
16. Revere’s three accounts differed in detail on this question. In his first draft of a deposition, recorded immediately after the ride, he wrote: “I was sent for by Doctor Joseph Warren about 10 O’Clock that evening, and desired, ‘to go to Lexington and inform Mr. Samuel Adams, and the Hon. John Hancock Esqr. that there was a number of Soldiers composed of the Light troops and Grenadiers marching to the bottom of the Common, where was a number of boats to receive them, and it was supposed, that they were going to Lexington, by the way of Watertown to take them, Mess. Adams and Hancock, or to Concord.”
The revised deposition was modified in the last sentence to read, “that they were going to Lexington, by way of the Cambridge River, to take them, or go to Concord, to distroy the Colony Stores.”
In 1798, Revere wrote Belknap. “Dr. Warren sent in great haste for me, and begged that I would immediately set off for Lexington, where Messrs Hancock and Adams were, and acquaint them of the Movement, and that it was thought they were the objects.” Cf. Revere, Draft Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Deposition, ca. April 24, 1775; Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798, all in Revere Family Papers, microfilm edition, MHS.
17. Most historians believe that Warren sent only two messengers: Revere and Dawes. But Jeremy Belknap found evidence of a third who has never been identified. He wrote, “Two expresses were immediately dispatched thither, who passed by the guards on the Neck just before a sergeant arrived with orders to stop passengers. Another messenger went over Charlestown ferry.” See Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp…,” 77-86. For Dorr’s role, see C[atherine] C[urtis], NEHGR 10(1853): 139; W.H. Holland, William Dawes and His Ride with Paul Revere (Boston, 1878). Long after the event, several historians suggested that the third messenger was Ebenezer Dorr, a leading citizen of Roxbury, and a Whig committeeman in that town. But this is an error that arose in the late 19th century, when a Boston journalist mistakenly wrote “Dorr” for “Dawes.”
18. Sanderson, Deposition; Jonas Clarke, “Narrative of the Events of April 19,” ms., LHS.
19. The same source reports that Col. Josiah Waters of Boston “followed on foot on the sidewalk at a short distance behind him until he saw him safely through the sentinels.” Francis S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury: Its Memorable Persons and Places (Roxbury, 1878), 74.
20. Ibid.
21. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798, RFP, microfilm edition, MHS.
22. Ibid.
23. For 18th-century distances, see Lt. [Thomas Hyde] Page, A Plan of the Town of Boston with the Intrenchments, &c. of His Majesty’s Forces in 1775 (London, 1777); reproduced with other contemporary maps of less accuracy in Kenneth Nebenzahl (ed.), Rand McNally Atlas of the American Revolution (New York, 1974), 42.
24. In the late 19th century, the identity of the church was called into question. Revere called it the “North Church.” But there were several steeples in the North End. One was the present Old North Church, an opulent structure then also known as Christ Church, or the Seven Bell Church after the carillon that Paul Revere had rung as a child. Another was a Congregational meetinghouse in North Square, often called the North Meeting, or Old North Meeting. This building no longer stands; it was pulled down for firewood by British troops during the siege of Boston. Richard Frothingham argued in The Alarm on the Night of April 18, 1775 that the lanterns were displayed from this building, and not the Old North Church. Frothingham was mistaken. An old inhabitant of Boston, Joshua Fowle, remembered long after the event, “There is no dispute, or ought not to be, in regard to the display of lights at the North Church by your father. The Seven Bell Church was always called by that name; the others were always called meeting houses, old Puritanic names, and b
y no other.” Joshua B. Fowle to Samuel H. Newman, July 28, 1875; Aug. 1876; also Jeremiah Loring to Wheildon?, Oct. 1876, William W. Wheildon, History of Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns (Boston, 1878), 34-36.
Further, the North Meeting at North Square had a low steeple on the south side of the North End, and could barely be seen from Charlestown.
Moreover, the identity of the men who displayed the lanterns was known in Boston soon after the event. Both were associated with North Church, not North Meeting. For all of these reasons, we may safely conclude that that the lanterns were displayed from Christ Church, now known as Old North Church.
The prominence of the Old North Church in the city’s skyline may be seen in Paul Revere’s “A View of Part of the Town of Boston in New England and British Ships of War Landing their Troops, 1768” (Boston, 1770), in Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings, 60.
25. Wheildon, Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns; John L. Watson, Paul Revere’s Signal (Cambridge, 1877); Goss, Revere, I, 247-58.
26. Robert Newman Sheets, Robert Newman; His Life and Letters in Celebration of the Bicentennial of His Showing of Two Lanterns in Christ Church, Boston, April 18,1775 (Denver; Newman Family Society, 1975).
27. Jeremiah Loring to Wheildon?, Oct. 1876, Wheildon, Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns, 34-36.
28. Sheets, Robert Newman; His Life and Letters…, 3.
29. Watson, Paul Revere’s Signal, argued that Capt. John Pulling displayed the lights from the tower. Wheildon (Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns) responded that the work was done by Newman, an interpretation repeated by Goss, Forbes, and Sheets. There is good evidence that both men were involved, and Bernard as well. Given the intrinsic difficulty of carrying two lanterns to the top of the tower, lighting them with flint and steel, and displaying them simultaneously by hand out of the window, I think it probable that New- man and Pulling worked together in the tower, while Bernard kept watch below.
No source survives to establish the sequence of events in the tower. It would have been dangerous to light the lanterns on the ground floor of the church, with British soldiers passing in the street, and impossible to light them at the top of a narrow ladder.
30. Revere’s account was confirmed by Richard Devens, who wrote, “I soon received intelligence from Boston that the enemy were all in motion, and were certainly preparing to come out into the country. Soon afterwards, the signal agreed upon was given; this was a lanthorn hung out in the upper window of the tower of N. Ch towards Charlestown.” Richard Devens, Narrative, published in Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 57.
31. Devens, Memorandum; Frothingham, Siege of Boston, 58—59.
32. Goss, Revere, I, 188—89, based upon letters of John Revere to Goss, Oct. 11, 1876, and Charles Wooley to Goss, May 1886.
33. Revere wrote that he kept his boat in “the north part of the town.” The story of the spurs descended in the Revere family from Paul Revere’s daughter Mary Revere Lincoln to her son William O. Lincoln, who recorded it for Goss, Revere, I, 189—90.
34. The Boston lady who donated her underwear to the boatmen was an ancestor of John R. Adan; John Revere to Goss, Oct. 11, 1876, Goss, Revere, I, 190.
35. W. W. Wheildon, Curiosities of History, 36; Goss, Revere, I, 188.
36. Donald W. Olson and Russell L. Doescher, “Astronomical Computing: Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride,” Sky and Telescope 83 (1992): 437-40; Jacques Vialle and Darrel Hoff, “The Astronomy of Paul Revere’s Ride,” Astronomy 20 (1992): 13-18; Boston Globe, April 19,1992.
37. The horse was presumably “got” by the combined efforts of Deacon Larkin, Devens, and Revere. Devens later recalled, “I kept watch at the ferry to watch for boats till about eleven o’clock, when Paul Revere came over and informed that the Troops were actually in their boats. I then took a horse from Mr. Larkin’s barn and sent off P. Revere to give the intelligence at Menotomy and Lexington.” Devens, Memorandum, in History of Charles-town, 315—16; Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, 57—58; Revere also left an account of this conversation in his third account of the ride.
38. William Ensign Lincoln, genealogist of the Larkin family, recorded in 1930 a family tradition that the horse was a mare named Brown Beauty, which belonged to Samuel Larkin, chairmaker and fisherman of Charlestown (1701-84). Lincoln writes, “The mare was borrowed at the request of Samuel’s son, Deacon John Larkin, and was never returned to the owner.”
John Larkin (1735-1807) was a merchant and deacon of the First Congregational Church in Charlestown. His estate was probated for $86,581.00, an exceptionally large holding. See William Ensign Lincoln, Some Descendants of Stephen Lincoln, Edward Larkin, Thomas Oliver, Michael Pearce, Robert Wheaton, George Burrill, John Porter, John Ayer (New York, 1930), 119, 123. Also very helpful on this question is Patrick M. Leehey, “What was the Name of Paul Revere’s Horse?” Revere House Gazette 16 (1965): 5.
Other secondary accounts are erroneous in various details.-Richard O’Donnell mistakenly describes the animal as a “little brown mare,” but Revere’s own accounts indicate that she was a large horse, and after his capture she was taken by a sergeant of grenadiers to replace his own small mount. Cf. O’Donnell, “‘On the Eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five…’ Longfellow didn’t know the half of it,” Smithsonian 4 (1973): 72-77.
Various names have been suggested in the literature on Paul Revere’s ride. Galvin (Minute Men, 123-24) calls her Thunderer (without supplying a source). Popular writers have inventively named her Meg, Scherazade, Dobbin, and Sparky (after “the spark struck out by the steed that night”).
39. Not even Paul Revere’s horse has been spared the attentions of the revisionists. Filiopietists have represented Paul Revere’s horse as a fine-boned thoroughbred, with a long gait and an elegant Arabian head. Iconoclasts have insisted, on the other hand, that she was a heavy, plodding “ploughhorse.” Both interpretations are mistaken, and the truth was not “in between.”
40. Revere to Belknap, ca. 1798, RFP, microfilm edition, MHS.
41. The red door and four-stub lantern may still be found in the Buckman Tavern, which since 1913 has been owned by the town of Lexington. It is now operated by the Lexington Historical Society. See also Willard D. Brown, The Story of Buckman Tavern (rev. ed., Lexington, 1989).
42. The parsonage still stands today. It has been moved twice, and is back close to its original site. See S. Lawrence Whipple, The Hancock-Clarke House, Parsonage and Home (Lexington, 1984).
43. Jonas Clarke Diary, April 7, 10, 1775, MHS.
44. Whipple, The Hancock-Clarke House, Parsonage and Home, 13—16; for the size of the guard, see Jonas Clarke, “Narrative of the Events of April 19.”
45. Richard L. Merritt, Symbols of American Community (New Haven, 1966).
46. Louise K. Brown, A Revolutionary Town (Canaan, N.H., 1975), 16.
47. Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, 17.
48. Jonas Clarke, “Narrative of the Events of April 19.”
7. The March
1. Jeremy Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp…,” Oct. 25, 1775, MHS; pub. in MHSP 4 (i860): 77-86.
2. Letter from a “Private Soldier in the Light Infantry,” Aug. 20, 1775, Margaret Wheeler Willard (ed.), Letters on the American Revolution (Boston, 1925), 187-200.
3. Belknap, “Journal of my tour to the camp…,” 77-80 (Oct. 25, 1775); Mackenzie, Diary, I, 18 (April 18, 1775).
4. Sutherland to Clinton, April 26, 1775, published in Harold Murdock (ed.), Late News of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s Troops on the Nineteenth of April, 1JJ5 (Boston, 1927); Mackenzie, Diary, I, 18 (April 18, 1775).
5. Barker, British in Boston, 31; Capt. W. G. Evelyn to Rev. William Evelyn, April 23, 1775, Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, of the 4th Regiment (“King’s Own,”) from North America, 1774-1776, ed. G. D. Scull (Oxford, 1879), 53~”55’ anonymous light infantryman in Willard (ed.), Letters on the American Revolution, 187—200; Pope, Late News, entry for April 18,1775; French,
Day of Concord and Lexington, 73; Murdock, The Nineteenth of April, 47; Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord, 104; Gross, Minutemen and Their World, 115; Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” I, 9.
6. Barker, The British in Boston, 31.
7. French, General Gage’s Informers, 35.
8. Donald W. Olson and Russell L. Doescher, “Astronomical Computing: Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride,” Sky and Telescope, April 1992, pp. 437-40; also Jacques Vialle and Darrel Hoff, “The Astronomy of Paul Revere’s Ride,” Astronomy 20 (1992): 13—18; see Appendix J below.
9. Lister, Narrative’, Galvin, Minute Men, 125. There was a curious irony here; the system of regimental seniority had been established only in 1751—an example of what has been called the modernity of tradition. See J. A. Houlding, Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army, (Oxford, 1981), 8, passim.
10. Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould, Deposition, April 25, 1775; AA4, II, 500.
11. Mackenzie, Diary, I, 19; French, General Gage’s Informers, 40.
12. Frank Smith, A History of Dover, Massachusetts (Dover, 1897), 93-94.
13. Maj. John Pitcairn to Col. John Mackenzie, Feb. 16, 1775, Mackenzie Papers, add. ms., 39190, BL.
14. Robin May, The British Army in North America (London, 1974), 33. May reproduces the Royal Warrant of 1768 for Infantry Clothing, 29-31.
15. L. I. Cowper, The King’s Own: The Story of a Royal Regiment (Oxford, 1939), 228.
16. Mackenzie, Diary, I, 18.
17. The route was reconstructed in 1912 by Frank Warren Coburn, in The Battle of April 19, 1775 (1912; new ed., Philadelphia, 1988).
18. Barker, The British in Boston, 32.
19. Coburn, Battle of April 19, 1775, 48.
20. Drake, Middlesex County, II, 311—12.
21. Galvin, Minute Men, 126.
22. Samuel Abbott Smith, West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Boston, 1864), 18.
23. Coburn, Battle of April 19,1775, 55; details of this incident must be read with caution. It was used as an electioneering weapon against Gerry when he ran as a Jeffersonian candidate for governor.
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