250 and Counting

Category: Lexington and Concord

  • September 21, 1775: RIP Abel Prescott

    Cover art for September 21, 1775: this might be Paul Revere. It might be William Prescott or Samuel Dawes. It's definitely not Abel Prescott.

    In the episode itself I took the time to hammer home the point that many of our historical legends aren’t quite what they seem to be.

    But also important is the forgotten people of our history as well. Not just the faceless folks who fought and died (or didn’t but remained in obscurity), but the people who were an important part of some events, yet go unnoticed today. And Abel Prescott is one of those people.

    Not a lot is known about him, other than that he was William’s younger brother. And while William Prescott, along with William Dawes and Paul Revere, were intercepted by the British, Abel Prescott did manage to get away, albeit with a bullet in his side. Five months later, that bullet killed him.

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  • September 17, 1775: Death of a Militiaman

    Cover art for September 17, 1775: statue of the Minuteman that stands in Lexington, Massachusetts.

    The Minuteman statue in Lexington, Massachusetts is said to represent Captain John Parker, who died on this day.

    Except Parker wasn’t a minuteman.

    He also probably didn’t look like the man in the statue, given his age and what other small details we know about him.

    But as usual, nobody lets the facts get in the way of a good story, so just roll with it, hm?

    (We’re guessing he probably wasn’t green, either. )

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  • June 25, 1775: Peter Brown Saw It All

    Cover art for June 25, 1775: the gravestone of Peter and Olive Brown, in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. via Find-a-Grave.com.

    There are lots of times when historians have to pull a lot of small pieces together to get a decent picture of events. They use oddball clues such as artifacts in paintings to determine someone’s state of health, for instance. They have to take into account that published reports could be propaganda in nature.

    But once in a while, something turns up that was written more or less at the time it happened, and what’s more it was written by someone who doesn’t necessarily have an agenda.

    And in this case, nobody even knew it existed until a hundred years later. Exactly a hundred years later, in fact. A young soldier named Peter Brown wrote a letter to his mother just a few days after the Bunker Hill battle to tell her what happened. He spared few details and told a rather complete story of a couple of days’ worth of activity. And while he did mail the letter, and his mother did receive it, it mostly lay in family archives until 1875, when a descendant found it and realized that it might be important.

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    If you’re interested in seeing the letter itself, or reading a transcription, it’s available at the Massachusetts Historical Society’s website.

  • April 25, 1775: Benedict Arnold Wasn’t All Bad

    Cover art for April 25, 1775: Benedict Arnold engraving by Henry Bryan Hall after John Trumbull, published 1879.

    Benedict Arnold was a pretty smart guy who chose the wrong friends…and, as we’ll discover later on, the wrong enemies as well.

    But for the time being, here’s a peek into some of Arnold’s activities when he was still on our side in both body and spirit.

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  • April 24, 1775: Eyewitness Testimony from Lexington & Concord

    Cover art for April 24, 1775: Written deposition of John Robins regarding events at Lexington

    The testimony of John Robins is what teachers like to call “primary sources”. It’s a document prepared by someone contemporary to an event, and even if the narrator is unreliable, we learn much more from it than from, say, something that was written long after the fact.

    In the case of John Robins’ testimony regarding events at Lexington and Concord, the events were still fresh in his mind, having happened only a few days earlier. And because it derived from an official proceeding, that document was reasonably well-preserved and serves as a fascinating window into one of the most important events of our history.

    And as for Robins himself, he was a relatively common man who happened to be part of the militia that day and might have been otherwise forgotten.

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  • April 23, 1775: Boston Needs a Few Good Men

    Cover art for April 2,3, 1775: detail from a page of the 11/17/1774 Holt's Journal.

    I (Claude) suppose that I should note that for a few days last week I sounded a little odd. You’re not wrong; I was not in my usual recording space and not using my usual recording equipment; what’s more I was plagued by allergies and sounded a little rough on top of the funky acoustics. I hope it didn’t bug you too much.

    Anyway.

    Today, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress takes the time to organize its militiamen into a decent army. Meanwhile in New York, word gets out about Lexington and Concord, and people in that colony have a big decision to make.

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  • April 22, 1775: Who Shot First?

    Cover art for April 22, 1775: "North Bridge, Concord, April 19, 1775", by Frank T. Merrill (dated 1909)

    In the aftermath of the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress held a series of hearings to determine who fired the first shot.

    The purpose of the hearings was partially to find out exactly what had happened, but it had another purpose: if it turned out that the British had fired first, then the Assembly could turn to England and say “SEE? It wasn’t us!”

    Even 250 years ago, Congressional hearings had a second agenda attached to them. (*sigh*) In the end, despite getting lots of testimony, the answer was still somewhat murky. But the Assembly still had enough information to give reconciliation one last shot.

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  • April 19, 1775: The War Begins at Lexington and Concord

    Cover art for April 19, 1775: The Battle of Lexington, By William Barnes Wollen, 1910 - National Army Museum

    This is the big one, and it’s a date that many people don’t remember, but today is the day that the Revolutionary War officially began.

    Oh sure, there were a few skirmishes here and there, which we’ve already discussed in earlier episodes. But this was the true tipping point from which nobody could recover or walk back.

    Looking through social media the past couple of days, it’s heartwarming to see the number of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of things like Paul Revere’s ride, and the sheer number of people who are participating, even if they’re doing something relatively simple such as putting two lights in a high window of their homes.

    We don’t recommend that you spend today shooting at British people wearing red, though.

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  • April 18, 1775: Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride

    Cover art for April 18, 1775: "Paul Revere Bringing News to Sullivan," by Howard Pyle, 1886

    Once in awhile, we fear that students of history don’t necessarily put things into the appropriate perspective when it comes to dates. We offer them some facts regarding what happened and when, but the events still kind of mush together.

    That’s how we get the Simpsons joke: “Let’s take a look back at the year 1928- the year when you might have seen Al Capone dancing the Charleston on top of a flagpole!”

    To that end, students might place the Boston Massacre, say, as quite close in the timeline to the start of the Revolutionary War, when in fact they happened several years apart. But at this specific period of time, things were in fact moving quickly and closely together: Colonies were lining up behind Massachusetts, various areas began to prepare for all-out war, General Gage was doing his best to control the colonists based on the orders that were sent to him several weeks earlier from London, and Lord North was in fact hoping to provoke the colonists into doing something that would give him a reason to crush them hard.

    So when word got out that the British were coming up the Charles river to make a move on Concord and Lexington, Colonist spies were wise to it and they got the word out as fast as they could. Listen, my children, and you will hear.

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