Yesterday marked the 250th anniversary of the first battles of the American Revolution. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were brutal and vicious. More than 40 American colonists were killed in the fighting. These were the first martyrs in the cause for American liberty. Here are the stories of some of those men who shed their blood on that fateful day for our freedom.
Jonathan Harrington was one of the few dozen men in the Lexington militia who stood on the Lexington Green when the first British troops arrived at sunrise on April 19, 1775. He lived with his wife and child in a home that was located on the Green. After a shot was fired, the British soldiers opened fire on the American militiamen. As they were dispersing, Harrington was shot through the chest. He crawled towards his house and died within sight of his home. Local legend says he crawled to his own doorstep and died at the feet of his wife and child.
Isaac Davis was the captain of the Acton minutemen. The Acton minutemen marched more than 5 miles to Concord in the early morning hours of April 19. After seeing smoke from the town, the minutemen marched down towards the North Bridge and the British soldiers guarding the opposite side fired a volley at the minutemen. This volley was high and may have been a warning shot. The next volley was fired into the minutemen. Private Abner Hosmer was shot through the head and killed. Davis was shot through the chest, his blood splattering the men around him. Seconds later the American colonists were given the command to fire on British soldiers for the very first time.
James Hayward was part of the Acton company that joined in the running battle back towards Boston. During the battle soldiers from both sides stopped to get water at local wells. At one point a British soldier went to the well by the Fiske house to get a drink of water. At the same time, Hayward was heading there too. The two saw each other and raised their muskets. The British soldier said, “You are a dead man!” Hayward replied, “So are you.” They both fired at the same time. The British soldier was killed instantly. Hayward was hit, with splinters of his powder horn going into his side. He died not long after.
Jason Russell was a 58-year-old man living in the village of Metonomy (present day Arlington, Massachusetts) and was preparing to defend his home on the road back to Boston. People were telling him to leave the area, but Russell refused and exclaimed “An Englishman’s home is his castle!” As the British column came down the road, Russell and a dozen militiamen began to fire into redcoats. Unfortunately for Russell and the other militiamen, the British had deployed flankers to clear out many of the houses along the road. The colonists were taken by surprise and retreated into the house. Russell was unable to run and was bayonetted to death by the British troops on his front doorstep. The British entered the house and hand to hand fighting occurred inside the house. Two British soldiers and eleven militiamen were killed.
Jason Winship and Jabez Wyman decided to sit in the Cooper Tavern and have a drink. The fighting in Metonomy became extremely brutal. Even unarmed civilians got caught up in the carnage. As British arrived at the Cooper Tavern, the tavern owners fled into a cellar. Winship and Wyman did not stand a chance. The owners noted that: “the King’s regular troops under the command of General Gage, upon their return from blood and slaughter, which they had made at Lexington and Concord, fired more than one hundred bullets into the house where we dwell, through doors, and windows,…The two aged gentlemen [Winship and Wyman] were immediately most barbarously and inhumanly murdered by them, being stabbed through in many places, their heads mangled, skulls broke, and their brains out on the floor and walls of the house.”
Samuel Whittemore was a 78-year-old man who lived in Menotomy. He prepared to fight the British troops marching along the road. He carried a musket, two pistols and a sword. As some British soldiers moved to get Whittemore, he shot one with his musket, then killed two with his pistols and then drew his sword to fight them. The British soldiers shot off part of his face off, clubbed him and bayoneted him fourteen times, leaving him for dead. Amazingly, he survived and live for another eighteen years, dying at the ripe age of 96.
One of the last people to die that day was 65-year-old militiaman James Miller. As the British were making it back to Charlestown, James Miller and some men fired into the retreating soldiers. British soldiers ran towards the militia. Miller’s compatriots fled and entreated him to do the same. Miller replied, “I am too old to run.” The British opened fire and killed Miller.
These stories are only a few of the dozens who died that day. You can find these and many other stories (and where they happened!) in “A Single Blow” by Robert Orrison and Phill Greenwalt, one of seven books that are part of the Emerging Revolutionary War book series published by Savas Beatie.
Today the remains of the men who were killed on Lexington Green now lie there under a monument that was erected in 1799, not long after the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War. The epitaph on that monument still speaks to the heroism and valor of these first Americans to fall in the Revolutionary War:
“The Blood of these Martyrs,
In the cause of God & their Country,
Was the Cement of the Union of these States, then
Colonies; & gave the spring to the spirit. Firmness
And resolution of their Fellow Citizens.
They rose as one man to revenge their brethren’s
Blood and at the point of the sword to assert &
Defend their native Rights.
They nobly dar’d to be free!!”
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 