Discover Concord

Have you ever tried to quickly clean up the house before last minute guests come over? Heart pounding down the seconds until their obnoxiously presumptuous fists knock on the door, you do a little frantic shoving, maybe commit a little bit of treason, and hope the house looks presentable. 

In 1775, Menotomy was a village of about 400 farmers, millers, tavern keepers, and their families. Located in today’s Town of Arlington, Menotomy stretched along Massachusetts Avenue from “the foot of the rocks” near Lexington to Alewife Brook. On April 19, 1775, the Battle of Menotomy would be the largest, longest, and bloodiest engagement of the day.

Americans have a deep reverence for those who perished in military service. Communities remember those who died during their service by providing free military gravestones, placing flags on graves, and erecting monuments or memorials. The soldiers who died during the Revolutionary War were America’s first veterans. Here in Concord, there has been a long-standing tradition each Memorial Day of reading the names of those who died in service. Until 2023, only one name was read for the Revolutionary War: Reverend William Emerson. For as long as anyone could remember, he was the only person remembered by the town for dying during his service in the Revolutionary War.

On the morning of April 19, 1775, over 700 King’s troops marched into Concord to search for military supplies that spies had told Royal Governor Gage were being hidden there to support a rebellion against the King. Their search met unexpected resistance, exploding into a day-long battle over eighteen miles from Concord to Boston with fighting on open ground and from behind trees and stone walls. Today, you can retrace the soldiers’ steps along the Battle Road and imagine the landscape and walls as they were that day thanks, in part, to a 2024 project by Minute Man National Historical Park to rebuild the park’s historic stone walls in Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington. Led by Michael Papile, a team of professional stone wallers affiliated with The Stone Trust (an organization dedicated to preserving and advancing the art of dry stone walling) restored these walls. Stone by stone, stories of time were put back together.

Early on the morning of April 19, 1775, approximately 70 men, all residents of Lexington, Massachusetts, gathered on the Town Green in response to the news that the British Regulars were approaching the town on their way to Concord to search for stores of ammunition. The Lexington men were members of the local militia responsible for protecting their community. Among those Lexingtonians was Prince Estabrook, a man of African descent who was enslaved by Benjamin Estabrook, another Lexingtonian. Whether or not Prince, or any of the other men, were aware of how the events of the morning would play out, it is certain that he did not envision that he was laying the foundation for a new nation. Even so, Prince embodied the events and issues of the day in a way that was distinct from the other men who gathered on the Green that April morning.

Concord, Massachusetts, is home to two important revolutions: a military one starting on April 19, 1775, and a moral, intellectual, and ideological one, epitomized more than half a century later by the Transcendentalist movement and its staunch support for the abolition of those enslaved in America. Few heroes in American history resonate so strongly with both of these movements as the iconic Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette.

In war, there are many ways to define victory. So, who won the Battles of Lexington and Concord? On the surface this may seem simple. The colonists were able to keep most of their military supplies safely out of British hands. The British soldiers then suffered heavy casualties during their retreat to Boston where they were trapped and besieged. However, though things certainly did not go the way they wanted, did the British Army actually lose on April 19, 1775? The answer depends upon how you define victory.

Prudence Cummings, born in 1740 in Hollis, New Hampshire, did chores, learned household skills, and played much like any other colonial girl. But unlike many, she attended school, hunted and fished with her father, and participated in family discussions about the future of the colonies. By the time she married David Wright and moved to Pepperell, Massachusetts, colonial resistance to British rule had increased. Soon, Prudence led the women of Pepperell to burn tea on the town common and boycott English goods. When the townspeople raised a liberty flag, Prudence joined in, boldly defying the king.

With the death of King George II on October 25, 1760, his 22-year-old grandson George III became the King of Great Britain and Ireland. Reports of the ascension of the new monarch reached the American colonies in early January 1761, and the first colonists to hear the news were the people of Massachusetts. The rise of the man who would become the last king of America was met with great fanfare and joy. 

In 1774 when Parliament passed the Boston Port Act in an attempt to break the Massachusetts colonists of their resistance to Crown policy, it also authorized English General and acting Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage to undertake any military measures necessary to help bring the colony under control. In late winter and early spring of 1775, Gage received a series of dispatches from London ordering him to not only arrest the leaders of Massachusetts’ opposition party but to launch a major strike against the apparently growing provincial stockpiles of weapons and munitions located throughout eastern Massachusetts. As he contemplated these orders, Gage considered a variety of military options, including a long-range strike against the large store of weapons located in the shire town of Worcester, forty miles west of Boston.

The Sons of Liberty was not just a Boston organization. The colonies of New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia all had Patriot groups calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. In the years leading up to the American Revolution all the groups were in contact with each other, and all were united to rally public support for colonial resistance against the Crown. 

Standing along the storied Battle Road lie the “witness houses” of April 19, 1775, homes that stood as silent observers to the opening shots of the American Revolution. These homes tell the stories of ordinary people who played extraordinary roles in shaping history.  

Each house represents a unique perspective on the day the colonies rose in defiance of British rule. From the Colonel James Barrett House, where hidden munitions were successfully relocated just days – and even hours - before the arrival of British troops, to the Major John Buttrick House, home of the man who issued the historic command, “Fire, fellow soldiers! For God’s sake fire!,” these homes echo with tales of resourcefulness and bravery.  

The Acton Minutemen were formed at the end of 1774 at a town meeting. Tensions with England had grown to a boil, and towns everywhere were responding by training their men to fight. The town of Acton, which had previously been part of Concord, chose their best men from their existing militia units to form the new Minute Company, and those men voted 30-year-old Isaac Davis as their captain.

It was the law of the land that every man between the ages of 16 and 60 was required to serve in his town’s militia. They were not paid and met twice each year to conduct marching and musket drills. By contrast, minute companies were paid and met twice each week to drill and train and were arguably among the best trained soldiers in the area when hostilities broke out in April of 1775.

Colonial rebels in Concord did not wait until April 1775 to reject British rule. They did so in October of 1774, a full six months earlier—and a small tax on tea was the least of their complaints.

Earlier that year, as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament had passed the so-called Coercive Acts. Today, closing the Port of Boston gets all the press, but two different measures actually tipped the scales and led to revolution. 

John Adams once stated that “the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people” long before the start of the Revolutionary War. Years before British soldiers fired on the townspeople in the first battle of the war, Lexington was fighting with economics rather than weapons.

As hostilities grew between Massachusetts and the English government in the 1770s, popular opinion was divided. Concord’s “Patriot preacher,” Rev. William Emerson, spoke out for liberty and served as chaplain for Concord’s minutemen. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law, lawyer Daniel Bliss, remained loyal to the King, and would be forced to flee for his life to Canada when war erupted in 1775.

At the end of the Seven Years’ War (called the French and Indian War in America), England emerged as the big winner. It had gained control of eastern North America, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from Labrador to Louisiana. 

This victory, sealed by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, came at a steep price. England’s national debt had swelled by an additional £59 million, equivalent to nearly £15 billion today. And the drain on the Treasury didn’t stop there. England had to deploy thousands of soldiers to keep the French and Spanish out and to keep the Indigenous population under control. 

April 19, 1775, marked the first battle of the American Revolution. On that day, 700 British soldiers marched from Boston to Concord to seize a stockpile of military arms and supplies. The expedition caused Patriot leaders to raise the alarm and muster the militia. The scale of the response is truly staggering and hints at a surprising amount of organization.