tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post2978969755611296856..comments2024-03-14T13:25:20.613-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: “Solomon Brown fired at them”Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-30429743737669242342023-12-02T21:01:14.168-05:002023-12-02T21:01:14.168-05:00I, too, am a Howland descendant.I, too, am a Howland descendant.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-43528321930502202762023-12-02T14:10:33.766-05:002023-12-02T14:10:33.766-05:00I recounted and I'm actually his first cousin ...I recounted and I'm actually his first cousin 7 times removed not 8. You and I are then cousins as well. We are also cousins to the Sherman family. Roger Sherman was the only one of the founding fathers to sign all four documents of the Revolution. We are also cousins to the Bush presidents and President Richard Nixon who go back to the Mayflower passenger John Howland. Theodore R. Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05299944865804996122noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-78549336381466863602023-10-31T10:15:01.478-05:002023-10-31T10:15:01.478-05:00Solomon Brown is my 5th great grandfather! I love ...Solomon Brown is my 5th great grandfather! I love finding all the information! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-15397309253944494842020-12-02T10:57:01.056-05:002020-12-02T10:57:01.056-05:00I am Theodore Brown,Solomon Brown's First cous...I am Theodore Brown,Solomon Brown's First cousin 8 times removed. I have the history of him and know that he did fire that first shot. I know what his attitude would have been after being detained by the British for several hours the night before. He would have been pissed off as I would have been.Theodore R. Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05299944865804996122noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-85484270582181597912019-12-31T19:11:28.746-05:002019-12-31T19:11:28.746-05:00The 1882 book about Capt. Oliver Brown is availabl...The 1882 book about Capt. Oliver Brown is available for viewing <a href="https://archive.org/details/biographicalsket00hayd_0/page/n2" rel="nofollow">here</a>.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-56588478460565682272019-12-31T18:25:08.568-05:002019-12-31T18:25:08.568-05:00I too am a descendant of Solomon Brown and would l...I too am a descendant of Solomon Brown and would like to know where I can get a copy of that book or maybe a photostatic copy of it. Michael Hall Grove City OhioAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11945988696064018095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-48205706358799512772018-04-19T11:37:53.410-05:002018-04-19T11:37:53.410-05:00Thank you for these articles on Solomon Brown. I ...Thank you for these articles on Solomon Brown. I am descended from his older brother, Capt. Oliver Brown. You may already be familiar with a small book by Horace Edwin Hayden in 1882 entitled "A Biographical Sketch of Captain Oliver Brown." At the end of the book he tells of the events of Solomon. Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05918597316625863803noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-35650590763622069372011-04-30T22:11:18.165-05:002011-04-30T22:11:18.165-05:00The fact that the Lexington depositions of 1775 do...The fact that the Lexington depositions of 1775 don’t mention the locals returning fire while those collected decades later is significant in two ways. <br /><br />It shows that the first set wasn’t collected to produce a complete picture of the event, but rather one portion of it.<br /><br />Furthermore, since returning fire showed that the militiamen on the common were carrying loaded guns, that casts a different light on the danger they posed to the army column. <br /><br />Several British officers did indeed report militiamen firing from behind a wall or hedge. We might presume at least some of the British soldiers shot at what they thought was the source of such fire. And what local man was observed being shot at while “stationed behind a wall”? Solomon Brown.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-76813459102275597472011-04-29T23:41:31.289-05:002011-04-29T23:41:31.289-05:00I agree with your assessment that the depositions ...I agree with your assessment that the depositions are basically trustworthy. For what it’s worth, I don't see the omissions about American return fire as telling. What does it matter if they talked about return fire when it was not in dispute that the Americans fired extensively on the British later in the day. The important point to establish was that the British were the aggressors and that specifically they had fired on unoffending men (Parker's company, which was leaving the green).<br /><br />You offer an interesting position on Solomon Brown that I hadn’t previously considered. He fired on the British from a place of partial concealment. None of the sources claim he fired before the British did (they seem to indicate the opposite), but there is a fuzziness about the descriptions and one can infer he might have been the first to pull the trigger. Arguably he was more motivated than others to act aggressively, and all-in-all, it’s more plausible that he fired first than any other person on hand for whom we have a name and a clear sense of his actions.<br /><br />But, I’m surprised to see, as you reveal in the Comments, that some people see his culpability as essentially established. My immediate objection to taking this too far is that British accounts of the first shot don't seem to mesh well with the Brown-firing- first theory.<br /><br />I don’t need to repeat these for your benefit, J.L., but should someone else still be reading these comments, they are:<br /><br />Pitcairn: "some of the rebels who had jumped over the wall, fired four or five shots at the soldiers, which wounded a man of the Tenth, and my horse was wounded in two places, from some quarter or other and at the same time several shots were fired from a Meeting House on our left"<br /><br />Lister: "they gave us a fire then ran off to get behind a wall."<br /><br />Sutherland: "3 shots were fired from the corner of a large house to the right of the Church when we came up to the main body… I heard Major Pitcairn's voice call out 'soldiers don't fire, keep your ranks, form & surround them, instantly some of the villains who got over a hedge fired at us"ADhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02870881763619404109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-88322411990882078032011-04-29T20:07:53.603-05:002011-04-29T20:07:53.603-05:00Before the name of Ammi White surfaced in print, F...Before the name of Ammi White surfaced in print, Fischer wrote, some people in Concord blamed the tomahawking on a “loutish boy” who was working for the Emersons. <br /><br />It’s not clear where that “loutish” comes from. Hawthorne’s <i>Old Manse</i> suggested the youth was working for the Emersons, but didn’t characterize him further. Josiah Adams’s 1835 oration in Acton called him an “excited and thoughtless youth.” Adams and another writer said that the man later expressed great regret for the act, so they kept his name secret. <br /><br />Fischer credits Ruth R. Wheeler with being the first historian to name Ammi White in print, but in fact James H. Stark did so in <i>The Loyalists of Massachusetts</i> (1910).J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-79572106971907840342011-04-28T00:28:43.242-05:002011-04-28T00:28:43.242-05:00In the case of Ammi White, the fellow that tomahaw...In the case of Ammi White, the fellow that tomahawked an already severely wounded British light infantryman at the North Bridge, I have seen no accounts of him being mentally disturbed. He later became a clock-casemaker (some of his work is on display in the Concord Museum), and he later moved to New Hampshire. He never saw what the fuss about dispatching the wounded man was about, apparently.<br /><br />The cover-up -literally- began in earnest that day, as the colonists hurriedly buried the bludgeoned British soldiers on the side of the road. The mission of the colonists in their fight was to show the British people and their government that Americans were not murderers or savages, but rather, wronged fellow Englishmen.<br /><br />Therefore, to keep the tale and the colonists' role therein unblemished, they buried the bodies quickly (as well as any others that had been brutalized) to minimize further eyewitnesses to their condition. <br /><br />They then took sworn depositions, and got the stories on a fast packet to England, before Gage and his officers could get their story straight and sent off to Lord Germain in London.RFullernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-71578559680541143022011-04-27T10:27:46.811-05:002011-04-27T10:27:46.811-05:00In the case of the first shot at Lexington, the ev...In the case of the first shot at Lexington, the event was so chaotic and unfocused that the locals may not even have required a conspiracy to distort the truth, but rather confusion and conflicting accounts followed by a consensus on what “must have happened.”J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-51054754852412536262011-04-25T23:34:46.873-05:002011-04-25T23:34:46.873-05:00This is quite interesting. Of course, the late inf...This is quite interesting. Of course, the late information from the 1800s is always dubious. Based on the quotes above, it almost seems like the British had marched out primarily to shoot at Solomon Brown. <br /><br />Regarding the hatcheting situation at Concord's North Bridge: the fact that the town kept the details, and the name, of that incident under wraps has made me wonder, after reading the above, if there was not some concerted effort here as well to cover up undesireable information. That is, what if Brown did fire first, and it was known, but covered? I don't think so, but it is an interesting conspiracy to ponder...<br /><br />DerekDerek "A Staunch Whig" Beckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16966961365623936407noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-68251142152776687952011-04-25T22:30:08.128-05:002011-04-25T22:30:08.128-05:00Yes, Revere’s first deposition went unpublished, t...Yes, Revere’s first deposition went unpublished, though that was probably because it said too much about the Patriots’ military preparation than about the first shot. <br /><br />Lexington researcher Rick Beyer recently noticed that there are two versions of Capt. John Parker’s deposition, though they don’t differ significantly in what they say.<br /><br /><i>Paul Revere’s Ride</i> discusses the possibility of an emotionally disturbed youth hatcheting a regular near the North Bridge in Concord. That seems not to have been the case, but the similarity makes me wonder if the stories have intertwined.<br /><br />About the first shot in Lexington, an endnote in that book mentions local lore that Buckman got angry at Brown for shooting from his tavern because he was attracting army fire. But it’s also dubious about some Buckman traditions.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-87137914377452724312011-04-25T22:24:04.209-05:002011-04-25T22:24:04.209-05:00Solomon Brown’s already getting bad press. An arti...Solomon Brown’s already getting bad press. An <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_199906/ai_n8861770/" rel="nofollow">article in <i>Human Events</i></a> in 1999 said, “It is an unproven legend that Brown fired ‘the shot heard round the world’.” <br /><br />Ten years later, the <a href="http://www.wickedlocal.com/lexington/archive/x50623410/Lexington-battle-reenactment-draws-thousands-to-Green-on-Patriots-Day" rel="nofollow"><i>Lexington Minuteman</i> reported</a>, “Many historians believe Solomon Brown of Lexington fired the shot.”<br /><br />In between, in 2005, I shared some of the thoughts in this posting in a presentation at Minute Man National Historical Park.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-79214039955404775692011-04-25T10:42:17.232-05:002011-04-25T10:42:17.232-05:00(1) As for the veracity of the depositions publish...(1) As for the veracity of the depositions published in 1775, remember that a deposition was collected from Paul Revere, then returned to him unpublished. He said specifically that he couldn't tell where the first shot had come from. So there was clearly selective culling of the depositions before they were published. It would be great if we could find some more of those unpublished, rejected depositions.<br /><br />(2) I recall David Hackett Fischer saying, at a lecture soon after "Paul Revere's Ride" came out, that a teenage boy, with a reputation of being what today we would call "emotionally disturbed", had been seen with a gun near the tavern that morning. So it seems there are multiple possibilities for a "young person" to have fired that "first" shot from the area around the tavern.Charles Bahnenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-72104940790746368972011-04-25T10:01:45.503-05:002011-04-25T10:01:45.503-05:00This being the internet, I expect to start hearing...This being the internet, I expect to start hearing things like, "Solomon Brown fired the first shot! It's been proven, now!" over the next few years.Robert S. Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06208771657848284055noreply@blogger.com