“A grenadier in full regimentals knocked at the door”

Here’s another anecdote about how Bostonians learned about the British march to Concord, passed down in a family and first published in the 1880s.

The story is said to come from Mary Stedman (1752–1835), wife of Dr. John Stedman (1743–1780). In the 1770s they lived on the corner of Winter Street and Marlborough (now Washington) in Boston.

Three years after the doctor died, his widow married William Donnison (1757–1834). The Donnisons had four children, and Mary Donnison told them stories about the Revolutionary War. Their daughter Elizabeth Quincy Donnison (1794–1876) married the Rev. Richard Manning Hodges (1794–1878) of Bridgewater.

Richard and Elizabeth Hodges in turn had children, including Sarah (1825–1910, shown here). She grew up in Cambridge, married the minister John Augustus Swan (1823–1871), returned to Cambridge, joined clubs, and did charity work. As a widow, she wrote down the stories that her mother Elizabeth Hodges had passed on from her grandmother Mary Donnison.

Sarah H. Swan fed this particular anecdote to the creators of The Memorial History of Boston, a four-volume edifice published in the 1880s. The tale went into a footnote, credited to “a granddaughter of Dr. Stedman,” though in fact Swan was a step-granddaughter of the doctor. In 1897 she included a slightly different version of the family story in her New England Magazine article, “The Story of an Old House and the People Who Lived in It.”

Here’s the first telling of this story from 1775, in Elizabeth Hodges’s voice:

It was difficult at that time to obtain servants, and Mrs. Stedman had been glad to secure the services of a woman whose husband was a British soldier named Gibson.

On the evening of the eighteenth of April a grenadier in full regimentals knocked at the door and inquired for Gibson. On being told that he would soon be at the house, an order was left for him to report himself at eight o’clock at the bottom of the Common, equipped for an expedition.

Mrs. Stedman hastened to inform her husband of this alarming summons, and he at once carried the intelligence to Dr. Benjamin Church, who lived near by on Washington Street.

Gibson soon came in and took leave of his wife, pale with anxiety at the doubtful issue of this sudden and secret enterprise. “Oh, Gibson!” said my mother, “what are you going to do?”

“Ah, madam!” he replied. “I know as little as you do. I only know that I must go.”

He went, never to return. He fell on the retreat from Lexington. A few minutes before receiving the fatal shot he remarked to one of his comrades that he had never seen so hot a day, though he had served in many campaigns in Europe.

And the second:

In the early evening of April 18, 1775, the young wife [Mary Stedman] was somewhat startled by a peremptory knock at the outer door. She opened it herself, and saw a British grenadier, who inquired if Gibson were there. Gibson was a soldier, whose wife was Mrs. Stedman’s cook. She that he would probably be there soon. “Tell him to report at the foot of the common, equipped, at eight o’clock.”

Gibson soon came in to take Ieave of his wife and child. “Oh, Gibson, what does this mean?” exclaimed Mrs. Stedman.

“Ah, madam,” he said, “I know as little as you do.”

When Dr. Stedman returned home and heard of what had occurred he hastened to carry the intelligence to his neighbor, Dr. Benjamin Church, then a trusted member of the vigilance committee, and thus the warning of the approaching expedition was conveyed to [John] Hancock and [Samuel] Adams, who had taken refuge at Lexington.

Gibson never returned. He fell on the retreat from Lexington, just after remarking to a comrade that “altho’ he had served in many campaigns in Europe he had never known so hot a day.”

It’s a fine anecdote. It conveys two women’s perspectives on the outbreak of war, with most of the action taking place in the kitchen. It offered the pathos of the doomed soldier while appearing as upper echelons of U.S. society were feeling more sentimental ties to Britain than earlier. But it also gives the tellers’ grandmother a crucial role in the American response to the march.

TOMORROW: But is this story credible?