Beck’s Blow-by-Blow Analysis
Coburn sorted out the action by the towns where fighting occurred. In Igniting the American Revolution, 1773–1775, Beck focused more closely on individual skirmishes. Here’s his analysis about which towns’ companies joined the fighting and where.
- North Bridge (Concord): Concord, Acton, Bedford, Lincoln
- Meriam’s Corner (Concord): Billerica, Chelmsford, Reading
- Brook’s Tavern/Hill (still Concord): Framingham, Sudbury
- “Bloody Angle” (Lincoln): Woburn
- “Parker’s Revenge” (Lincoln/Lexington line): Lexington
- Fiske Hill (Lexington): Cambridge
- Menotomy (then Cambridge, now Arlington): Menotomy, Medford, Malden, Lynn, Beverly, Danvers
- Watson’s Corner (Cambridge): Brookline, Roxbury, Dedham, Needham
From the committee, he took a cross road to Watertown, the British being in possession of the Lexington road. At Watertown, finding some militia who had not marched, but applied for orders, he sent them down to Cambridge, with directions to take up the planks, barricade the south end of the bridge, and there to take post; that, in case the British should, on their return, take that road to Boston, their retreat might be impeded.Watertown had an unusually large number of men under Capt. Samuel Barnard, so it’s possible some of them went into the fight on the north side of the Charles while others held the bridge. But Col. Percy avoided any confrontation at the river by turning east from Cambridge toward Charlestown. (Beck suggests the Watertown men might have then come up from the bridge to fight.)
Another town Coburn listed as taking part in the battle but Beck found no place for is Newton. Coburn wrote that three Newton companies joined the fight at Lexington, citing mainly Samuel F. Smith’s town history.
Smith gave a lot of space to a narrative passed down in the Jackson family, which actually says the Newton men started fighting in Concord and carried on all the way to when the redcoats got into their boats at Lechmere’s Point in Cambridge—which never happened.
However, Smith and another local historian, Francis Jackson, also printed a story about Capt. Jeremiah Wiswall’s company, how his seventy-five-year-old father insisted on marching along, and how the old man was shot in the hand. I quoted those passages back here.
It strikes me as potentially significant that two of the Newton companies said they “Marched from Newton to head quarters at Cambridge” while the third, Capt. Wiswall’s, went “upon the Alarm in Newton to Lexington.” That third muster roll includes “Mr. Noah Wiswall,” the captain’s father. Contemporaneous accounts do list Noah Wiswall among the wounded provincials.
All told, I therefore lean toward including Capt. Wiswall’s Newton company among the units that actually engaged the British troops in either east Lexington or west Cambridge. I’m not sure about the other two seeing combat, and the muster rolls contradict the Jackson family tradition.
[Full disclosure: I’m from Newton.]
6 comments:
An excellent analysis, as usual, John. You've made a convincing case that Capt. Wiswall's company was engaged in the fighting. Hometpwn pride or not, the point is proven.
I see two other cases where I side with Coburn's interpretation, rather than Beck.
It's reported that men from Needham and Dedham are buried in the Old Burying Ground in Arlington Center, meaning that companies from those towns entered the action in Menotomy, rather than at Watson's Corner in Cambridge.
And the two Woburn companies report that they "Marched from Woburn to Concord and from thence to Cambridge...." Of course, there were no town boundary signs erected back then, and the Bloody Angle is close to the Concord line, so maybe they thought they were in Concord when they were just near it.
It's useful, I think, to look at the geography:
Acton, Bedford, and Lincoln are all contiguous to Concord, so it makes sense (and it's documented) that companies from those towns would gather on Punkatasset Hill while the Regulars were searching Barrett's farm.
Billerica and Chelmsford are north of Bedford, and the road from Bedford to Concord (Old Bedford Road) leads directly through Meriam's Corner, so those units joined the fighting there.
The Reading militia also arrived via Old Bedford Road, as the Regulars were arriving from Concord. The Reading unit probably traveled to Bedford through Wilmington and Burlington (then the north parish of Woburn).
Woburn was the next town east of Lexington. Those men probably entered Lexington on Woburn Street, then followed the Battle Road west until they encountered the Regulars.
From Framingham and Sudbury, to the south, the militia would have passed through Lincoln, then up Bedford Road, meeting the Battle Road near Hartwell Tavern, again proceeding west from there until they met the enemy.
The Cambridge units, of course, would have followed the Battle Road -- roughly today's Massachusetts Avenue -- northwest, until they found the action.
The colonial-era road from the North Shore -- Lynn, Danvers, and Beverly -- passed through Saugus (then part of Lynn) and into Malden. From there they followed modern Route 60 to Menotomy. Some of them waited for the Regulars in the town center, while others took Massachusetts Ave. towards Lexington, and joined the action at the Foot of the Rocks (Arlington Heights).
The men from Needham and Dedham, to the south, could have gone north through Weston and Lincoln, but that would have put them behind the scene of the action after the Redcoats had already passed through. So they went northeast, into Newton.
From Newton there were then three bridges the companies could have used to cross the Charles -- at Waltham, Watertown, and Cambridge. They didn't go via Waltham, since we know that the people of Waltham didn't get news of the fight until it was too late for them to respond. The best route from Newton would have been through Watertown, and then up Common and Pleasant Streets, again leading directly to Menotomy. The fact that Menotomy was a major crossroads explains why so many militia were awaiting the Redcoats there, and why the action was so bloody.
The units from Brookline and Roxbury would have crossed the river at Cambridge. Major Isaac Gardner, from Brookline, was killed at Watson's Corner in Cambridge (now North Cambridge).
I understand that some men from Harvard, MA also joined the fighting. Did he look at towns west of Concord who participated?
Nourse’s 1894 history of Harvard says that the Harvard militia companies turned out, but no Harvard men were known to have actually gotten into the fighting. Again, this inquiry is not about which towns responded to the alarm on 19 Apr 1775 and were ready to fight but which actually engaged the British regulars.
Thanks for the geographic analysis, Charlie. The roads might also help us to understand the Stow militia’s role in the action. One of the Barretts actually went out to warn the Stow company away from a route that would take them right into a position held by the British. That could have delayed those men from reaching the North Bridge area and made them go a longer route to the hill afterward.
To Charles Bahne's accounts of how the units from various towns arrived at the Battle Road on April 19th, it might be helpful to add a couple of corrections.
The men of Woburn under Loammi Baldwin probably did enter Lexington along Woburn Street, but they did not "then follow the Battle Road west until they encountered the Regulars." Loammi Baldwin's own account is that they took a route through "Lincoln meetinghouse" which is to say, southwest along Lexington Road and then looping back north along Brooks Road to intersect the Battle Road near what the Park today refers to as Brooks Village.
As for "from Framingham and Sudbury, to the south, the militia would have passed through Lincoln, then up Bedford Road, meeting the Battle Road near Hartwell Tavern, again proceeding west from there until they met the enemy," that might seem the most direct route today. But again, the most direct route in 1775 from Lincoln center to the Battle Road would not have been along today's Bedford Road, but instead along Brooks Road. The Brooks Road route is difficult to discern today because the northern part is now truncated by modern Route 2, and the southern leg that once went toward Lincoln center has been abandoned altogether.
I hope this is helpful.
Don Hafner
Thanks for the update, Don; I really appreciate it. I've had a longstanding interest in trying to map out the roads that existed in 1775, as overlaid on a modern map. There are very few older roads that have been abandoned altogether, but many have been downgraded in some form, and some have been straightened0......
It appears that the southern half of Brooks Road was abandoned very early. The earliest detailed (and trustworthy) map of Lincoln and vicinity that I can find is from 1819, and it shows Brooks Road extending south all the way to Lincoln Meetinghouse. (There is a 1794 map of Lincoln, but it omits many roads including both Bedford Road and Brooks Road.) But an 1830 map of Lincoln shows only the north part of Brooks Road, truncated at the Concord Turnpike [now Route 2], which was laid out in 1807.
An 1841 map likewise shows Brooks Road only extending north from the turnpike. But then an 1852 map shows it extending south, on a different alignment: instead of going all the way to Lincoln Meetinghouse, it curves east and joins Bedford Road north of Hobbs Brook and the present Wheeler Road. An 1856 map of Middlesex County also shows this curving road meeting Bedford Road
Google Maps today shows much of that curving road as some sort of a path or trail, indicated by a thin green line, although it isn't visible in the satellite view.
I will add this to my trove of information about roads that existed (and didn't exist) in 1775.
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