“About erecting a monument on the battle-ground”

In his 1835 History of the Town of Concord, Lemuel Shattuck wrote that the spot by the former North Bridge where two British soldiers lay buried “deserves to be marked by an ever-enduring monument,” not just two rough stones that only locals could recognize.

On 7 Dec 1835, the Boston Evening Transcript apparently reported that the town was running with that idea:

We learn from a friend who recently visited Old Concord, that the inhabitants of that town are about erecting a monument on the battle-ground, on the spot were the two first British soldiers fell and where they were buried, and where their grave-stones still are.

The land belonged to the reverend and venerable Dr. Thayer, now in his 83d year, and still continues in the ministry, who has given it to the town for that purpose.

I wrote “apparently” because the newspaper database I use includes only two of the four pages of that issue of the Evening Transcript, but other newspapers quoted that article the next day.

The 8 December Boston Courier also had the pleasure of pointing out, “For ‘Dr. Thayer,’ we presume the Transcript intended to say Dr. RIPLEY.” And indeed that evening’s Transcript acknowledged the error.

It was a curious mistake since at that point the Rev. Dr. Ezra Ripley (shown above) had been Concord’s preeminent clergymen longer than most people had been alive. He had succeeded the Rev. William Emerson in 1778 and was still watching over the town almost sixty years later.

The Evening Transcript’s brief report also left out how Concord had started to build a monument to the start of the Revolutionary War in 1825. But back then voters had chosen to locate that landmark in the town center rather than where any fighting had taken place. Some objected to the location, or to spending the money, and then a bonfire damaged the cornerstone.

Robert Gross lays out that drama in The Transcendentalists and Their World, so I don’t have to go over it here.

The upshot is that Concord finished building a monument out by the remains of the North Bridge in 1836. Its inscription was composed by a committee of local worthies including Ripley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Rep. Samuel Hoar. It was dedicated in 1837; at that ceremony the public first heard Emerson’s phrase “the shot heard ’round the world.”

The three points I want to emphasize about the building of that monument are:

• The obelisk wasn’t just coincidentally where the two British soldiers were buried. It was located at that spot because those soldiers’ remains lay nearby.
• The creation of the monument attracted attention from Boston and neighboring towns. Concord’s leading citizens were involved. The Rev. Dr. Ripley, who lived till 1841, was especially interested.
• There were also people in Concord who had reasons to look askance at the new erection, and would have been happy to share embarrassing stories about it.

I’ll come back to those points in a few days.

TOMORROW: A day on the Concord River.