“The Regular Troops have this morning kill’d six men”

Here’s what appears to be an authentic document from 19 Apr 1775. It was sold by Heritage Auctions in June 2017, but the company has preserved an image for us.

This short note reads:

To all whom it may concern, be it known, that the Regular Troops have this morning kill’d six men near Lexington Meeting House; this news is brot: to Watertown by Mr. Sanger, who told me that he saw the men lie dead.

J. Palmer
of the Congress Com:tee

Watertown, Wednesday Morning abt 8 o’Clock

Joseph Palmer (1716–1788) was a Massachusetts Provincial Congress delegate from Braintree and a member of the committee of safety and supplies. He was staying in Watertown with in-laws.

Two hours later, “near 10 o’Clock,” Palmer wrote a longer, more detailed letter that he sent to Hartford, Connecticut, with courier Isaac Bissell. That dispatch reported that a British relief column was out. By then, Palmer wrote, he had “spoken with Several Persons who have seen the Dead & Wounded.”

Along the way that letter was copied and sent south, its text mutating as it was hurriedly transcribed. I don’t think the original of that letter exists, but many handwritten and printed copies do, making it rather famous.

This first, shorter letter shows that Palmer had heard about the deaths on Lexington common by eight o’clock and started to spread the news on behalf of the congress’s committee. It’s unclear whom he addressed this particular note to, however.

I also can’t identify “Mr. Sanger.” There were multiple men with that surname in Watertown at this time, including David Sanger, on an October 1774 committee to equip two cannon, and Samuel Sanger, first sergeant of the militia company.

That’s a reminder that, even though some documentation survives to show such men as Joseph Palmer spreading the alarm in April 1775, many more people did so without leaving a firm trace in the historical record.