Counterfactual 3: If Prescott Hadn’t Alerted Concord

Continuing my speculation about what might have happened if Paul Revere and William Dawes hadn’t alerted Lexington about the regulars coming out, I’m now going to look at Concord.

This post was prompted by the suggestion in Kostya Kennedy’s book The Ride that if Revere hadn’t ridden out on 18 April “the munitions at Concord could have been seized.”

That’s mistaken because militia colonel James Barrett, his helpers, and his family had started moving the most valuable military supplies out of town days before the British army march. In part because Revere had brought a warning from Boston on an earlier ride. 

On 6 April, James Warren was in Concord for a meeting of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and he wrote to his wife Mercy: “This Town is full of Cannon, ammunition, stores, etc., and the Army long for them and they want nothing but strength to Induce an attempt on them.”

But when the redcoats arrived, Ens. Henry DeBerniere said, they “did not find so much as we expected.” Specifically, he reported:

Capt. [Mundy] Pole of 10th regiment…knock’d the trunnions off three iron 24 pound cannon and burnt their carriages; they also destroyed a quantity of flour, and some barrels of trenchers and spoons of wood for their camp.

At Barrett’s farm the soldiers burned some more carriage wheels. But the town was obviously no longer “full” of military stores. And that change had taken days, not a few hours.

If the British expedition hadn’t paused in Lexington but marched straight through, as I posited yesterday, the vanguard would probably have arrived in Concord less than half an hour earlier. Some of the local militia might have been on alert, but without Dr. Samuel Prescott’s warning, it probably wouldn’t have been at full force.

But would that have mattered at first? When the regulars approached the town, the Concord militia marched away and took a position on a hill west of the North Bridge. Other men and then other town companies joined them there while the redcoats searched both the town and Barrett’s farm.

Without the earlier alerts from Revere riding west from Medford to Lincoln and the Prescott brothers riding out of Concord, those militia companies from other towns wouldn’t have joined the Concord companies as quickly as they did. It’s thus possible there would have been significantly fewer men on that hill when smoke began to rise from the center of town, where redcoats were burning carriage wheels (and, briefly, the town house).

The Concord men might have been just as upset by the sight of that smoke, but might not have felt their numbers were strong enough to do anything about it. And eventually the smoke would have dissipated as people in town succeeded in dousing the fire. So the provincials might never have made their fatal march down to the bridge, with the Acton company in the lead.

TOMORROW: The battle that never was.

“Returning from Lexington before day light”

When Paul Revere described his ride with William Dawes to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap in 1798, he wrote: “We were overtaken by a young Docter Prescot, whom we found to be a high Son of Liberty.”

Revere wrote nothing about why Dr. Samuel Prescott was out on horseback in west Lexington after midnight.

In his 1824 History of the Battle of Lexington, Elias Phinney quoted Elijah Sanderson on how British army officers “attempted to stop a man on horseback, who, we immediately after understood, was Dr. Prescott’s son.”

Again, no reason given for young Prescott being out on the road at that time.

The first printed explanation for Prescott’s late night that I’ve found appeared that same year in the 24 Apr 1824 Concord Gazette and Middlesex Yeoman. In a 49th-anniversary retrospective on the opening battle of the Revolutionary War, that hometown newspaper stated:

The approach of the British army from Lexington, was known to the people of Concord at an early hour of the morning. This information was brought by Dr. SAMUEL PRESCOTT who was returning from Lexington before day light, (as was the custom on such occasions in those days) from a visit to the lady who afterwards became his wife.

He was met by the British advance guard near Mr. [Ephraim] HARTWELL’s in Lincoln, and in attempting to stop him a scuffle ensued, during which he had the reins of his horse’s bridle cut off; but being acquainted with the way, he jumped his horse over the fence, adjusted the bridle and came to Concord. Others who endeavored to get to Concord for the same purpose were stopped by the enemy.

Those unnamed ”others” included Revere, Sanderson, and their companions.

In recounting the British army search of Concord, the same article states:

One party went down the road to the house owned by the late ASA HEYWOOD, then occupied as a tavern. Suspicions were excited that young Dr. PRESCOTT was in the house; and as they considered him the principal cause of defeating the execution of their plan to take the town by surprise, they sought his life. He was aware of their intentions and secreted himself in a hole beside the chimney in the garret, and eluded their search. They broke the windows of the house and left it.

That anecdote is obviously based on the experience of Samuel Prescott’s older brother Abel, as recounted here. Both brothers had been physicians and impromptu alarm riders who died decades earlier, so it’s understandable for local lore to conflate them.

(I’m not sure if Asa Heywood, who had died earlier in 1824, ever owned the house where Jonathan Heywood’s widow Rebecca was living in 1775, or whether it was then a tavern, but I’m just not up to sorting through real estate records of Heywoods in Concord.)

There were other errors in the newspaper’s account, such as a claim that Lt. Col. Francis Smith was wounded in the fight (true) and “died in a few days” (false).

Nonetheless, this article is significant as the earliest statement that Dr. Samuel Prescott was out late visiting his fiancée on 18 April.

TOMORROW: More details emerge.

Dr. Abel Prescott and the Details

As recounted yesterday, the Concord official Abiel Heywood told the Rev. Ezra Ripley that British soldiers fired at Dr. Abel Prescott, Jr., and “wounded him in one arm.”

Ripley published that story in A History of the Fight at Concord in 1827, when Heywood was still alive, along with other survivors of the British raid who could correct the account.

Since Heywood described how as a fourteen-year-old he witnessed Prescott seeking refuge in his family home, and helping his stepmother bandage the doctor’s wound, we should rely on Heywood describing where the wound was, right?

But eight years later, Lemuel Shattuck published his History of the Town of Concord, and he summarized the same incident this way:

…they [British soldiers] fired at Mr. Abel Prescott, whom they saw returning from an excursion to alarm the neighbouring towns; but, though slightly wounded in his side, he secreted himself in Mrs. Heywood’s house and escaped.

Abiel Heywood was still alive and prominent then, too.

These days almost every description of Dr. Abel Prescott’s wound says it was in his side rather than his arm. And maybe it was, but an earlier source contradicts that.

Shattuck also wrote in a footnote: “Abel died of the dysentery in Concord, September 3, 1775, aged 25.” I think that was the first time the doctor’s death was described in print.

It’s notable how different authors have treated Prescott as a war casualty. In 1775 there was disagreement about whether to list him as wounded in battle. He wasn’t actually bearing arms against the enemy at the time, though as an alarm rider he was fulfilling a military purpose. Explaining the circumstance of his wounding, however, might say more than the Patriots wanted to about how they were prepared with an alarm system.

Disagreements over how to count Dr. Prescott may be why his name didn’t appear on Ezekiel Russell’s “Bloody Butchery” broadside, but did show up in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s official list of casualties to complain about.

The way authors described Dr. Prescott’s death continued to evolve. Shattuck stated baldly that the cause was “the dysentery.” There was an epidemic of that diarrheal disease in Massachusetts in late 1775, called “camp fever” because it was undoubtedly spread in the Continetal Army camps and brought home to rural towns by sick soldiers and others who had been in those camps.

Shattuck didn’t state that Dr. Abel Prescott contracted dysentery while treating soldiers, however, or say anything more about his military activity.

In contrast, at least since Ruth R. Wheeler in Concord: Climate for Freedom (1967), authors have connected Prescott’s injury in April with his death in the summer. Wheeler wrote: “in his weakened condition he fell a prey to dysentery and died in August.”

By stating that Dr. Abel Prescott, Jr., never recovered from his wound, recent authors have thus made him into another casualty of the battle on 19 Apr 1775. And given what we know about health, that might be accurate. But it’s also possible that Prescott recovered from his wound and contracted dysentery independently, like many other people in Massachusetts.

Finally, there’s a question about when Dr. Abel Prescott, Jr., died. As I’ve said, that household doesn’t show up in Concord’s published vital records. Shattuck stated a death date of 3 September. The Prescott Memorial (1870) echoed that date and reported his age as “26 years, 5 mos., 9 days,” but that was actually nine days short of five months. More recently somebody apparently took that count of days as exact and calculated Prescott’s death as happening on 21 September, and that date now appears on Find-a-grave, Wikipedia, and other websites. Finally, as quoted above, Wheeler wrote that young doctor “died in August.” In the absence of a contemporaneous source, I’m sticking with 3 September.

COMING UP: Back to Dr. Samuel Prescott.

“Mrs. Heywood, an aged lady, and her son-in-law”

Yesterday we left Dr. Abel Prescott, Jr., trying to return home to Concord after alerting militia officers in Framingham and Sudbury that British regulars were on the march.

As Prescott rode closer, he spotted some of those soldiers, reportedly near the South Bridge. According to town minister and chronicler Ezra Ripley in 1827, this happened “A few minutes after the fight at the [North] bridge,” meaning those soldiers might have been on edge after hearing shots.

Ripley wrote:

Perceiving that he was watched, and that by pressing forward he should be likely to fall into their hands, he [Prescott] turned his horse about, on which they fired upon him, and wounded him in one arm.

He rode directly to the house of Mrs. Heywood, who with her son-in-law, now the Hon. Abiel Heywood, and living witness of this affair, quickly attended to his wound.

But observing the British advancing to the house, Mrs. Heywood, an aged lady, and her son-in-law left it, and sought a place of greater safety.—

Mr. Prescott ran up stairs and concealed himself in a dark place, behind the chimney and a dry cask. He heard them searching for him and uttering bitter threats, but they did not find him.

When I read this passage, I had questions about who “Mrs. Heywood” was and why her “son-in-law” had the same surname. Here’s what I figured out.

On 28 Aug 1744, the Rev. Daniel Bliss married Sarah Stone and Jonathan Heywood of Concord. He had been born in 1717, she around 1727. They had six children. The fifth was Abiel, born on 9 Dec 1759.

On 8 Jan 1768, Sarah Heywood died, aged forty-one. Some of her children were still young; Abiel had recently turned eight.

On 23 August of the same year, Jonathan remarried. His new wife was listed as “Rebeckah Rise, of Sudbury,” in the Concord records and as “Mrs. Rebecca Rice” in the Concord records.

Calculating from Rebecca Heywood’s reported age when she died in 1801, she had been born in 1714. So Jonathan Heywood had married an older woman as his second wife, not a younger one. Rebecca Rice might also have been a widow, but I can’t find an earlier marriage in Sudbury.

Jonathan Heywood died on 18 July 1774, short of his second sixth anniversary. According to the custom of the time, his property was to be held for the benefit of his children, but his widow could continue to live in the family house. His minor children, including fourteen-year-old Abiel, would have a guardian appointed to protect their interests.

Thus, Ripley used the term “son-in-law” in an old-fashioned sense to mean stepson. And “aged lady” to mean a widow of about sixty-one.

The “house of Mrs. Heywood” was the house where Rebecca Heywood lived for more than a quarter-century after her husband Jonathan died. Abiel Heywood, and quite possibly some of his siblings, were there with his stepmother on 19 Apr 1775 when Dr. Abel Prescott arrived, wounded in the arm and hunted by regulars.

Abiel Heywood grew up, went to Harvard, also trained as a doctor, but spent most of his time on Concord civic affairs. On the occasion of his first marriage, at age sixty-two, he bought his first pair of pantaloons, abandoning Revolutionary-style knee breeches. He lived long enough to tell stories at the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of war.

TOMORROW: Assessing Dr. Prescott’s wound.

Getting to Know Dr. Samuel Prescott

One of the questions after my online talk for the Army Heritage Center Foundation last week led me to discussing Dr. Samuel Prescott and how little we know about him. So I decided to look into what we do know.

Dr. Prescott is remembered for joining Paul Revere and William Dawes on their ride west from Lexington center in the small hours of 19 Apr 1775. Revere’s 1798 account is largely responsible for that clear identification. The silversmith wrote: “We were overtaken by a young Docter Prescot, whom we found to be a high Son of Liberty.”

Some authors have claimed that Prescott was already active in the Patriot resistance, carrying messages. I’ve never seen evidence of that beyond the fact that Revere called him “a high Son of Liberty.” But look at how that clause began, “whom we found…” Revere and Dawes, who were active in the network and in Revere’s case had been out to Concord before, didn’t know Prescott. They had to get to know him.

Note also how Revere, aged forty, recalled this rider as “a young Docter Prescot.” Samuel Prescott was only twenty-three years old. In fact, he was the fourth Dr. Prescott in Concord, after his father, Dr. Abel Prescott (1718–1805), and his brothers, Benjamin (1745–1830) and Abel, Jr., who had just turned twenty-six. (Their mother had died the previous July.)

(I’m following the dates that appear in The Prescott Memorial, published by a family member in 1870. Find-a-Grave gives a different date in 1749 for Abel, Jr.’s birth without citing a source. The family doesn’t appear in Concord’s published vital records.)

Revere warned his companions that there were British army officers on the road that night, so they should be prepared. And:

I likewise mentioned, that we had better allarm all the Inhabitents till we got to Concord; the young Doctor much approved of it, and said, he would stop with either of us, for the people between that & Concord knew him, & would give the more credit to what we said.

The elder Dr. Abel Prescott had treated people in that region for decades, succeeding his own father and elder brother. He had probably brought his sons along on calls for training.

In Lincoln, while Prescott and Dawes visited a house together, Revere spotted two riders up ahead. He thought they were behaving like the army officers who had nearly stopped him in Charlestown. He called for his companions to join him, thinking three Patriots could handle two officers. Instead, “in an Instant I was surrounded by four.”

Revere continued:

The Docter being foremost, he came up; and we tryed to git past them; but they being armed with pistols & swords, they forced us in to the pasture;—the Docter jumped his Horse over a low Stone wall, and got to Concord.

Revere had nothing more to say about Prescott. Concord sources confirm that he reached his home town with the Bostonians’ warnings and then continued on west to Acton and Stow.

Meanwhile, Dr. Abel Prescott, Jr., mounted and carried the same news to Framingham and Sudbury, south of Concord. Later in the morning he tried to return to Concord over the South Bridge, only to find regulars from the 10th Regiment of Foot guarding that position.

TOMORROW: Wounded and hiding.