Lt. Isaac Potter as a House Guest

We have a couple of glimpses of Lt. Isaac Potter as an involuntary guest of Concord harness-marker Reuben Brown after the start of the Revolutionary War.

Earlier this year Joel Bohy alerted me to a passage from the diary of Ralph Waldo Emerson dated 5 Aug 1835:

It is a good trait of the manners of the times that Thaddeus Blood told me this morning that he (then twenty years old) and Mr. Ball (fifty) were set out to guard Lieutenant Potter, the British Officer taken at Lexington, 19 April, ’75; and, whilst staying at Reuben Brown’s, Potter invited them both to dine with him.

He, Lieutenant Potter, asked a blessing, and after dinner asked Mr. Ball to dismiss the table, “which he did very well for an old farmer.” Lieutenant Potter then poured out a glass of wine to each and they left the table.

Presently came by a company from Groton, and Lieutenant Potter was alarmed for his own safety. They bolted the doors, etc., etc.

Presumably those were men from Groton on their way to the siege lines. Their town was in a struggle with its Loyalist minister that verged on violence, so they may well have had a reputation for being especially hearty Patriots.

Thaddeus Blood was indeed an aged veteran of the Revolutionary War, the author of a long and detailed account of the start of the fighting that was finally published in the 1880s. As for old Mr. Ball, so many men named Ball were living in Concord at the time—there’s a whole website devoted to them—that I haven’t been able to identify the one about age fifty who dismissed the table.

Lt. Potter reportedly left something else behind at Brown’s house: a military sword. It was displayed at the one-hundredth anniversary of the battle in 1875 and described like this:

The weapon is much heavier than the American swords, and the blade wider and longer. It appears to be a fighting sword, while the others are more of an ornamental or parade article. The handle is black, with heavy brass surroundings on the hilt. The inscription on the guard is ”Xth Rgt. Co. VI. No. 10.” This is also the property of Mr. [Cummings E.] Davis.

By then, people in Concord misremembered Potter’s first name as “James.” He was an officer in the marines, so it’s not clear why he would have been carrying a sword marked for the army’s 10th Regiment of Foot. It’s possible that sword was lost by an officer in the 10th and then mistakenly linked to Potter.

The last we see of Lt. Potter was during a prisoner exchange in Charlestown on 6 June. The newspaper report listed one of the British officers being returned to his side of the lines as “Lieut. Potter, of the marines, in a chaise”—presumably he was still feeling the effects of his wounds.

A Prisoner at Reuben Brown’s

At the end of the day on 19 Apr 1775, the British commanders inside Boston had no idea what had happened to 2d. Lt. Isaac Potter of the marines.

For days Potter was listed as missing—the only officer whose fate was unaccounted for. Just before sending his report on the battle to London, Gen. Thomas Gage added at the bottom:

N.B. Lieutenant Isaac Potter reported to be wounded and taken prisoner.

Yesterday I followed Ellen Chase in guessing that Potter was traveling back to Boston in a chaise ahead of the withdrawing column, which suggests he had been wounded back in Concord. It’s also possible he was wounded and captured during the withdrawal. Whatever happened, it must have been chaotic for his fellow officers to have lost track of him.

The evidence suggests the provincials captured Potter in Menotomy and then sent him back to Concord, to the house shown above. That was the home of Reuben Brown, a maker of harnesses, saddles, and other leather gear. It stood beside a large workshop on the main road. Brown’s business helps to explain why the regulars took a chaise from his yard to transport their wounded.

The harness-maker lived until 1832 and evidently loved to tell stories about the opening of the war. After he died, the New England Farmer reprinted an obituary from the Boston Courier which said of Brown on that morning:

his wife with her infant children [was] instructed to manage for herself in the woods north of the town, with many other females and infirm people of the place. Mr Brown then mounted his horse again, it being now about day-break, and commenced the task of alarming the neighboring country. And his efforts will need no comment when we say that he rode that day about 120 miles in the performance of this noble duty.

Likewise, the author of a profile of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln published in The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans in 1865 mentioned:

The writer has frequently conversed with a venerable citizen of Concord [named in a footnote as Brown], since deceased, then an artisan in the village, who, having at the first news of the approach of the enemy some time before day-break, commenced the voluntary labor of alarming the neighboring country, actually rode on horseback more than one hundred miles during the next twenty-four hours…

Apparently Brown wasn’t even home for most of the day of the battle. It’s therefore unclear why Lt. Potter ended up in Brown’s house.

But he was there within a couple of days. According to Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 history of Concord:

Lieutenant Isaac Potter, of the marines, was taken prisoner, and confined some time at Reuben Brown’s. Colonel [James] Barrett was directed, April 22d, to give him liberty to walk round the house, but to keep a constant guard of three men, day and night, to present his being insulted or making his escape.

David Mason was in Concord working with Barrett to prepare cannon for the provincial army. Mason wrote “Lieut Potter of the Marines” in a notebook, so he must have crossed paths with the prisoner, too.

TOMORROW: Lt. Isaac Potter, house guest.

Reuben Brown, the Link Between Lexington and Concord

Reuben Brown was born in Sudbury in 1748. In 1770, soon after coming of age, he moved to Concord and established himself as a saddler. Three years later, on 12 May 1773, he married a girl from his old town, Mary (Polly) How. Their daughter Hepzibath arrived four months later on 15 September, and their second daughter Sally on 9 Mar 1775.

Also in early 1775, according to Concord historian Lemuel Shattuck, Brown made “cartouch-boxes, holsters, belts, and other articles of saddlery” for local militiamen. The town’s Liberty Pole stood in a field behind his shop.

But those weren’t Brown’s most significant contributions to the Battle of Lexington and Concord. He had a unique perspective on the action, as described in his highly wrought obituary in the 3 Oct 1832 The New England Farmer (reprinted from the Boston Courier):

Died at Concord, Mass. on the 25th ult. [i.e., of last month] Mr Reuben Brown, a rare specimen of that hardy, industrious, intelligent and fearless yeomanry which, fifty years ago, was the glory of the Commonwealth and the bulwark of the Union.

Mr Brown, who was a native of Sudbury and a grandson of the first minister of that ancient settlement, removed to Concord about the year 1771, and was of course just in season to witness the earliest scenes of the great Drama of the Age. He did witness them literally, indeed, for on the eventful morning of the 19th of April, long before day-break, he was on his way, alone, at the request of some of the Concord authorities, to reconnoitre the advance of the British to Lexington.

He reached the “Common” just as they were seen marching up the Boston road. He advised the American officers, who were wholly unprepared to meet an enemy, to withdraw; but they declined, chiefly from the firm belief, which their men shared with them, that the British would never think of firing upon them at all events.

Mr Brown waited to see the issue of the meeting—the blood of the first martyrs of American liberty—and he then returned rapidly to Concord and reported progress.

His work had now but commenced. His shop was closed—a large saddler’s establishment in which he had already fitted out several companies of cavalry and infantry—and then his house—standing on the main road in the village—and his wife with her infant children instructed to manage for herself in the woods north of the town, with many other females and infirm people of the place—

Mr. Brown then mounted his horse again, it being now about day-break, and commenced the task of alarming the neighboring country. And his efforts will need no comment when we say that he rode that day about 120 miles in the performance of this noble duty. The result of the exertions in which no single man probably bore so active a part as himself, is well known to all readers of a history which “the world has by heart.” On many other occasions he was equally efficient, though he did not happen to be at any time engaged in fighting the enemy in the field. Two of his brothers were at Bunker Hill.

Universally respected by his fellow citizens for his sound judgment, his energy, his industry, his public spirit, his cordial benevolence, and, above all, for that staunch old fashioned honesty which knew no shadow of turning—his gray hairs were crowned with the praise of a Patriot, and his death with the peace of a Christian. He came to his grave at the venerable age of 84.

Brown was thus the communication link between Lexington and Concord at the start of the fight. His report that the British troops were willing to shoot warned his own neighbors to be cautious about confronting those soldiers, putting off the confrontation in Concord for a few hours until more militia units arrived.

Reportedly, before leaving town the regulars took a chaise from Brown’s shop, perhaps to transport a wounded man. That man might well have been Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould—at least, men in Cambridge later took control of both Gould and Brown’s chaise. Reuben Brown also had a connection to another prisoner, Lt. Isaac Potter of the Marines: the provincials held him for a while in Brown’s house.

Here is an old photograph of that house from the collection of the Boston Public Library. Brown’s account books from a couple of decades later are at the Concord library.

British Officers Taken Prisoner

On Wednesday I shared some reports of a prisoner exchange between the British and provincial armies, 232 years earlier. The Essex Gazette reported the provincials’ prisoners as:

Major Dunbar, and Lieut. Hamilton of the 64th on horse-back; Lieut. Potter, of the marines, in a chaise; John Hilton of the 47th, Alexander Campbell of the 4th, John Tyne, Samuel Marcy, Thomas Parry, and Thomas Sharp, of the marines, wounded men, in two carts

Few sources on the siege of Boston say anything more about those men, so here’s what I’ve been able to gather.

Maj. William Dunbar was a retired British officer who had been traveling in New England when the war broke out; he was captured in Cambridge while seeking to ride home to Canada. On 29 April the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety ordered that “Major Dunbar, now a prisoner at Head-Quarters” in Cambridge, be taken “to Woburn, under a strong guard, and...kept in safe custody.” (The committee also authorized the company escorting Dunbar to charge their tavern bill to the province.) According to Historical Sketches of Andover, relying on correspondence between Dunbar and Samuel Osgood, the officer was “Mayor of Quebec,” but there seems to have been no such office until 1833; that might simply have been a misreading of “Major.” Dunbar died in Montreal in 1788.

Lt. Hamilton of the 64th Regiment was probably one of the British officers who rode out on horseback early on 18 April to scout the route to Concord, stop alarm riders like Paul Revere, and otherwise prepare the way for the army’s march that evening. He was captured, unwounded, by provincial militiamen as he tried to get back to his regiment at Castle William. (He was not Lt. James Hamilton of the 10th, who had refused to ride out the night before, claiming illness.)

In an invisible-ink report to Gen. Thomas Gage dated 6 May 1775, Benjamin Thompson of Woburn said that “Dunbar from Canada, & Ens. Hamilton of [tear] Regt. with their Servants are Prisoners in this town.” Ensign was the rank below lieutenant, the equivalent of a 2nd lieutenant in today’s U.S. army, so Thompson wasn’t far off. (Judge Peter Oliver, in a letter to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, referred simply to “Mr. Hamilton, of the 64th Regiment.”) Did Dunbar and Hamilton have servants with them who did not return to Boston, or did Thompson assume the enlisted men were their servants?

Lt. Isaac Potter of the marines was wounded near Lexington, according to Gage’s report to London. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 History of the Town of Concord reported:

Lieutenant Isaac Potter, of the marines, was taken prisoner, and confined some time at Reuben Brown’s. Colonel [James] Barrett was directed, April 22d, to give him liberty to walk round the house, but to keep a constant guard of three men, day and night, to present his being insulted or making his escape.

Maj. David Mason of the Massachusetts artillery regiment wrote “Lieut Potter of the Marines” in a notebook he was keeping in 1774-75, so their paths must have crossed.

As for the enlisted men, it’s typical of British military sources not to name them. Gage reported all the officers killed, wounded, and captured in his report to London, but simply gave numbers for lower-ranking men. Similarly, the officers traveled to this prisoner exchange on horses and a chaise while the enlisted men shared wagons. The American newspaper account might therefore be our best printed source on the private soldiers. For more information, someone might have to page through original manuscripts in the U.K.’s National Archives.

COMING UP: And the British military’s prisoners?