More Lectures in Lexington

A few days ago I shared links to various organizations’ calendars for Patriots’ Day. Many of those events recur every year, but here are a couple of new presentations from the Lexington Historical Society.

Thursday, 14 April, 6:00 P.M.
Memorial Dedication to Jack and Dinah
Dr. Robert Bellinger
Lexington Depot

In 2019, Lexington Historical Society began the journey of researching the history of slavery in eighteenth-century Lexington, focusing on the Hancock-Clarke House, where the Hancock family enslaved two individuals named Jack and Dinah in the years leading up to the Revolution. Dr. Robert Bellinger of Suffolk University, consulting historian for this project, will present his research looking into the lives of black families in town, both enslaved and free, in the eighteenth century.

Then, as part of the reinterpretation of the house, the Society has partnered with Stopping Stones, an organization which creates memorials for enslaved people throughout the United States, to place such a memorial to Jack and Dinah at the Hancock-Clarke House site. Attendees will have the opportunity to walk through the museum following the dedication.

This museum will also be open for tours all Patriots’ Day weekend. The Hancock-Clarke House tour has been revamped to incorporate the new research about Jack and Dinah, enhancing our understanding of the complexities of the Revolution as people of all social classes, races, and genders debated the meaning of freedom and liberty here in Lexington and beyond.

This in-person event is free. Registration is recommended but not required.

Thursday, 21 April, 7:00 to 8:30 P.M.
“Your Petitioner Is So Much Hurted”: John Robbins and His Wound
Joel Bohy and Dr. Douglas D. Scott
online

After the smoke cleared on the evening of April 19th, the town of Lexington mourned its dead. Others who participated in the battle that morning survived with injuries that plagued them for the rest of their lives. View a presentation by historic arms expert Joel Bohy and archaeologist Dr. Douglas D. Scott as they discuss the struggles of John Robbins, a soldier in Captain John Parker’s militia company.

Robbins suffered horrific injuries in the battle, rendering him “truly Pitiable being unable to Contribute anything to the Support of a wife & five small Children.” Who was this man? How extensive were his injuries? And was he ever able to receive a pension? Afterward, participate in a live Q&A with the speakers to dive deeper into the ballistic history of the battle.

Register for this online program here.

Case Study of a Wounded Provincial

At Historical Nerdery, Alexander Cain just shared an essay by Joel Bohy and Douglas D. Scott, who have been studying musket balls and the damage they can cause.

In this particular posting, that damage was to the body of John Robbins, who was standing in the front line of the Lexington militia company that the 10th Regiment’s light company fired on at dawn on 19 Apr 1775.

Bohy and Scott write:

After April 19 and the Battle of Bunker Hill a few of the wounded men began to ask the state for help. Their wounds, in some cases, made them unable to work and make a living. Medical bills were also growing and with no income how could they pay the bills and provide for their families? Many of these petitions for a pension, or after December 1775 for lost and broken material, are in the collection of the Massachusetts State Archives spread through numerous volumes. The earliest petition for Robbins is from 1776. It gives a description of his wounds:

“To the Honorable the Colony Counsil & the Honorable the House of Representatives in general Court assembled The Petition of John Robbins of Lexington Humbly Sheweth, That your Petitioner was on the memorable 19th of april 1775 most grievously wounded. by the Brittish Troops in Lexington, by a musket ball which passed by the left of the spine between his Shoulders through the length of his neck making its way through and most miserably Shattering his under jaw bone, by which unhappy Wound your Petitioner is so much hurted in the Muscles of his shoulder, that his Right arms is rendered almost useless to him in his Business and by the fracture of his under jaw the power of Mastecation is totally destroyed and by his, low Slop diet, weakness, and total loss of his right arm, and the running of his wound, his Situation is rendered truly Pitiable being unable to Contribute any thing to the Support of a wife and five small Children but is rather a Burden upon them, & has no Encouragement from his Surgeon of his being Materialy better He therefor is under the disagrable Necessity of begging relief & assistance of this Honrrable Court by a Pension or other wise as your Honors Great wisdom & compations may suggest, and your Petitioner as in duty bound will Ever pray Lexington 14th June 1776 John Robbins”

This request for support echoes the public collections of funds for Christopher Monk and then Robert Patterson after they were wounded in the Boston Massacre.

To see details of Robbins’s life after his wound, including how long he lived, check out Historical Nerdery.

The First Shots on 19 April 1775

Immediately after the battle in Lexington and other parts of Middlesex County on 19 Apr 1775, each side tried to make the case that the other had fired first.

British officers filed reports emphasizing how they had heard alarm signals and seen provincials with guns moving over distant hills during the march out to Concord. Lt. William Sutherland described a specific example of gunfire from the provincials:

On coming within Gunshot of the village of Lexington a fellow from the corner of the road on the right hand Cock’d his piece at me, burnt priming, I immediately called to Mr. [Jesse] Adair & the party to observe this Circumstance which they did & acquainted Major [John] Pitcairn of it immediately.

Lt.-Col. Francis Smith included this incident in his report to Gen. Thomas Gage, and Gage included it in his report to the ministry in London.

When the two forces approached each other on the Lexington common, Sutherland continued, someone shot “from the Corner of a house to the right of the Church”—probably Buckman’s tavern. After army officers ordered the militia company on the green to disperse, the lieutenant went on, “some of the Villains were got over the hedge, fired at us.”

Maj. Pitcairn reported “several Shott were fired from a Meeting House on our Left,” but other British officers pointed to the men grouped to the right side of the common. Some wrote that it was impossible to know where that first shot had come from, but no officers blamed the militiamen actually lined up on the green. (The impressions of the British enlisted men went unrecorded.)

In contrast, all the provincials insisted that the regulars on Lexington common had fired first. John Robbins said that “the foremost of the three [mounted] officers ordered their men saying, ‘Fire!—by God!—fire!’” Within a short time that officer was widely identified as Maj. Pitcairn. Benjamin Tidd and Joseph Abbot described hearing “first a few guns, which we took to be pistols, from some of the regulars who were mounted on horses.”

Many other Lexington men offered no details of the first shot beyond insisting that it had come from the redcoats before anyone had fired at them. In fact, dozens of men signed the same two depositions attesting to that vital fact. The only thing their accounts had in common with the British officers’ reports is that each agreed that the other was to blame.

Until the early twentieth century, almost all American historians echoed the provincial sources and described the British firing first. With more British sources appearing, more skepticism, and less defensiveness, more recent American authors acknowledged that the situation was probably more confused than that, and even that it was possible that the first short came from someone on the provincial side.

At his “1775” blog, Derek W. Beck has shared his conclusion that some American(s) must have fired first—though not necessarily while deliberately aiming at the soldiers. I’ve heard Christopher Bing, a son of Lexington who’s produced a handsome edition of Paul Revere’s Ride, make a similar argument: that the British soldiers were too well drilled to fire without being ordered to or being attacked (though even their own officers complained that, once attacked, the regulars on the green went out of control for a little while).

All that said, I think that for some of the men in Lexington that morning, the war had already started, making the first shot on the common less significant. Lt. Sutherland, for example, would state that locals had shot at him twice before the confrontation on the green. And one young man from Lexington had been in the thick of the conflict since the previous afternoon.

TOMORROW: Solomon Brown’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.