Counterfactual 2: If Capt. Parker Hadn’t Assembled His Company

Picking up the “what if” thread from yesterday, I turn to this question: What would have happened if neither Paul Revere nor William Dawes had arrived in Lexington in the wee hours of 19 Apr 1775?

The town would still have been at a heightened level of military alert. That afternoon a young local named Solomon Brown had ridden out from Boston—not as a messenger, but just coming home from business.

On the road Brown had spotted a bunch of other men on horseback. They looked or sounded British. When their cloaks flapped back, he saw they were carrying pistols. Brown began to suspect they were British army officers.

Everyone in Lexington knew two important politicians from Boston were staying in the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s house: John Hancock, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and Samuel Adams, delegate to the Continental Congress. Were those army officers coming out to arrest those men?

In fact, Maj. Edward Mitchell was leading about a dozen mounted officers out into the countryside to keep alarm riders from getting to Concord. That town was the only goal of Gen. Thomas Gage’s mission. Lexington was just along the way.

Not knowing that, Solomon Brown went to his militia sergeant, William Munroe (shown above). Munroe gathered “a guard of eight men, with their arms,” at the parsonage. So some Lexington militiamen were already on the alert well before hearing from Revere or Dawes.

In real life, after receiving the Bostonians’ post-midnight warning, Capt. John Parker assembled the rest of the Lexington militia company on the town common. Nothing happened, so he let the men disperse to nearby houses and taverns to catch some sleep.

But let’s imagine that Revere and Dawes never arrived. The town picked up news of the approaching column hours later from a few travelers, from hearing bells and warning shots from towns to the east.

In that case, the Lexington men might have assembled more hastily. They might have headed for where they thought they might be most needed: at the parsonage, strengthening Sgt. Munroe’s guard.

Hancock and Adams might not have had time to leave town—or Hancock might have refused to do so with more men watching. So an armed crowd would have gathered on what’s now Hancock Street, determined to prevent the troops from arresting those political leaders.

The expedition’s light infantry companies were the first to march into town. But in this scenario the men of the 10th Regiment wouldn’t have seen a body of armed men lined up on the common. They wouldn’t have felt any need to veer off to confront those men. They would have kept marching swiftly along the road to Concord, half a mile from the Hancock-Clarke house.

The two bodies of armed men might have spotted each other in the early dawn light. But they would have been too far apart for either to present any threat. The army column would probably have passed through Lexington without any incident.

Contrary to the scenario Jim Piecuch found described in Kostya Kennedy’s The Ride, Hancock and Adams would not ”have been captured or killed” because the regulars weren’t looking for them.

(Well, if Hancock had insisted on rushing to the common to confront the regulars, he might have been captured or killed. But even he wasn’t that reckless.)

TOMORROW: Alternative scenarios for Concord.

“Alarmed in Lexington” and More

The Lexington Historical Society is now the Lexington History Museums.

As the Sestercentennial of the start of the Revolutionary War approaches, the organization’s Buckman Tavern museum is open to visitors every day of the week but Wednesday, 10am–4pm.

Another of the museums, the Hancock-Clarke House, is about to host this special program.

Saturday, 8 March, 7 to 9 P.M.
Alarmed in Lexington
Hancock-Clarke House, 36 Hancock Street

Step back in time to experience the anxious hours before the start of the American Revolution. It’s past midnight on April 19th, 1775, and Paul Revere has just left the home of Lexington’s minister, Jonas Clarke, with news of an impending British attack. This leaves the home’s occupants to take in the news and prepare for what is to come.

In a series of three short plays by Debbie Wiess, see how John Hancock and Samuel Adams, leaders of the Revolution; Dorothy Quincy and Lydia Hancock, John’s family; and Jonas and Lucy Clarke, town leaders, process the impending crisis as they prepare for war in the very rooms in which these conversations took place 250 years ago.

Admission is $25, or $20 for museum members. This program has received funding from Kirkland and Shaw Plumbing and Heating and by a grant from the Lexington Council for the Arts, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which in turn receives funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

[I hope those funds were received last year since the current administration has stopped many payments for work already done and contracts already awarded. The White House has also ordered future N.E.A. grants to conform to criteria not established by Congress; arts organizations just filed a lawsuit about the unconstitutionality of that order. Events like “Alarmed in Lexington” show how White House edicts can affect local endeavors that don’t have direct federal involvement.]

Next month, the Lexington History Museums will also reopen its Munroe Tavern for the season, and debut its new Depot museum covering all of Lexington history.

Lexington and the “subtle, wicked ministerial plan”

Last week I analyzed the accounts of tea burning in Marshfield 250 years ago and concluded that I found no strong evidence for the exact date of this event.

Marshfield was notable for being split between Whigs and Loyalists. It had an Anglican church as well as the Congregationalists. The control of town meeting teetered back and forth between factions. The tea-burning, whenever it happened, wasn’t an official act.

In contrast, the town of Lexington was militantly Whig. Its minister, the Rev. Jonas Clarke, supported that stance. Early on, the town voted to create a committee of correspondence to share news and views with Boston and elsewhere—a litmus test for radicalism.

On 13 Dec 1773, as the crisis over the East India Company cargoes in Boston heated up, Lexington called a town meeting. Charles Hudson’s town histories published the record, and Alexander Cain, author of We Stood Our Ground: Lexington in the First Year of the American Revolution, has shared more exact transcriptions at Untapped History. I drew the quotations that follow from a combination of those sources.

Lexington’s committee of correspondence produced a blistering statement about the Tea Act:

…the Enemies of the Rights & Liberties of Americans, greatly disappointed in the Success of the Revenue Act, are seeking to Avail themselves of New, & if possible, Yet more detestable Measures to distress, Enslave & destroy us.

Not enough that a Tax was laid Upon Teas, which should be Imported by Us, for the Sole Purpose of Raising a revenue to support Taskmasters, Pensioners, &c., in Idleness and Luxury; But by a late Act of Parliament, to Appease the wrath of the East India Company, whose Trade to America had been greatly clogged by the operation of the Revenue Acts, Provision is made for said Company to export their teas to America free and discharged from all Duties and Customs in England, but liable to all the same Rules, Regulations, Penalties & Forfeitures in America, as are Provided by the Revenue Act. . . .

Once admit this subtle, wicked ministerial plan to take place, once permit this tea, thus imposed upon us by the East India Company, to be landed, received, and vended by their consignees, factors, &c., the badge of our slavery is fixed, the foundation of ruin is surely laid; and, unless a wise and powerful God, by some unforeseen revolution in Providence, shall prevent, we shall soon be obliged to bid farewell to the once flourishing trade of America, and an everlasting adieu to those glorious rights and liberties for which our worthy ancestors so earnestly prayed, so bravely fought, so freely bled!

The committee proposed six resolves to steer the town away from this horrible fate. These included:

2. That we will not be concerned either directly or indirectly in landing, receiving, buying, or selling, or even using any of the Teas sent out by the East India Company, or that shall be imported subject to a duty imposed by Act of Parliament, for the purpose of raising a revenue in America.

3. That all such persons as shall directly or indirectly aid and assist in landing, receiving, buying, selling, or using the Teas sent by the East India Company, or imported by others subject to a duty, for the purpose of a revenue, shall be deemed and treated by us as enemies of their country.

Other resolves endorsed everything the Bostonians were doing and condemned the tea consignees, even naming Richard Clarke and the Hutchinson brothers.

After the meeting unanimously approved those statements, someone proposed another:

That if any Head of a Family in this Town, or any Person, shall from this time forward; & until the Duty taken off, purchase any Tea, Use or consume any Tea in their Famelies, such person shall be looked upon as an Enemy to this town & to this Country, and shall by this Town be treated with Neglect & Contempt.

Now they were getting personal.

TOMORROW: What happened next.

Lexington Lectures, 22-24 April

The Lexington Historical Society isn’t resting after a busy Patriots Day weekend. It’s offering four online presentations this week.

Thursday, 22 April, 7:00 P.M.
The Will of the People
Prof. T.H. Breen delivers a special Cronin lecture discussing how the ordinary people of New England reacted to war in their backyards. Based on his book The Will of the People, Breen’s talk will explore how debates raged throughout the country about the fate of the new nation when the outcome of the war was far from certain, while fiery Patriots like the Rev. Jonas Clarke continued to keep the dream alive.

Friday, 23 April, 10:00 A.M.
The Right to Liberty
African-Americans, both enslaved and free, grappled with what becoming part of a nation where all men were theoretically created equal meant, and often took matters into their own hands when the liberties they were owed did not come to fruition. Professional storyteller Valerie Tutson shares the heroic tales of James Forten, who as a teenager fought against the British navy and later worked to abolish slavery, and Elizabeth Freeman, who in 1781 successfully sued for her freedom, citing the Massachusetts constitution. This program is suitable for all ages.

Friday, 23 April, 2:00 P.M.
April 19th Collections Spotlight
The Lexington Historical Society’s museums hold many relics of the first day of the Revolution. Objects that witnessed bloody battle live in situ in our historic houses or rest in exhibit cases, and still more spend their time behind closed doors in our archives. Join Collections and Outreach Manager Stacey Fraser for a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most treasured, but least seen, relics of the Revolution in our museum collection.

Saturday, 24 April, 4:00 P.M.
Noble Volunteers
Author Don Hagist has spent years studying the demographics and personal stories of British soldiers. Far from nameless killing machines, these men came from a variety of ages, ethnicities, and occupations. Many had far more in common with the Americans than we remember, and most never expected to one day be waging war with their own people when they took the King’s shilling. Hagist shares surprising insights from his latest book.

“At the House of Mr. Daniel Harrington”

On 16 Oct 1769, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette ran this news item with the dateline “Lexington, Aug. 31, 1769.”:

Very early in the Morning, the young Ladies of this Town, to the Number of 45, assembled at the House of Mr. Daniel Harrington, with their Spinning-Wheels, where they spent the Day in the most pleasing Satisfaction: And at Night presented Mrs. Harrington, with the Spinning of 602 Knots of Linnen, and 546 Knots of Cotton.

If any should be inclin’d to treat such Assemblies or the Publication of them, with a Contemptuous Sneer, as thinking them Ludicrous: Such Persons would do well first to consider what would become of one of our (so much boasted) Manufactures, on which we pretend the Welfare [of] our Country is so much depending, if those of the fair Sex should refuse to lay their “Hands to the Spindle,” or be unwilling to “hold the Distaff.”

The quotations at the end were noted as coming from “Prov. 31. 19.”

The phrase “Very early in the Morning” also appeared in an earlier report about a similar spinning meeting in Beverly. Getting to work early was a sign of diligence.

The “Number of 45” was of course a symbol of John Wilkes’s reform campaign in London.

Daniel Harrington (1739-1818) was a young man whose house faced the Lexington common. In May 1760, shortly before turning twenty, he had married Anna Munroe. Their first child arrived six months later, and by 1769 they had four living children plus one—Daniel, Jr.—memorialized by the stone shown above. By 1775 Harrington would be clerk of the Lexington militia company, later rising to captain. He became a selectman in 1777 and was chosen to lead the singing in the meetinghouse in 1781.

Perhaps the most puzzling detail of this article is that a month and a half had passed since the Lexington spinning meeting. The Gazette had run reports on several similar events in the preceding months, and it would no doubt have welcomed this one as well. Someone in Lexington had to prepare the report, however; Richard Kollen speculates that was the Rev. Jonas Clarke. In many towns, the minister hosted the spinning and received the results, but not here, and perhaps that caused the delay.

The second paragraph of the report, chiding people who dismissed spinning meetings, indicates some people were indeed sneering at those events. And to be true, they didn’t produce enough good thread to have practical value. But these events were important to the Whig movement as propaganda—so they had to get into the papers.

TOMORROW: Lexington looks back on this spinning meeting.

More Glimpses from the Lexington Parsonage

Yesterday I quoted the recollections of Dorothy Quincy about her experiences at the Lexington parsonage on 19 Apr 1775, where she was staying as fiancée of John Hancock.

As recorded in 1822 by William H. Sumner, the widow Dorothy Scott described the aftermath of the battle this way:

Mrs. Scott was at the chamber window [i.e., upstairs] looking at the fight. She says two of the wounded men were brought into the house. One of them, whose head was grazed by a ball, insisted on it that he was dead; the other, who was shot in the arm, behaved better. The first was more scared than hurt.

In 1912 the Lexington Historical Society published another woman’s memory of that morning in the parsonage. This came from Elizabeth Clarke (1763-1844), the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s oldest daughter, writing to a niece in 1841:

this day which is sixty six years since the war began on the Common which I now can see from this window as here I sit writing, and can see, in my mind, just as plain, all the British Troops marching off the Common to Concord, and the whole scene, how Aunt [Lydia] Hancock and Miss Dolly Quinsy, with their cloaks and bonnets on, Aunt Crying and ringing her hands and helping Mother Dress the children, Dolly going round with Father, to hide Money, watches and anything down in the potatoes and up Garrett, and then Grandfather Clarke sent down men with carts, took your Mother and all the children but Jonas [1760-1828] and me and Sally [1774-1843] a Babe six months old. Father sent Jonas down to Grandfather Cook’s to see who was killed and what their condition was…

The hiding of valuables and wringing of hands probably preceded the arrival of the redcoats, though the appearance of those soldiers and the shooting must have increased the anxiety.

Back to Dorothy Scott:

After the British passed on towards Concord, they received a letter from Mr. H. informing them where he and Mr. [Samuel] Adams were, wishing them to get into the carriage and come over, and bring the fine salmon that they had had sent to them for dinner. This they carried over in the carriage…

Back in Lexington, the minister and his family eventually turned to look after the community:

…in the afternoon, Father, Mother with me and the Baby went to the Meeting House, there was the eight men that was killed, seven of them my Father's parishoners, one [Asahel Porter] from Woburn, all in Boxes made of four large Boards Nailed up and, after Pa had prayed, they were put into two horse carts and took into the grave yard where your Grandfather and some of the Neighbors had made a large trench, as near the Woods as possible and there we followed the bodies of those first slain, Father, Mother, I and the Baby,

there I stood and there I saw them let down into the ground, it was a little rainey but we waited to see them Covered up with the Clods and then for fear the British should find them, my Father thought some of the men had best Cut some pine or oak bows and spread them on their place of burial so that it looked like a heap of Brush.

Clarke’s recollection didn’t include anything about the British returning to Lexington from both east and west—Col. Percy and his relief column arriving from Boston at the same time the remnants of Lt. Col. Francis Smith’s expedition made it back from Concord. That occurred about 2:30 P.M.

In his biography The Patriot Parson of Lexington, Richard P. Kollen posits that the Clarkes kept hidden until the combined British forces had withdrawn to the east and then went to the meetinghouse to view the bodies around 4:00.

Other sources say that the weather on 19 April wasn’t even “a little rainey” but cool and dry. It’s possible that the wet interment Betty Clarke remembered occurred on the next day, or that her memory combined a couple of events. Three more Lexington men were killed in the afternoon fighting, and the town also had a British soldier to bury.

Abraham Merriam and “envy against his father-in-law”

Yesterday I noted Sarah McDonough’s recent blog post for the Lexington Historical Society about how the notorious Levi Ames had robbed the house of the Rev. Jonas Clarke in the spring of 1773.

Alexander Cain, who knows more than a bit about Lexington, also wrote about Ames’s nefarious activity in that town last March at Historical Nerdery.

Cain drew particular attention to this passage from Ames’s autobiographical confession:

I stole ten or eleven dollars from Mr Symonds, of Lexington, whose son-in-law, Mr. Meriam, while I was in prison, informed me where the money was and how to get it, but he never received any of it; I supposed he gave me this information through envy against his father-in-law, through whose means he was then confined for debt.

Naturally, I was curious about the family dynamics there. Who were “Mr Symonds” and “Mr. Meriam”? Did a man put his son-in-law in jail for debt? Did the debtor just grouse about all the money his wife’s father had at home, or was Ames accurate about his fellow prisoner wanting him to rob a particular house?

Cain quoted a line from Clarke’s diary offering one lead: “Mr. Joseph Simond’s House broke open his watch stolen &c.” However, the only Joseph Simonds I could find in town that year, a militia lieutenant during the siege of Boston, was too young to have had a son-in-law. In addition, Ames was clear about robbing “ten or eleven dollars from Mr Symonds,” not a watch.

Instead, I think Ames’s victim was Daniel Simonds (1693-1777), whose daughter Sarah (1739-1805) married Abraham Merriam (1734-1797). There were a lot of Simondses and Merriams in and around Lexington at the time, but this family seems like the best candidate for that tale.

Ames spoke of two stretches in jail (or “goal,” as New Englanders then spelled it) before his final one. Once he was jailed “at Cambridge,” and once he was “in Concord goal.” Ames didn’t specify dates or when he met “Mr. Meriam,” but both those jails served Middlsex County, which included Lexington and its neighbors.

Though born in Lexington, Alexander Merriam was listed as “of Concord” when he married Sarah Simonds on 22 Apr 1756. The couple had children on a regular schedule: Abraham (1757), Ezra (1760), Silas (1762), Sarah (1766), Jonas (1769), Abigail (1772), and so on.

Notably, two of the last three children were listed in the Lexington town records as having been born in Woburn. The Merriams were living in one town while attending church in another. For a farmer to do that suggests that Abraham didn’t own enough land to support himself and was working for someone else.

Indeed, in a 2012 report for the Lexington Historical Society titled Research for the Re-Interpretation of the Buckman Tavern, Lexington, Massachusetts: Conceptions of Liberty, Mary B. Fuhrer discussed Abraham Merriam among the “Truly Poor Men in Lexington’s 1774 Valuation.” She wrote:

Abraham Merriam, 40, was one of six sons. His father Jonas was still alive in 1774, but appears to have sold his land. Since all of Abraham’s brothers moved away by 1774, it is probable that his father sold his estate and divided it equally among his many sons to allow them to purchase frontier estates elsewhere. . . . This appears to be a case where there were simply too many sons to allow any one to be favored with the homestead and still have enough resources left to provide for all the others.

We get another glimpse of Abraham Merriam’s financial situation in this document owned by the Lexington Historical Society and nicely digitized for our enjoyment. It’s a bond dated May 1771, by which Merriam borrowed £100 from Benjamin Waldo of Boston, promising to pay that sum back with interest within a year or be liable for £200. Waldo was a well established merchant captain and fireward. One of the witnesses to that bond was Daniel Simonds, Merriam’s father-in-law.

On the back of that document are notations of the payments Waldo received. None came from Abraham Merriam (at least directly), and none came on time. Instead, the first payments starting in 1774 were from Nathaniel Simonds, Sarah Merriam’s brother.

Was this the debt that landed Abraham Merriam in jail? Or was this big loan an attempt to consolidate debts after a jail term and start over? What responsibility did Daniel Simonds bear for that debt—did he push his son-in-law into taking out that loan, or was his son-in-law simply upset that the older man didn’t dip into the pile of cash in his house to repay it? Did Jonas Merriam sell his son Abraham’s inheritance to get him out of debtor‘s prison? Barring more family documents, we won’t know.

And how did that situation appear to Sarah Merriam? In 1772 her son Jonas died, but she still had five children to care for, including a newborn. Abraham had evidently been in debtor’s prison at least once. And then in 1773 Levi Ames’s confession was published, airing the accusation (no doubt easily deciphered by folks in Lexington) that her husband had set up her father to be robbed.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

Levi Ames and the Clarke Family’s Silver

The Revolution250 coalition has a Twitter account and a Facebook page. I’m one of the people who contributes to those feeds, promoting upcoming events and celebrating past ones, like the “Boston Occupied” reenactment earlier this month.

Last year, I started posting a “resource of the day,” sometimes an upcoming event exploring Revolutionary Massachusetts but more often a website or quotation pegged to a past happening on that date. I figured that would keep the accounts active even when we don’t have a big commemoration to crow about. Sometimes the challenge is coming up with a proper event and link; sometimes it’s choosing among several possibilities.

In August the news of the day was the capture of a young criminal named Levi Ames in 1773. Then, drawing on the notes kept by Boston printer John Boyle, the Rev250 feeds noted each milestone in Ames’s legal journey through trial, sentencing, and hanging. For his story in detail, visit Anthony Vaver’s Early American Crime.

Those Rev250 postings caught the eye of Sarah McDonough, Programs Manager at the Lexington Historical Society. This week on the society’s staff blog she shared a local link to the story that Boyle didn’t mention:

It wasn’t until May 22nd of 1773 that Ames made it to Lexington. He went straight for homes with money, starting with Reverend Jonas Clarke. While the family was asleep, recovering from a measles outbreak, Ames broke into the home and stole Lucy Clarke’s wedding silver, including a tankard, pepper box, and sugar tongs. The spree continued over the next few months, until the burglar was caught in August with stolen goods belonging to a man named Martin Bicker.

And that was when Rev250 took up the tale. But another strand of Ames’s story leads back to the Clarke house in Lexington (shown above):

After hearing of the sentencing, Reverend Clarke travelled to Boston to convince Ames to repent before his execution. We now know Clarke as a dynamic public speaker, but this was one of his greatest achievements – not only did he convince Ames to confess to stealing the family silver, but Ames also revealed where it was hidden, and Clarke happily returned home with his stolen goods that same day.

Richard Kollen discusses Clarke’s perspective on events in the biography The Patriot Parson of Lexington, Massachusetts.

TOMORROW: More digital detection about Ames in Lexington.

“Come in, Revere; we are not afraid of you.”

Elias Phinney’s History of the Battle at Lexington (1825) is one of the most important sources of information about events in Lexington on 18-19 Apr 1775.

Phinney published a recollection from William Munroe about how, as a sergeant in the town militia, he had assembled a small squad of guards at the parsonage.

That led to this scene in Phinney’s book as Paul Revere arrived from Boston about midnight:

On the arrival of Revere, he was hailed by the guard, and stopped. He desired to be admitted to the house. Munroe, not knowing him, nor the object of his errand, refused to let him pass, stating, that the family had just retired to rest, and had desired, that they might not be disturbed by any noise about the house. “Noise!” said Revere, “you’ll soon have a noise, that will disturb you all. The British troops are on their march, and will soon be among you.” He passed without further ceremony, and knocked at the door.

Mr. [Jonas] Clark immediately opened a window, and inquired who was there. Revere, without replying to the question, said he wished to see Mr. [John] Hancock. Mr. Clark, with his usual deliberation, was going on to observe, that it was a critical time, and he did not like to admit people into his house, at that time of night, without first knowing their business, when Hancock, who had retired to rest, but not to sleep, knew Revere’s voice, and cried out, “Come in, Revere; we are not afraid of you.”

Recent authors have presented that last line in different ways. Some describe Hancock as jovial, others as condescending. I think this shows his skill at being “condescending” in the old, positive sense of the word. But the question that occurred to me this year is: What evidence exists for Hancock saying that line at all?

Here’s how Phinney took down William Munroe’s description of the encounter:

On learning this, I supposed they had some design upon Hancock and [Samuel] Adams, who were then at the house of the Rev. Mr. Clark, and immediately assembled a guard of eight men, with their arms, to guard the house. About midnight, Col. Paul Revere rode up and requested admittance. I told him the family had just retired, and had requested, that they might not be disturbed by any noise about the house. “Noise!” said he, “you’ll have noise enough before long. Tho regulars are coming out.” We then permitted him to pass.

No remark from Hancock there. The Rev. Jonas Clarke published an account of that night in 1776, and it doesn’t include such a detail. Revere wrote nothing about Hancock’s banter in his account from about 1798. And there’s no such detail in the recollections taken down from Hancock’s widow, then Dorothy Scott, in 1822.

It’s possible that Phinney came up with the line on his own. We can see he embellished what Revere told Munroe. But embellishment requires some core material to work on, and it’s possible that Phinney heard about Hancock’s remark from someone else in the parsonage who didn’t want to go on the public record as Munroe did.

A book called The Memorial of Joseph and Lucy Clark Allen, published by the Allen family in 1891, includes a mention of “Eliza Clark,” one of the Lexington minister’s daughters. She appears in Charles Hudson’s town history as Elizabeth Clarke, born in June 1763 and died unmarried in 1844. She was thus eleven years old in April 1775.

After naming Eliza Clarke, that Allen family history says, “The stories of these times were often recounted by the daughter who had helped her father, and who remained at the old parsonage many years after the rest of the family had scattered; and till her death in 1843 she was an important personage in our mother’s early experiences.” That’s in a passage about how the Clarkes served militiamen food throughout the day which includes a direct quotation: “For want of sufficient accommodations the guests seated themselves on the floor and helped themselves with their fingers.” There’s no source for that line, but by implication it was part of the oral tradition in the family going back to Eliza.

On the preceding page of that book is a footnote:

When Paul Revere came to the house on this errand, the guard at first refused to let him in; but Hancock, hearing his voice, said, “That is Revere: you need not be afraid of him.”

Again, there’s no source provided for this anecdote or the direct quote it contains. It’s possible that by 1891 the Allen family tradition had been cross-pollinated with the story from Phinney, which became a standard part of American history. But it’s also possible that Eliza Clarke’s story of hearing Hancock say something like “That is Revere: you need not be afraid of him” was Phinney’s original source for the line, “Come in, Revere; we are not afraid of you.”

A New Biography of the Rev. Jonas Clarke

This season has brought a new biography of the Rev. Jonas Clarke, the Lexington minister who was hosting John Hancock and Samuel Adams on 19 Apr 1775 as British regulars marched toward that town.

Clarke wielded a lot of influence in Lexington. People recalled that he drafted many of the town’s resolutions objecting to new Crown measures in the 1760s and 1770s. His published sermon on the first anniversary of the outbreak of war is not only a significant historical source on the event but also helped to shape its meaning for the people of Massachusetts.

The Patriot Parson of Lexington, Massachusetts: Reverend Jonas Clarke and the American Revolution is the latest book by Richard P. Kollen, a history teacher who has served as the historian for the Lexington Historical Society. The work was supported by that society, custodian of the Clarke-Hancock House where the minister lived and of his papers, and by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

Kollen’s research seems very thorough, running from Clarke’s birth in Newton in 1730 to his death in 1805. As an educated man, the minister documented his life in sermons, letters, and three surviving volumes of journals. His family and community ensured the preservation of those sources, and Kollen—already author of several other books on Lexington history—has mined them for all they’re worth. It’s hard to imagine a more detailed picture of Jonas Clarke.

The Patriot Parson is thus reminiscent of early-19th-century clerical biographies, which likewise extolled their subjects’ values and long careers in detail. I’m sure Kollen didn’t set out to write a Congregationalist hagiography like so many of those volumes. It’s just that Clarke doesn’t seem to have had notable faults or been involved in many juicy controversies (aside from, you know, the split with Britain). Lexington didn’t go through the theological or political arguments of other, larger communities nearby.

Kollen doesn’t shy from noting difficult parts of Clarke’s life. For example, the minister’s older brother, Thomas Clarke, suffered from some sort of mental illness. Kollen quotes from a letter that Jonas wrote in 1753 about Thomas’s “roving mind” and tracks Thomas from the house of the family’s one surviving sister back to Jonas’s household after the war. But the sources simply don’t provide Kollen with grounds for much more than speculation about this aspect of family life.

Another potential area of controversy is slavery. It was common for New England ministers to have an enslaved household servant or two. Clarke’s predecessor, the Rev. John Hancock, owned a man named Jack, and his Concord contemporary, the Rev. William Emerson, owned a man named Frank. Indeed, in smaller New England towns the only slaveholder might be the town minister. On the other side of the issue, such ministers as the Rev. Samuel Cooke of Menotomy, who was stepfather to Clarke’s wife, preached in 1770 that slavery “degraded human nature nearly to the level of the beasts” and urged the Massachusetts General Court to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade.

There’s no evidence that Clarke ever owned anyone. Kollen quotes records of the minister hiring day laborers before his sons grew old enough to work the fields. The book suggests that it is “not unlikely” that Clarke agreed with Cooke. However, Kollen has to acknowledge, Clarke left no statement about slavery, making his personal choice opaque. (The topic of slavery, a focus of so many historians these days, doesn’t even appear in the book’s index.)

The Patriot Parson will be the authoritative book on Clarke for a long time to come. People writing about him or eighteenth-century Lexington in the future will have to consult this book as a source. At the same time, the lack of evident internal and community conflict in Clarke’s life limits the book’s wider appeal. But history doesn’t guarantee that being near the center of a dramatic event means that one leaves behind a dramatic life story.

The Patriot Parson comes from the History Press, so it follows that publisher’s standard design: a paperback of slightly more than 200 packed pages. There are many black and white photographs throughout the book, good notes, and a basic index.

The Roots of the “Black Robed Regiment” in 2010

Yesterday’s look at Oklahoma legislator and minister Dan Fisher showed how he’s active in the “Black Robed Regiment,” a movement among some Christian pastors to be more militantly involved in politics.

I’m sure the “Black Robe(d) Regiment” phenomenon is worthy of deeper study. The short version, as summarized at Media Matters and at Wikipedia, is that it arose from a conversation between author David Barton and broadcaster Glenn Beck (shown here) in 2010 and was quickly picked up by like-minded ministers eager to become more involved in political affairs.

Barton’s Wallbuilders site includes an page promoting the movement while the National Black Robe Regiment website includes an article by Barton it titles “The Original Black Robe Regiment.” This being the internet, there are other domains using the “Black Robe” trope and no way to tell if some are more “official” than others.

Barton has become notorious for distorting historical evidence to support his Christianist view of the American Revolution and early republic. Given the place of religion in eighteenth-century society, especially in New England, it should be hard to overstate its importance, but Barton has done so habitually. He’s also ventured into topics unrelated to Christianity but embedded in modern right-wing politics, such as gun ownership, and proved equally unreliable.

Barton’s article on the “Original Black Robe Regiment” appears to be typical of his approach. It proffers an impressive number of footnotes—101 in all. On closer examination, however, those citations don’t add up to so much.

Footnote 66, for example, is simply a repetition of footnote 1 when Barton returns to the phrase “black regiment.” But that set of sources doesn’t actually offer evidence for the essay’s first sentence:

The Black Robed Regiment was the name that the British placed on the courageous and patriotic American clergy during the Founding Era (a backhanded reference to the black robes they wore). [1]

In fact, Google Books can’t find the phrase “black robed regiment” from any source prior to this century. It appears that Barton made it up, inadvertently or on purpose, based on the actual period phrase “Black Regiment,” which I’ll discuss tomorrow.

My favorite footnote in the article is attached to this passage:

When Paul Revere set off on his famous ride, it was to the home of the Rev. [Jonas] Clark in Lexington that he rode. Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams were lodging (as they often did) with the Rev. Clark. After learning of the approaching British forces, Hancock and Adams turned to Pastor Clark and inquired of him whether the people were ready to fight. Clark unhesitatingly replied, “I have trained them for this very hour!” [47]

The note:

[47] Franklin Cole, They Preached Liberty (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1941), p. 34. Only source we can locate is Cole’s.

I doubt that second sentence was meant to be left for us to see. It indicates that Barton and his research team had enough questions about whether “Pastor Clark” really said those words to look for a better source than a book published by a Christian evangelical press 166 years after the event. But they failed to find any other source to support Cole’s quotation, despite the many accounts and histories of the Lexington alarm—which should have made them skeptical about that book. Instead, Barton cited it in this essay seven more times.

In those hundred footnotes I count seven primary sources from the eighteenth century: Peter Oliver’s account of the Revolution from shortly after the war, two citations of 1770s Boston newspapers taken from a note in the 1961 edition of Oliver, letters of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, a 1789 newspaper report, and a collection of sermons.

Some other contemporaneous writing no doubt appears in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century books that provide the bulk of the citations and quotations, but those books also contain unsupported traditions and fables like the one quoted above. That’s why I think it’s important to go back to the earliest documents, consider them fully and skeptically, and not just quote what I like uncritically because I can’t find anything more solid.

It’s easy to find primary sources on eighteenth-century American religion. The problem is that those sources present a much more complex, multi-faceted, and unfamiliar picture of religious life and thought than the Black Robe(d) Regiment would apparently like.

COMING UP: What Peter Oliver really wrote.

The “No King But Jesus” Myth

Here’s a myth about the fighting at Lexington in April 1775 that’s become popular on the American far right over the last thirty years.

What might be the earliest telling comes from Charles A. Jennings, a Christian Identity speaker who operated the ironically named “Truth in History” website and wrote:

On April 18, 1775 John Adams and John Hancock were at the home of Rev. Jonas Clarke, a Lexington pastor and militia leader. That same night Paul Revere arrived to warn them of the approaching Redcoats. The next morning British Major Pitcairn shouted to an assembled regiment of Minutemen; “Disperse, ye villains, lay down your arms in the name of George the Sovereign King of England.” The immediate response of Rev. Jonas Clarke or one of his company was: “We recognize no Sovereign but God and no King but Jesus.”

Fake History tackled this myth in 2010, pointing out the myriad problems:

• Samuel Adams had been in Lexington earlier that morning, not John.
• Jonas Clarke was town minister and thus by law not a “militia leader.”
• Clarke wasn’t on the common during the confrontation with the British.
• Most important, there’s no evidence for this exchange.

We have dozens of first-hand descriptions of the confrontation on Lexington common from 1775 and afterwards, coming from men on both sides of the conflict. Not one includes the words “No king but Jesus.”

“No king but Jesus” was actually the title of a pamphlet that the English republican Henry Haggar published in 1652. Some historians have called it a slogan of the Levellers, a radical faction in the English Civil War. But British society had repudiated that idea, installing kings again.

That meant those words weren’t really a respectable motto, even in eighteenth-century New England. The one contemporaneous report of Americans adopting the slogan during the Revolutionary period came from an angry British appointee trying to discredit the anti-Stamp movement in Pennsylvania in 1765. Reviving that call in 1775 would have undercut the provincials’ cause because they were proclaiming their loyalty to King George III and the British constitution.

Tea-Burning in Lexington, 15 Dec.

It’s Tea Party season in Boston again as we stuff a commemoration of the historic event into the hectic holiday season. The Bostonians of 1773, most of whom rigorously ignored Christmas and had never heard of Hannukah, Eid, or other faiths’ winter solstice holidays, didn’t have that trouble.

The first announcement actually comes from half a day’s ride out of town:

The Lexington Historical Society invites you to attend the first-ever re-enactment of a little known but critical event in town history: The Burning of the Tea. This free event, open to the public, takes place on Saturday, December 15, at 3:00 P.M. at Munroe Tavern, 1332 Massachusetts Avenue in Lexington.

Three days before the Boston Tea Party, citizens of Lexington burned all their tea in a common bonfire. Lexington’s minister Jonas Clarke issued an incendiary declaration of support for the people of Boston, warning that anyone in Lexington who consumed tea would be treated “as an enemy of this town and this country.” Clarke’s fiery words resonate through history, a foreshadowing of events to come: “Should the State of Our Affairs require it, We shall be ready to Sacrifice our Estates, and every thing dear in Life, Yea & Life itself, in support of the common Cause.”

Rev. Peter Meek will give voice to Rev. Jonas Clarke’s powerful 1773 public resolution. Citizens are welcome to join re-enactors from the Lexington Minutemen in stoking the bonfire (built by Lexington Boy Scouts) with tea (supplied by Peet’s Coffee and Tea) to protest Parliament’s “wicked” policies. The William Diamond Fife and Drum Corps will supply a stirring live soundtrack. A musket salute from the Lexington Minutemen will provide the finale, and all will then be invited inside Munroe Tavern for coffee and hot chocolate—but absolutely no tea!

This event is scheduled to last for ninety minutes.

(The thumbnail image above shows Tom Fortmann portraying the Rev. Mr. Clarke at a 2009 event.)

“John Raymond, an aged man,…was brutally fired upon”?

As I discussed yesterday, in the first half-century after John Raymond’s death outside the Munroe Tavern on 19 Apr 1775, people in Lexington agreed that British soldiers had killed him, but didn’t make a big deal of his death compared to others the same day.

That changed around the time of the Centennial. The Rev. Artemas B. Muzzey (1802-1892) of Cambridge, grandson of a man in Capt. John Parker’s militia company in 1775, published a reminiscence of Revolutionary veterans in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1877 which stated:

William Munroe…kept the public house known as “Munroe Tavern.” Here the British stopped on their retreat, and murdered John Raymond, an inoffensive man, as he was leaving the house.

Thus Raymond’s death during a battle became a murder.

Three years later, in a History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Lexington historian Charles Hudson wrote:

The officers with Percy resorted to Munroe’s tavern just below. The occupants of the house left the place in affright, leaving only John Raymond, an aged man, who was at the time one of the family. The intruders ordered him to supply them with all the good things the house afforded, which he readily did. But after they had imbibed too freely, they became noisy and so alarmed Raymond that he sought to escape from the house; but was brutally fired upon and killed in his attempt to flee from danger.

Hudson also used Raymond’s death to complain about the British soldiers’ “system of personal insult, treachery, and murder” in his history of Lexington, published in 1913.

In The Battle of April 19, 1775 (1912), Frank W. Coburn went into further detail in describing the activity of Col. Percy (shown above) and his troops:

This energetic destroyer of American homes had selected Munroe Tavern as his temporary headquarters, and ordered his wounded conveyed there also. While their wounds were being dressed his men demanded such refreshments as the place could provide, and unlike [Lt. Col. Francis] Smith’s subordinates in Concord, were not considerate enough to pay for them. So landlord William Munroe’s loss was £203, 11s. 9d., of which £90 was in the “retail shop,” presumably of a liquid nature.

As he was orderly sergeant in Captain Parker’s Company, he was naturally absent on duty, and left a lame man, John Raymond, in charge, who waited upon the unbidden guests because he was compelled to. His last service was to mix a glass of punch for one of the red-coats, after which he essayed to escape through the garden. He was not alert enough, for two soldiers fired, and one of their bullets readily overtook him as he hobbled away. Thus one more was added to the list of American dead, one of the easiest victims, of course, for he was simply an unarmed cripple. This probably happened at the rear of the Tavern.

For this paragraph Coburn cited “A carefully written newspaper clipping evidently from a Boston periodical, dated April 19, 1858, preserved in a scrap book once belonging to the Thomas Waterman collection of American History.” I couldn’t locate such an article in the Archive of Americana newspaper database, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one turns up. I would be surprised if an 1858 article offers more reliable information than was available to William Munroe in 1825.

In fact, as authors added to the drama of John Raymond’s death, they inserted contradictions into the story. Hudson referred to Raymond as “aged,” but also reported his birth date, which showed that he was forty-three years old.

Coburn called Raymond a “cripple,” but other authors listed him among the members of Capt. Parker’s militia company, which suggests that Raymond’s lameness was temporary or didn’t interfere with his military activity, like Nathanael Greene’s. (Alternatively, those authors might have assumed that Raymond’s name on the list of dead meant he died as a militiaman.)

Harold Murdock noted those contradictions in his Nineteenth of April, 1775, published in 1925. He theorized that the British troops might have viewed Raymond as their prisoner, and shot him as he was trying to escape. He also argued that Percy himself spent little time at the tavern. In any event, Murdock felt sure that the Lexington minister Jonas Clarke would have made more of Raymond’s death if his neighbors in 1775 had seen it as an atrocity.

To the credit of the historians who wrote the words now engraved on the memorial to John Raymond at the Munroe Tavern, that text sticks to the facts stated by Munroe and his family. There are a lot of details about Raymond’s killing that we’ll probably never know, so it’s wise to avoid the incendiary language of some authors writing well after the event.

TOMORROW: John Raymond’s children.

The Death of John Raymond

Part of the Munroe Tavern’s formal reopening on Sunday was the dedication of a memorial marker for John Raymond, killed on the grounds on 19 Apr 1775. That’s the stone to the left of the thick white archway in Ray Boas’s photograph above.

Immediately after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts provincial authorities listed Raymond among the men from Lexington who had died that day. Their broadsides and newspaper dispatches put no asterisk beside his name to indicate that he was killed on the common in the morning—so he must have died in the afternoon battle.

But otherwise, I found nothing published in 1775 about the circumstances of John Raymond’s death. The Provincial Congress made as big a deal as possible of certain British army “atrocities”—the deaths of two men in a Menotomy tavern, the invasion of Hannah Adams’s house in that same village. The Rev. Jonas Clarke of Lexington highlighted those same events in his sermon on the first anniversary of the battle. But he didn’t mention Raymond.

The earliest description of how Raymond died that I’ve come across appeared in William Munroe’s deposition about the battle from 1825:

On the return of the British troops from Concord, they stopped at my tavern house in Lexington, and dressed their wounded. I had left my house in the care of a lame man, by the name of Raymond, who supplied them with whatever the house afforded, and afterward, when he was leaving the house, he was shot by the regulars, and found dead within a few rods of the house.

Two years later, Munroe’s death notice (quoted here in full, and referring to him by his later militia rank) stated:

Col. M. participated with his company in the events of the day, leaving the care of his public house in the superintendance of a neighbor, whom the British killed on their retreat.

Those sources established several details about Raymond: he was one of Munroe’s neighbors, and he was “lame”—whether permanently or temporarily is unclear. Munroe left him in charge of the tavern, he served the British troops, and they shot him a short distance from the house “when he was leaving.”

TOMORROW: The story grows new details.

“I Told Them My Errand”

Soon after his ride on the night of 18-19 Apr 1775, Paul Revere wrote out a deposition describing his experiences. This is how his first draft characterized the message he carried from Boston to Lexington:

I was sent for by Docr. Joseph Warren about 10 oClock that evening, and desired, “to go to Lexington and inform Mr. Samuel Adams, and the Hon. John Hancock Esqr. that there was a number of Soldiers composed of the Light troops and Grenadiers marching to the bottom of the common, where was a number Boats to receive them, and it was supposed, that they were going to Lexington, by the way of Watertown to take them, Mess. Adams and Hancock or to Concord.”

The second draft has somewhat different wording but the same sense. Revere wrote nothing in either version about carrying a written message.

Furthermore, there are significant differences between what Revere recalled that Dr. Warren knew when he left Boston and what the Rev. Jonas Clarke of Lexington wrote a year later. Clarke said the message from Boston included an estimate (much too high) of the number of soldiers, a different location for their landing across the Charles River, and a definite statement that they were headed to Concord. Those discrepancies indicate that Clarke was not quoting a message Dr. Warren had written before Revere began his journey, but working with additional information and perhaps some hindsight.

Revere also didn’t mention carrying a written message in his 1798 letter to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap about the start of the war. In fact, in that account the silversmith wrote: “I found Messrs. Hancock and Adams at the Rev. Mr. Clarke’s; I told them my errand,” implying that he delivered the warning from Boston orally.

Revere was nearly stopped by a British mounted patrol as he left Charlestown, but in none of his accounts did he describe worrying about being caught with an incriminating document. (After officers stopped him on his way from Lexington to Concord, Revere wrote, “they first searched me for Arms.”)

The Rev. William Gordon of Roxbury, who appears to have been close to Samuel Adams, didn’t mention a letter from Dr. Warren in his early account of the day. The traditions passed down in William Dawes’s family, published in 1878, say nothing about a written message.

Instead, the evidence indicates that Dr. Warren, Revere, and their colleagues worked to set up a network of messengers whom leaders could trust without needing written confirmation. Revere had worked with Adams, Hancock, and Warren for years. Hancock knew Dawes as adjutant of the Boston militia regiment, and Dawes was somewhat active in politics.

Revere visited Lexington a few days before 18 April to prepare the ground. On his way home, he arranged for colleagues in Charlestown to send a rider west based on a signal from the Christ Church tower; obviously, that rider starting on the other side of the river couldn’t have carried a letter from Dr. Warren. But with signals arranged and relationships established, he didn’t need to. At least that’s my interpretation of the evidence.

“It Was Shrewdly Suspected”

On Tuesday I quoted the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s 1777 account of events in Lexington on 19 Apr 1775, including this passage:

Between the hours of twelve and one, on the morning of the NINETEENTH OF APRIL, we received intelligence, by express, from the Honorable JOSEPH WARREN, Esq.; at Boston, “that a large body of the king’s troops (supposed to be a brigade of about 12, or 1500) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to land on Lechmere’s-Point (so called) in Cambridge: And that it was shrewdly suspected, that they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores, belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord,” in consequence of General Gage’s unjustifiable seizure of the provincial magazine of powder at Medford, and other colony stores in several other places.

As I noted yesterday, in 1825 local historian Elias Phinney repeated most of the words Clarke had put between quotation marks. He left out a few:

• “land on”
• “(so called)”
• “shrewdly”

The latter two are phrases that stand out of Clarke’s passage because they don’t seem to belong to the night of 18-19 Apr 1775. Would Dr. Warren, racing to send crucial information to his colleagues, have been so scrupulous as to add “(so called)” to the common name of Lechmere’s Point? Would he have patted himself on the back by inserting “shrewdly”?

In the same vein, and even more tellingly, what timeframe could the word “then” refer to in the phrase “then deposited at Concord”? Clarke must have written that word in 1776 or 1777 to remind his audience of the situation back in April 1775. It wouldn’t have been part of any note Warren wrote for Samuel Adams and John Hancock to read while the troops were still marching and the stores were still deposited.

And yet the word “then” appears inside Clarke’s quotation marks, as well as Elias Phinney’s. So at the very least, we know those writers weren’t quoting an original document exactly. And it appears even more likely that Phinney got his words from Clarke, not from any note from Warren now lost.

I also think Clarke used his quotation marks to signal that he was approximating the message from Dr. Warren, not reproducing it word for word. And, since the parson never actually stated that he’d seen a written message from Boston, we have to consider the possibility that he was paraphrasing the news that Warren’s messengers had conveyed out loud.

TOMORROW: Listening to Paul Revere.

(The photograph above showed the Lexington Historical Society’s Hancock-Clarke House, where Paul Revere and William Dawes rendezvoused with Adams and Hancock, and where Clarke wrote his sermon and narrative.)

“Written Communications from Gen. Warren”?

In 1825, Elias Phinney published his History of the Battle at Lexington: on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775. Until then, Americans had remembered the men on Lexington common as being shot down without offering any threat or resistance to the British army; they were martyrs. Phinney still insisted that the redcoats had fired first, under orders from Maj. John Pitcairn, but he argued that the Lexington men had fired back, making them stalwart heroes and the event a “battle.”

Along the way, Phinney wrote:

Gen. [Joseph] Warren, ever watchful and active in devising, as he was undaunted in executing, the best measures for the safety of the country, had despatched two messengers, Col. Paul Revere and a Mr. Lincoln, with information to [John] Hancock and [Samuel] Adams. Revere passed over the ferry to Charlestown, procured a horse of the late Deacon [John] Larkin, and rode with all speed to Lexington, where he arrived a little after midnight. . . .

Shortly after, Mr. Lincoln, who had come by the way of Roxbury, arrived. They both brought written communications from Gen. Warren, “That a large body of the king’s troops, (supposed to be a brigade of twelve or fifteen hundred,) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to Lechmere’s Point in Cambridge, and it was suspected, they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord.”

“Mr. Lincoln” is Phinney’s mistaken identification of William Dawes (shown above), based on the mistaken recollection of Lexington militia sergeant William Munroe fifty years after the fight. Obviously, Phinney wasn’t working with sources that named Dawes, such as Revere’s own accounts.

Phinney’s words echo what the Rev. Jonas Clarke published in 1777, quoted yesterday, but not exactly. Did both Clarke and Phinney copy from a document that doesn’t survive? If so, the differences between the two transcriptions raise questions. Either Clarke added words, or Phinney removed them. Was the estimate of British soldiers written as “12, or 1500” or “twelve or fifteen hundred,”?

I think it most likely that Phinney relied on Clarke’s published narrative, quoting the words he thought had come from “written communications from Gen. Warren,” cutting those that seemed out of place, and applying up-to-date rules for style. In other words, Phinney’s statement that Revere and “Lincoln” had carried written messages was his interpretation of Clarke’s statement, not based on actually seeing one of those documents or other independent evidence.

TOMORROW: Going back to the Rev. Mr. Clarke’s words from 1777.

“We Received Intelligence, by Express”

It’s been over a month since the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and I’m still working through questions related to that event. In the comments on this posting about Isaac (a.k.a. Israel) Bissell, I wrote, “Revere and Dawes didn’t take written reports out to Lexington, but Hancock and Adams knew and trusted them already.”

Charles Bahne emailed to ask about that because other researchers have written that Paul Revere and William Dawes did carry written messages from Dr. Joseph Warren. So I realized I should review the evidence and explain my conclusion.

On 19 Apr 1776, exactly one year after the battle, the Rev. Jonas Clarke of Lexington preached on the event. He was an eyewitness, had hosted Samuel Adams and John Hancock in the parsonage the night before, and was a figure of learning and authority in the town.

The following year, the Boston printing firm of Powars and Willis published Clarke’s sermon in a pamphlet subtly titled:

The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppressors, and GOD’s tender Care of his distressed People.

A Sermon, preached at Lexington, April 19, 1776. To commemorate the MURDER, BLOODSHED and Commencement of Hostilities, between Great-Britain and America, in that Town, by a Brigade of Troops of George III, under Command of Lieutenant-Colonel SMITH, on the Nineteenth of April, 1775.

To which is added, a brief NARRATIVE of the principal Transactions of that Day.

That narrative has been published several times since.

Clarke’s narrative began:

On the evening of the eighteenth of April, 1775, we received two messages; the first verbal, the other by express, in writing, from the committee of safety, who were then sitting in the westerly part of Cambridge, directed to the Honorable JOHN HANCOCK, Esq; (who, with the Honorable SAMUEL ADAMS, Esq; was then providentially with us) informing, “that eight or nine officers of the king’s troops were seen, just before night, passing the road towards Lexington, in a musing, contemplative posture; and it was suspected they were out upon some evil design.”

(What’s boldface here was italicized in the original publication.)

A few paragraphs later, Clarke wrote:

Between the hours of twelve and one, on the morning of the NINETEENTH OF APRIL, we received intelligence, by express, from the Honorable JOSEPH WARREN, Esq.; at Boston, “that a large body of the king’s troops (supposed to be a brigade of about 12, or 1500) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to land on Lechmere’s-Point (so called) in Cambridge: And that it was shrewdly suspected, that they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores, belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord,” in consequence of General Gage’s unjustifiable seizure of the provincial magazine of powder at Medford, and other colony stores in several other places.

The phrase “by express” meant a messenger sent particularly to carry that news. Both passages use quotation marks, implying that Clarke was copying words directly from the messages he described. The first says that the Committee of Safety in Cambridge sent two messages, but only one was in writing. Did the “express, from the Honorable JOSEPH WARREN,” also bring a letter?

TOMORROW: Interpreting Clarke’s words in 1825.

The Rev. Jonas Clarke’s Sermon for 1776

Yesterday I quoted Gen. Thomas Gage’s official report on the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The provincials were more vigorous in disseminating their version of the events, and they kept at it longer.

One part of that effort was the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s sermon on 19 Apr 1776, one year after the battle, which was published along with “A Brief Narrative of the principal Transactions of that Day.” Clarke was caught up in the events himself—he was hosting John Hancock and Samuel Adams at his parsonage in Lexington—and digested his neighbors’ accounts of what they had experienced the year before.

The result is a valuable source on the fighting in Middlesex County, written soon after the event. At the same time, it’s a heavily biased piece of propaganda, absolving the provincial militiamen of all blame and putting the British military actions in the worst possible light. A sample:

In the retreat of the king’s troops from Concord to Lexington, they ravaged and plundered, as they had opportunity, more or less, in most of the houses that were upon the road. But after they were joined by Percy’s brigade, in Lexington, it seemed as if all the little remains of humanity had left them; and rage and revenge had taken the reins, and knew no bounds!

Clothing, furniture, provisions, goods, plundered, broken, carried off, or destroyed! Buildings (especially dwelling-houses) abused, defaced, battered, shattered, and almost ruined! And as if this had not been enough, numbers of them doomed to the flames! Three dwelling houses, two shops and a barn, were laid in ashes, in Lexington! Many others were set on fire, in this town, in Cambridge, etc. and must have shared the same fate, had not the close pursuit of the provincials prevented, and the flames been seasonably quenched!

Add to all this; the unarmed, the aged and infirm, who were unable to flee, are inhumanly stabbed and murdered in their habitations! Yea, even women in child-bed, with their helpless babes in their arms, do not escape the horrid alternative, of being either cruelly murdered in their beds, burnt in their habitations, or turned into the streets to perish with cold, nakedness and distress!

But I forbear—words are too insignificant to express, the horrid barbarities of that distressing day!!!

You can read Clarke’s whole text in Charles Hudson’s history of Lexington.

This image of the sermon comes from the Learning at the National Heritage Museum blog, showing a copy in the collection of Lexington’s Cary Memorial Library. This posting from the Museum’s current blog is a good place to begin to explore the older blog’s links to primary sources about the start of the Revolutionary War, and there are more postings about 18-19 Apr 1775 coming up.