“Now the war has begun and no one knows when it will end.”

When we left the nonagenarian Amos Baker of Lincoln yesterday, he had just described how the commanders of the Middlesex County militiamen massed above the North Bridge in Concord agreed to march toward the British regulars holding that position.

Baker then recounted:

And the order was given to march, and we all marched down without any further order or arrangement.

The British had got up two of the planks of the bridge. It is a mercy they fired on us at the bridge, for we were going to march into the town, and the British could load and fire three times to our once, because we had only powder horns and no cartridge boxes, and it would have been presumptuous. I understood that Colonel Abijah Pierce got the gun of one of the British soldiers who was killed at the bridge, and armed himself with it.

Pierce had come out with nothing but a walking-stick as a weapon. Baker probably exaggerated when he said the provincials had “only powder horns and no cartridge boxes,” emphasizing how much the locals were underdogs. At the bridge they had a clear numerical superiority, which is why the regulars soon retreated.

There were two British soldiers killed at the bridge. I saw them when I went over the bridge, lying close together, side by side, dead.

Joshua Brooks, of Lincoln, was at the bridge and was struck with a ball that cut through his hat, and drew blood on his forehead, and it looked as if it was cut with a knife; and we concluded they were firing jackknives.

When we had fired at the bridge and killed the British, Noah Parkhurst, who was my right hand man, said, “Now the war has begun and no one knows when it will end.”

Baker then told the story of James Nichols, an Englishman in the Lincoln company. Richard C. Wiggin wrote about that story and the records behind it here.

I believe I was the only man from Lincoln that had a bayonet. My father got it in the time of the French war.

I went into the house where [Isaac] Davis and [Joseph] Hosmer were carried after they fell, and saw their bodies. I supposed the house to be Major [John] Buttrick’s.

When we marched down to the bridge, Major Buttrick marched first, and Captain Davis next to him. I did not see Colonel [John] Robinson [of Westford] to know him.

I verily believe that I felt better that day, take it all the day through, than if I had stayed at home.

After justice of the peace Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar finished writing this down, the text was read back to Baker and he signed it in front of three witnesses. Baker died later that year, thought to be the last veteran of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

(The picture above is Don Troiani’s painting of the fight at the North Bridge. True to form, he has given the provincial militiamen up front bayonets.)

Amos Baker at the Bridge

On 22 Apr 1850, three days after the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, justice of the peace Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar took down the memories of a nonagenarian veteran named Amos Baker.

Baker was thought to be “the sole survivor of the men who were present at the North Bridge at Concord,…and the only man living who bore arms on that day.”

Hoar wrote out an affidavit that said:

I, Amos Baker, of Lincoln, in the County of Middlesex, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on oath depose and say that I was ninety-four years old on the eighth day of April, 1850; I was at Concord Fight on the nineteenth of April, 1775; I was then nineteen years and eleven days old.

My brother Nathaniel, who was then paying his addresses to the girl whom he afterwards married, was at the house where she was staying, near the line between Lexington and Lincoln, and received the alarm there from Dr. Samuel Prescott, and came over and gave it to me. My father and my four brothers, Jacob, Nathaniel, James, and Samuel, and my brother in law, Daniel Hosmer, were in arms at the North Bridge. After the fight at the bridge, I saw nothing more of them, and did not know whether they were alive or dead, until I found two of my brothers engaged in the pursuit near Lexington meeting house. Nathaniel followed the enemy to Charlestown.

When I went to Concord in the morning, I joined the Lincoln company at the brook by Flint’s pond, near the house then of Zachary Smith, and now of Jonas Smith. I loaded my gun with two balls,—ounce balls, and powder accordingly. I saw the British troops coming up the road that leads on to the Common at Concord. The sun shone very bright on their bayonets and guns.

Abijah Pierce of Lincoln, the Colonel of the minute men, went up armed with nothing but a cane.

When we were going to march down to the bridge, it was mentioned between Major [John] Buttrick, and Capt. Isaac Davis, that the minute men had better be put in front, because they were the only men that had bayonets, and it was not certain whether the British would fire, or whether they would charge bayonets without firing. I do not remember which of them said it, but they both agreed to it; and Captain Davis’s company of minute men [from Acton] was then brought up on the right. Then they saw the smoke of the town house, and, I think, Major Buttrick said “Will you stand here and let them burn the town down?”

Local historian Josiah Adams noted that other witnesses were more certain in ascribing these words to adjutant Joseph Hosmer.

That smoke having roused the officers, Baker said, “the order was given to march, and we all marched down without any further order or arrangement.”

TOMORROW: “Firing jackknives”?

The Real Fight at Concord Bridge

The thumbnail image to the right is N. C. Wyeth’s “Fight at Concord Bridge.” It shows Concord’s “embattled farmers,” apparently standing athwart the town’s North Bridge, blocking the British troops.

In the same spirit is this painting, which allposters.com doesn’t credit to a particular artist. The site labels it “American Minutemen Fight to Hold Off the British Army at Concord Bridge, April 10, 1775.” That’s not only nine days early, but misrepresents how the fighting at the North Bridge in Concord went down.

Many people conceive of that skirmish as the local militiamen taking a stand on the bridge and refusing to let the British troops cross. In fact, the two forces’ movements were much more complicated.

When Lt. Col. Francis Smith’s British expedition came into view east of Concord, the militia companies assembled in town turned and marched west, away from the regular troops and across that North Bridge. They took positions on high ground that overlooked the Concord River, eventually ending up more or less where the North Bridge Visitor Center is now.

Lt. Col. Smith sent seven companies of light infantrymen to that bridge. Four of those companies crossed and went two miles beyond to search the farm of militia colonel James Barrett, where Gen. Thomas Gage had heard (correctly) that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had hidden weapons. The militia didn’t try to block that search party. Three other British companies remained near the bridge, on either side of the Concord River, in order to guard their comrades’ withdrawal route.

The regulars down by the river watched the militia up on the rise. The militiamen, numbers growing, watched the regulars. The situation was so static that one English-born farmer from Lincoln, James Nichols, walked down the hill to talk to the soldiers, then walked back up and said he was done for the day—he wasn’t interested in fighting his countrymen.

Then some men on the hill spotted smoke from the center of Concord. The grenadiers there had found some cannon carriages and extra wheels, piled them up, and set them on fire. The flames threatened the town house. Officers ordered soldiers to douse the fire, but by then it had done too much damage—not to the building, but to the stalemate back at the bridge.

Lt. Joseph Hosmer asked Col. Barrett, “Will you let them burn the town down?” After hearing from other officers, the militia colonel ordered an advance. Two militia regiments began to march down toward the bridge and the three British companies guarding it.

Clearly outnumbered, those regulars withdrew to the town side of the bridge and started to take up the planks to keep the militia regiments from crossing. To the locals, that looked like more property destruction. Men shouted down at the redcoats, and the militia companies kept marching.

As Capt. Walter Sloane Laurie and Lt. William Sutherland tried to get the British soldiers in formation to protect themselves, three soldiers fired without orders. Capt. Isaac Davis and Pvt. Abner Hosmer of Acton were killed, and four other men were wounded. The provincials fired back, hitting four British officers, killing three privates and wounding five more. The redcoats retreated at a run back to the center of Concord.

Thus, the “embattled farmers” of Middlesex County weren’t trying to keep the redcoats from crossing the Concord River—it was the other way ’round!

TOMORROW: In pulling back from the North Bridge, the British left four companies cut off behind enemy lines. What happened to them?