“Drive them British from that bridge”

As I discussed yesterday, the militia companies from the western side of Sudbury were better equipped than those on the east side. Under Lt. Col. Ezekiel How, Capt. Aaron Haynes, and Capt. John Nixon, they responded first when the alarm arrived on 19 Apr 1775.

Among those west Sudbury men was Josiah Haynes, a farmer born in 1696. He had served as a selectman and became a deacon in 1733. At age seventy-eight, Haynes no longer required to do militia duty—he was getting too old for that stuff. Nevertheless, on the morning of 19 April he turned out with his neighbors.

According to Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 history of Concord, the two companies “received orders from a person stationed at the entrance of the town for the purpose of a guide, to proceed to the north instead of the south bridge.” That Concord man was later identified as Stephen Barrett (1750-1824), son of Col. James Barrett, commander of a Middlesex County militia regiment.

J. H. Temple’s 1887 History of Framingham said that the first order for Capt. Nixon’s Sudbury minutemen was to halt within sight of the South Bridge. At mid-morning British regulars showed up to hold that choke point as others searched designated properties in town.

Some Sudbury men wanted to attack those soldiers. Deacon Haynes reportedly told the captain, “If you don’t go and drive them British from that bridge, I shall call you a coward!” Nixon replied, “I should rather be called a coward by you, than called to account by my superior officer, for disobedience of orders.” Eventually orders arrived for the Sudbury men to march on the North Bridge by a roundabout route that took them past the Barrett farm.

Stephen Barrett’s father was on horseback with the Concord companies, which had withdrawn as the British column arrived and massed on the far side of the North Bridge on Punkatasset Hill. Barrett was also the principal custodian of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s artillery and other supplies in town. [See The Road to Concord for more details.]

Stephen’s mother, Rebeckah, was at the family home, watching British soldiers search the place for those weapons. Thanks to hard work by the Barretts and their neighbors in recent days, all of that ordnance had been hauled away and hidden. The regulars found only some carriage wheels, which they set about burning.

The Sudbury companies passed within sight of the Barrett farm while the British were at work. Lt. Col. How reportedly looked at the scene and said, “If any blood has been shed, not one of the rascals shall escape.” Shattuck wrote that he rode on alone to find out for sure, “disguising himself”—which might just have meant leaving his weapons behind so he looked like an ordinary farmer.

According to an 1875 account in Harper’s Magazine, How went all the way to Barrett’s farm and even talked with some of the British officers. Stephen Barrett also returned home around this time. Soldiers realized he was a Barrett and put him under arrest. Rebeckah Barrett intervened, pointing out that Stephen was her son, not her husband.

How rejoined the Sudbury men and they moved on, avoiding a clash with British troops for the second time that morning. But as they neared Punkatasset Hill, the provincials and the regulars started trading shots. The Sudbury companies hurried forward and joined in pushing the regulars away from the North Bridge before withdrawing again.

All the provincial companies that had arrived in Concord moved east, skirting the town center and taking positions to attack the British soldiers as soon as they left the populated area. That was the real start of the battle. The Sudbury militiamen joined in that fight, following the regulars east.

Somewhere in Lexington, old Deacon Haynes was shot and died. Here is his gravestone in Sudbury, courtesy of Find-a-Grave.

The inscription reads:

In Memory of
DEACON JOSIAH HAYNES
who died
in Freedoms Cause ye
19th of April, 1775.
In the 79th
Year of his Age.

Come listen all unto this call
Which God doth make today
For You must die as well as I
And pass from hence away

Luther Blanchard, Fifer

Yesterday I wrote about the Acton Minutemen marching toward Concord’s North Bridge, reportedly to the tune later codified as “The White Cockade.” The fifer in that unit was Luther Blanchard, son of Simon and Sarah Blanchard, born 4 June 1756 and therefore eighteen years old.

Luther was also one of the first people wounded during the North Bridge skirmish. In A History of the Fight at Concord (1827), Ezra Ripley wrote:

In a minute or two, the Americans being in quick motion, and within ten or fifteen rods of the bridge, a single gun was fired by a British soldier, which marked its way, passing under Col. [John] Robinson’s arm, slightly wounding the side of Luther Blanchard, a fifer in the Acton company. This gun was instantly followed by a volley, which killed Capt. [Isaac] Davis and Mr. [Abner] Hosmer, both of the same company.

Eight years later, Lemuel Shattuck added in a footnote in A History of the Town of Concord:

Luther Blanchard went to Mrs. [Rebeckah] Barrett’s, who, after examining his wound, mournfully remarked, “A little more and you’d been killed.”

“Yes,” said Blanchard, “and a little more and ’t wouldn’t have touched me;”—and immediately joined the pursuers.

Though Luther Blanchard marched with the Acton company (fifers got paid for musters), he lived in the neighboring town of Littleton, in an area that’s now part of Boxborough. Luther appears on Boxborough’s town seal, and every June it observes Fifer’s Day in his honor; this year’s celebration comes on 15 June.

COMING UP: What happened to Luther Blanchard?

John Austin, Carver and Conductor

According to Agnes Austin (1769-1861), when the Revolutionary War began, her father John (born in 1722) was at James Barrett’s farm in Concord helping to prepare stores for the provincial forces.

Austin and the seven men he was supervising evidently hid their supplies and dashed away before Capt. Lawrence Parsons and four companies of regulars arrived to search the place. Austin later told his daughter about how Rebeckah Barrett treated those soldiers, so he probably went back to the house after they had left but didn’t participate in the battle.

Meanwhile, Agnes Austin’s other anecdotes indicate that she was home in Charlestown, in place to see those soldiers march in at the end of their long day.

Over the next two months, most families moved out of Charlestown, which was caught between British-held Boston and the besieging provincial army headquartered in Cambridge. John Austin’s family probably joined him at some safe place to the west. On 17 June, the Battle of Bunker Hill caused most of Charlestown to burn (and shown above), and that probably included the Austins’ empty home.

Two days later, a committee of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had recommendations for supporting the artillery regiment (which had suffered a supply problem in the battle):

That, in addition to the storekeeper already appointed by this Congress, there be established four conductors of stores, and two clerks for the ordnance department; and a company of artificers, to consist of a master carpenter or overseer, with 49 privates; and the committee of safety be desired to recommend to this Congress, fit persons for the offices abovenamed. . . .

Your committee, furthermore, beg leave to report an establishment for the officers and privates above mentioned, viz,: The storekeeper, $80 per month: four conductors, each $48 do. [ditto]: one master carpenter, or overseer, $80 do.: two clerks, each £48 do.: 49 privates, they to find their own tools, $50 do. each.

That afternoon the Committee of Safety responded:

Pursuant to a Resolve of the Provincial Congress sent to this Committee respecting the nomination of four Conductors, two Clerks, and one Overseer for a company of Artificers in the regiment of Artillery; they beg leave to recommend the following persons to the office affixed to their names, viz: Mr. John Ruddock, Mr. John Austin, Mr. John Kneeland, Mr. Thomas Uran, Conductors; Mr. Nathaniel Barber, Jun., Mr. Isaac Peirce, Clerks; Joseph Airs [Eyres], Overseer of the Artificers.

All of those men besides Austin were from Boston, and all had been active in Whig politics before the war. Ruddock was the son of the late North End magistrate with the same name; the family had fought with British soldiers in 1768-70. Peirce was a town watchman. Barber’s father was part of the North End Caucus and is one of the names inscribed on the “Liberty” punch bowl. Uran and Eyres had helped to guard the tea ships. Kneeland was a printer—mostly of religious material, said Isaiah Thomas, but some of his pamphlets had clear political messages.

Like Austin, all of those men were refugees. By appointing them conductors, clerks, and overseer, the Massachusetts legislature not only put reliable men in those posts but also provided them and their families with income.

Other documents show that John Austin continued to work for the Massachusetts military at least through early 1778. At that time, his pay was coming through Nathaniel Barber. Or, since Austin had a son of the same name (Agnes’s older brother) born in 1756, and probably namesake cousins as well, some of those references might be about other men.

Austin, a carver by trade, appears to have died in 1786. There’s more about him and his family in The Cabinetmakers of America and New England Furniture: The Colonial Era.

Agnes Austin’s “Many Incidents” of the Revolution

Brian A. Sullivan, archivist for Mount Auburn Cemetery, has transcribed the diary of John Langdon Sibley, Librarian at Harvard College in the mid-1800s (shown at left). The transcription is available on here on the web.

In this Patriots’ Day season, I found the entry for Sunday, 3 Oct 1858, particularly interesting. It says in part:

A blind lady, 89 years old May 27, 1858, Miss Agnes Austin, who lives on the west corner of the Appian Way & Garden St, says that her father John who had charge of the public stores here in the time of the Revolutionary war & often told her many incidents connected with it. . . .

John Austin, with ten others, was at work nine weeks at Concord before the battle. They were collecting and arranging public stores. The news of the approach of the British arrived; they scattered the provisions. Mr. Austin told the men to dress themselves as much like gentlemen as they could, to put on two shirts as they might be captured & they would want them. & then disperse & take care of themselves.

When the enemy came to Col. [James] Barrett’s where Mr. Austin was stopping. they inquired for them & for the Colonel. Mrs. [Rebeckah] Barrett told them they were all gone, & she did not know where they were. The enemy told Mrs. Barrett not to be alarmed. as she should not be harmed. They made her accompany them to every room in the house to see if there were warlike stores or arms. They wanted food. She let them have what milk she had & bread.

Agnes Austin (1769-1861) is also mentioned in George Kuhn Clarke’s 1912 History of Needham:

In my childhood I was often taken to call upon a very ancient blind lady, Miss Agnes Austin, who was born in Charlestown, and lived there for many years, and who delighted to tell her visitors that she saw the British troops under Earl Percy and Lieut.-Col. [Francis] Smith on their return at the close of the memorable nineteenth of April, 1775. A considerable number of the soldiers had thrown away their red coats and much of their equipment. The first legacy that I ever received was under the will of this venerable lady, who was a distant connection of my family.

Austin’s tale about her father in Concord has many of the hallmarks of what I’ve called “grandmothers’ tales” of the Revolution:

• It’s a story told decades later, long after most participants and witnesses have died.
• The story puts an ancestor of the teller (and often the first listeners) front and center at a historic event.
• The narrator was an elderly unmarried (widowed or never married) woman passing on lessons to children.

As with all oral traditions, my response is to look for contemporaneous documentary support. Is there corroboration for any detail? Are there significant contradictions?

And in this case, I actually found strong documentary support.

TOMORROW: John Austin and the supplies in Concord.