“Two rough stones mark the spot”

Back in 2013, Boston 1775 published a series of postings about the British soldiers killed at the North Bridge in Concord, and what happened to their bodies.

Based on reports from army officers, the royal authorities complained in print that a soldier left wounded at the bridge had been “scalped” and otherwise mutilated.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress vigorously denied that charge. It published this deposition, taken down by justice of the peace Duncan Ingraham:

We, the subscribers, of lawful age, testify and say, that we buried the dead bodies of the King’s troops that were killed at the North-Bridge in Concord, on the nineteenth day of April, 1775, where the action first began, and that neither of those persons were scalped, nor their ears cut off, as has been represented.

Zechariah Brown,
Thomas Davis, jun.

Concord, May 11th, 1775.

Privately, however, militiamen who had been at the bridge deplored what they had seen. To begin with, that soldier had still been alive. Thomas Thorp of Acton recalled in 1835: “I saw him sitting up and wounded, as we had passed the bridge.” His killing “was a matter of horror to us all.”

In June 1775 the Rev. William Gordon acknowledged in print that “A young fellow…very barbarously broke his scull and let out his brains, with a small axe.” Gordon did not excuse that act, but he did insist it wasn’t scalping.

Still, Gordon’s source, the Rev. William Emerson of Concord, and other locals kept the young killer’s name secret. Charles Handley of Acton recalled: “The young man man who killed him told me, in 1807, that it had worried him very much; but that he thought he was doing right at the time.” It took more than a century before his name came out: Ammi White.

As for the dead soldiers, in 1827 the Concord minister Ezra Ripley wrote: “The two British soldiers killed at the bridge were buried near the spot where they fell, both in one grave. Two rough stones mark the spot where they were laid.”

In 1793 the town of Concord built a new bridge downstream. The span of the old bridge was dismantled, but some end portions remained. The pieces on the south side served as another landmark reminding locals where the two British men were buried.

TOMORROW: Erecting a monument.

“They came three thousand miles and died”

So how many British soldiers died at the North Bridge in Concord? How many were buried nearby? Those questions have answers, but not definite ones.

As I quoted earlier in the week, one of the British officers there, Lt. William Sutherland, described leaving two men “dead on the Spot.” But Capt. Walter Sloane Laurie reported losing three men overall. And Capt. Lawrence Parsons reportedly saw three men dead at the bridge as he later passed that spot—or was that count influenced by Laurie’s report?

When Zechariah Brown and Thomas Davis, Jr., described burying corpses of the regulars who died at the bridge, they said “neither” had been scalped, suggesting there were two. But their testimony was probably selective. Had another corpse already been moved away?

In 1827, Concord minister Ezra Ripley wrote that in the firing at the North Bridge “Two of the British were killed and several wounded,” with the dead still lying “near the bridge” when their comrades returned from Col. James Barrett’s. Furthermore:

The two British soldiers killed at the bridge were buried near the spot where they fell, both in one grave. Two rough stones mark the spot were they were laid. Their names were unknown. Several others were buried in the middle of the town.

Ripley wrote nothing about Ammi White and his hatchet.

In his 1835 history of Concord, Lemuel Shattuck wrote that “Three British soldiers were killed” at the bridge, but only two were “left on the ground” there and later interred nearby. “One of the wounded died and was buried where Mr. Keyes’s house stood,” Shattuck added. Many later authors have therefore written that two British soldiers were killed immediately at the bridge and another badly wounded, making it back to the center of Concord before dying there.

And who were the “Several others” that Ripley said were interred in central Concord? Shattuck reported that one was Pvt. John Bateman, who died under the care of Dr. John Cuming “at the house then standing near Captain Stacy’s”—Daniel Bliss’s house, according to other authors. (This despite Bateman giving a deposition in Lincoln, not Concord, on 23 Apr 1775.) Bateman “was buried on the hill,” Shattuck wrote.

Don Hagist has reported that Bateman was a grenadier in the 52nd Regiment. The companies at the bridge came from the 4th, 10th, and 43rd. So Bateman must have been fatally wounded in the British withdrawal from Concord, not at the bridge. (It’s notable that some founding settlers of Concord were named Bateman; perhaps people of that town brought him back out of some feeling of kinship.)

According to Shattuck, therefore, there were four British soldiers buried at three sites in Concord soon after 19 Apr 1775. According to Ripley, there might have been “Several others,” but that’s too vague to track down.

TOMORROW: Commemorations and looking for names.

Burying the Bodies at the North Bridge

At the end of 19 Apr 1775, the people of Concord faced a big problem. Massachusetts was, of course, now in armed rebellion against the royal authorities holding the province’s capital. There were dead and dying royal soldiers in town. But Concord shared those problems with other towns.

The big problem specific to Concord was that one of those British soldiers had not only been shot but had obviously suffered a major head wound inflicted at close range. An inhabitant named Ammi White, born about 1754, had struck a wounded and defenseless man with his hatchet. The town’s minister, the Rev. William Emerson, had apparently seen him do this. See D. Michael Ryan’s article for more detail.

Concordians dug a grave for the soldiers who died near the North Bridge, put the bodies inside, and covered them up. But then Gen. Thomas Gage had a “Circumstantial Account” of the battle published in Boston, and (as quoted yesterday) it said that one soldier at the bridge had been “scalped, his head much mangled, and his ears cut off, though not quite dead.” So that required a response.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress published its own report complaining about British soldiers’ behavior, particularly later in the day. That narrative also stated:

A paper having been printed in Boston, representing, that one of the British troops killed at the bridge at Concord, was scalped, and the ears cut off from the head, supposed to be done in order to dishonour the Massachusetts people, and to make them appear to be savage and barbarous, the following deposition was taken that the truth might be known.

We, the subscribers, of lawful age, testify and say, that we buried the dead bodies of the King’s troops that were killed at the North-Bridge in Concord, on the nineteenth day of April, 1775, where the action first began, and that neither of those persons were scalped, nor their ears cut off, as has been represented.

Zechariah Brown,
Thomas Davis, jun.

Concord, May 11th, 1775.

Those men gave their oath to magistrate Duncan Ingraham. As a merchant captain, he had been part of the genteel mob that attacked Loyalist printer John Mein in Boston in 1769. He retired to Concord in 1772 and two years later acted friendly enough with British army officers to have a Patriot mob attack him—symbolically, by attaching a sheep’s head and guts to his chaise.

By May 1775, however, Ingraham was firmly among the Patriots. The deposition he helped create deflected Gage’s specific charges: scalping and cutting off ears. Brown and Davis didn’t say anything about whether they’d noticed if one of those soldiers had suffered a terrible head wound. As with many other depositions that the Massachusetts Whigs collected in the 1770s, I think this testimony was the truth but not the whole truth.

TOMORROW: Did that bury the controversy?