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CHAPTER III

IMPORTANT MESSAGES. -- PARSONAGE GUESTS. -- MIDNIGHT MESSENGERS. -- ECHOES OF THE LEXINGTON BELFRY

      A MOVEMENT of Gage's on the 15th looked suspicious to Dr. Warren, who sent out a messenger to Hancock and Adams, then at Lexington. It was this intelligence that prompted the Committee of Safety, of which John Hancock was chairman, to take additional measures for the security of the stores at Concord, and to order, on the 17th, cannon to be secreted, and a part of the stores to be removed to Sudbury and Groton. On the 18th (Tuesday) Gage's officers were stationed on the roads leading out of Boston, to prevent intelligence of his intended expedition that night. These officers dined at Cambridge. The patriot committees also met that day in Menotomy--West Cambridge (Arlington). Some of the Committee remained to pass the night at Wetherby's Tavern. Devens and Weston started in a chaise towards Charlestown, but soon meeting a number of British officers on horseback, returned to warn their friends at the tavern.

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They waited there till the officers passed, and then rode to Charlestown.[1]
      Mr. Gerry of the Committee of Supplies, anxious as were they all for the safety of Hancock and Adams, sent an express to them that "eight or nine officers were out, suspected of some evil design." This caused the precautionary measures so wisely adopted by the minute-men of Lexington, and prepared them for other messages that followed during the night.
      Mr. Gerry's letter was delivered by a messenger who took a by-path to the Lexington parsonage. The reply is worthy of notice.

"LEXINGTON, April 18, 1775.

      DEAR SIR, --I am obliged for your notice. It is said the officers are gone to Concord, and I will send word thither. I am full with you that we ought to be serious, and I hope your decision will be effectual. I intend doing myself the pleasure of being with you to-morrow. My respects to the Committee. I am your real friend,

JOHN HANCOCK."

      The politeness, culture, and despatch of the opulent young merchant and patriot are apparent in this hastily penned reply. One need not draw much upon his imagination to see the beautiful Dorothy Quincy sitting by in the quiet solicitude of her high-bred dignity.


[1] Jeremiah Lee, Elbridge Gerry, and Azor Orne, members of the Committee of Safety and Supplies, were Marblehead men. Their footprints will be more thoroughly traced in the story of that shore town. For Paul Revere's first ride, see Chapter XX.

[Photo - "Lexington Parsonage"]

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      The master of the house and entertainer of these noted guests, Rev. Jonas Clark, alludes to three different messages received at Lexington that evening; viz., a verbal one, a written one from the Committee of Safety in the evening, and between twelve and one an express from Dr. Warren.
      It is the last message that the poet has made familiar to all. One of the messages we must believe was brought by William Dawes, who went out from Boston, through Roxbury, at about the same time that Revere left by the way of Charlestown.
      The intelligence thus brought to the guests at the Lexington parsonage was not only for them, but for the whole country, and no delay was made in spreading the alarm.
      The presence of British officers scouting about the country that spring was a very common thing; but the large number on the 18th, and the lateness of the hour, led to the conclusion that their purpose was to return, under cover of the night, and capture Hancock and Adams, whose offences, it was said by Gage in his proclamation of June 12, "are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment."

"As for their king, that John Hancock       And Adams, if they're taken, Their heads for signs shall hang up high,       Upon the hill called Beacon."

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      This apprehension of the Lexington people had brought together a company of men well armed, who made up the guard around Rev. Mr. Clark's house, in command of Sergeant Munroe. Three of their number, Sanderson, Brown, and Loring, went on towards Concord to ascertain and give information of the British officers; but while in the town of Lincoln, between Lexington and Concord, they were captured. Revere and Dawes, after refreshment, started on towards Concord, not knowing the fate of those who had preceded them. They were soon joined by Dr. Prescott of Concord, who was returning to his home after spending the evening with Miss Mullikin, at her home in Lexington. He was an earnest patriot, and entered heartily into the plans of his chance friends. Before coming to Concord line they were met by the same British officers, armed and equipped, who demanded their surrender. Prescott, being familiar with the roads, leaped a stone wall, escaped, and carried on the alarm to his townsmen. The prisoners were taken back towards Lexington, threatened and questioned, but given their freedom when the alarm bells of the country towns so frightened the British officers that they made haste for their escape.
      With these general facts plainly in mind, the reader must be prepared to consider the approach of the invading army, their reception at Lexing-

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ton and Concord, and see what the other towns had to do about it.
      The soil of Lexington drank up the first blood shed in the cause of freedom on that April morning; and Concord was the point on which the forces of the colonists and of the king were focussed -- the former bent on protection, and the latter on destruction. It was there that the first forcible resistance to British aggression was made.
      By reason of the events of that morning these towns became famous throughout the world, and pilgrims have journeyed thither for more than a century.
      Historians have vied with one another in telling the story of Lexington and Concord, but I prefer to give it to my readers as I received it from the Old Belfry.
      Facts of civil history and domestic life, having been introduced incidentally, will not detract from the interest of the story.
      "Come up into the old belfry," said my friend of fourscore years, as we strolled across the beautiful green in the centre of Lexington.
      Uncle Eli Simonds is well fitted to act as guide in this part of historic Middlesex. He is among the last of the native born of Lexington who have heard the narratives of the early days from the lips of those who participated. He has been to the place of sacrifice, hand in hand with those who

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were actors in the opening scene of the Revolution. Eli Simonds has not only the advantage of a birthright in the town of Lexington, but he

[Photo - "Eli Simonds"]

came of a long line of ancestry who made a settlement there when the territory was known as Cambridge Farms.
      The house to which he directed his steps, and to which every tourist to that town makes his

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[Photo - "The Old Belfry, Lexington"]

way, was the one from which Uncle Eli took his earliest observations, -- the Lexington belfry.
      To those accustomed to the lofty belfry of the present time, the rude structure at Lexington, somewhat back from the village street, seems diminutive, and of itself presenting but little attraction. While climbing to its present situation Uncle Eli said, "This was erected on this hill in 1761, removed to the common in 1767, and was known to our ancestors as the 'bell free.' In it was hung the bell provided through the generosity of Mr. Isaac Stone.
      "It sounded the alarm over the hills and through the vales on the memorable morning of April 19, 1775; and it served the people in joy and sorrow in that position until 1794, when the new meeting-house put forth a steeple of its own, and the bell was raised to its loft. Then the belfry was sold. It was so soon after the battle waged about its walls that no one had aroused sentiment enough to suggest its preservation. In fact, the time had not yet come for the erection of a memorial, upon the spot where fell 'the first victims to the sword of British Tyranny and Oppression.'
      The martyrs were sleeping in the rude graves where they were placed by the stricken town, before it was known 'whether their blood would fertilize the land of freedom or of bondage.' But the fates had decreed that the old belfry should be preserved, which was accomplished through the

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purchase of the tottering house by John Parker, son of the gallant captain of the Lexington minute-men.
      "It was removed to the Parker farm, some two and a half miles away, and there used as a mechanics' workshop. It was there that I became familiar with its stout frame, cut doubtless from the primeval forest, and made from trees that may have had the blazes of the pioneer's axe. Neither the house nor barn on the Parker estate afforded such general attractions as the old, belfry offered to young and old."
      It was the workshop of a mechanic, John Parker, whose age exactly corresponded with that of the shop in which he plied his craft. In it the old soldiers and townsmen gathered to while away the hours of their infirmity; and in some retired nook, perhaps perched upon the huge timber in the loft where once hung the bell, were the boys of the farm, Parkers and Simondses, and their youthful associates, who there gave heed to the stories related in their hearing.
      Not the least thoughtful of the bystanders in the belfry workshop was Eli Simonds, who has long been "Uncle Eli" of the neighborhood, an honored official of the town. To this mechanic, John Parker, who was well on in his teens when his father was called to arms, the reveille of that April morning never got out of those rafters. He heard the clanging of the bell, saw his father grab

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his musket, and hastily leave the home and family in answer to the midnight alarm. The whole town afforded no more appropriate place for the soldiers to test their memories.
      Captain John Parker died, Sept. 17, 1775. He was in feeble health when at the head of the Lexington minute-men. He faced the British regulars, eight hundred strong, commanded by the impetuous Pitcairn. He also marched with a portion of his company to Cambridge on the 6th of May, and with a still larger detachment of them on the 17th of June.
      After the death of the captain, the relations of the two families, Parker and Simonds, were more intimate; for Eli's grandfather became a joint owner, and the two families of children mingled by a common right at the farm.

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