On this day 250 years ago, the Concord militia received and began executing the order of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety instructing that certain ammunition and supplies stored in Concord be removed from the town or hidden. That order was issued just in time, because on that same day in Boston, General Gage ordered Lt. Col. Francis Smith:
You will march with the Corps of Grenadiers and Light Infantry put under your Command with the utmost Expedition and secrecy to Concord, and where you will seize and destroy all the Artillery and Ammunition Provisions Tents & all other military stores you can find, you will knock off one Trunion at least of each of the Iron Guns, and destroy the Carriages and beat in the Muzzles of the Brass ones so as to render them useless.
Before midnight on this day 250 years ago, almost 900 men commanded by Lt. Col. Smith had boarded boats and were rowed across Back Bay to Lechmere Point in Cambridge. As the first step in the raid, however, that morning 20 British officers and troops rode out of Boston on horseback across Boston Neck to patrol the roads between Boston and Concord and intercept Patriot messengers warning of the raid. From Longfellow’s poem we all know that Paul Revere rode out of Boston to warn of the raid, but he was not the only American who spread the alarm on that day that the British were coming.
Joseph Warren received word of Gage’s order to Smith shortly after Smith received it and learned in the evening that British troops were heading to boats on the Back Bay. He immediately dispatched Revere and William Dawes to ride to Lexington to warn Hancock and Samuel Adams who were staying at the home of Hancock’s cousin Rev. Jonas Clarke in Lexington. Dawes rode out of Boston on the Boston Neck taking the longer route to Lexington. Revere first went to Old North Church to send the signal that the British troops were going by water. Revere did not hang the lanterns in the church, but gave that task to Robert Newman and John Pulling who put up the lanterns while Thomas Bernard stood guard.
And the warning of the raid was spreading before Joshua Bentley and Thomas Richardson rowed Revere across the Back Bay. Col. William Conant of the Charlestown Militia was watching for the lantern signal and alerted his company and sent a messenger to Lexington before Revere arrived in Charlestown. Revere met with Conant and Richard Devens of the Charlestown Committee of Supplies to pass along the news and to mount the horse that Devens had borrowed from John Larkin for Revere to ride.
Other Patriot messengers besides Revere and Dawes were spreading the word of the British patrols. Devens and Abraham Watson had earlier that day encountered the advanced party of mounted British soldiers patrolling the roads and warned their fellow members of the Massachusetts Committees of Safety and Supplies staying in Menotomy (present-day Arlington, Massachusetts) — Elbridge Gerry, Jeremiah Lee and Azor Orne — and other Patriots to avoid the patrols. Elijah Sanderson, Solomon Brown and Jonathan Loring had encountered the British patrols and went to Lexington to warn the militia there.
As a result, the Lexington Militia had begun to assemble and had placed a guard on the Clarke House where Hancock and Adams were staying before the end of the day. In Groton, several miles to the northwest of Concord, the Patriots correctly surmised that the redeployment of cannon from Concord to their town meant that the British raid on Concord was underway. Nine Groton minutemen set out on the march to Concord that night and would arrive there before the British.
Although the first shots and deaths in the Concord raid would occur at Lexington on the next day, the first American casualty in the Concord raid happened on April 18. Josiah Nelson questioned one of the British officers on the patrol and was slashed on the head by the officer’s sword. Although Nelson was bleeding profusely from his scalp, he bandaged his wound and would join the fight against the British the next day.
Sources: https://www.discoverconcordma.com/articles/110-massachusetts-provincial-congress-britains-guiltless-children; Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride at 89-107; The Lexington-Concord Battle Road, Concord Chamber of Commerce at 3, 7-10.
On this day in 2025, there will be a reenactment in Boston on the 250th anniversary of the beginning of Paul Revere’s ride including the hanging of the lanterns in the Old North Church, and a reenactment in Lexington slightly in advance of the 250th anniversary of Revere’s arrival in Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British army was coming (Revere didn’t make it to Lexington until after midnight).
https://www.lexingtonhistory.org/patriotsday
On This Day In The Revolution 