The Concord minute men;

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THE CONCORD
MINUTE MAN

...By...

GEORGE TOLMAN

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THE

CONCORD MINUTE MEN

READ BEFORE THE

CONCORD ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY

March 4, 1901

By GEORGE TOLMAN

Secretary of the Society

Published by the Society

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CONCORD ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY

Established September, 1886

Executive Committee for 1900-01

President.

THE HON. JOHN S. KEYES .

SAMUEL HOAR, Esq

THE REV. LOREN B. MACDONALD

THOMAS TODU

GEORGE TOLMAN ....
CHARLES H. WALCOTT, Esq.
EDWARD W. EMERSON, M.D.

:- Vice- Presidents.

Treasurer.
Secretary.

House on Lexington Road

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'^V..

THE CONCORD MINUTE MEN.

March, igoi.

IT will perhaps be remembered that at the January
meeting of this Society, I mentioned that the
original muster roll of Capt. Charles Miles' Concord
Company of Minute Men, that was engaged at the
North Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775, was about
to be sold at the auction of the Dr. Charles E. Clark
collection in Boston, and that I purjaosed to make
as high a bid for it as I thought the Society would
stand. It is perhaps unnecessary now to remark that
I did not get it, although my representative went
higher for it than I, with the natural conservatism of
old age, should have ventured, and the precious docu-
ment was at last knocked down to a New York
publishing house for $275. Of course they expect
to make money on it, and the ultimate destination
of this roll, which ought never to have left the Town
of Concord, will be the private library of some mil-
lionaire collector, or the cabinet of some historical
society that can afford to make a permanent invest-
ment of its funds in historical documents of this
sort. Of one thing, however, we may be reasonably
confident, and that is the future safety of this im-
portant and interesting paper. It can never be lost
or destroyed, or left disregarded to turn up at some
time in the distant future, in a second-hand book

^(i2558'

ahpp at .the price of a shilling, for its value has
/how: been-, permanently fixed at above a minimum
of $275, and not only will its present possessors
take every care for its preservation, but also, if it
ever comes upon the market again, numbers of
anxious collectors will be ready to compete, at still
higher figures, for the privilege of taking equal care
of it forever. If the Concord Antiquarian Society,
or its representative at the sale, had wanted to buy
the document as a speculation — to sell it again
at an advanced figure — it might have afforded to
raise the bluff still higher, but of course this idea
is quite out of the question, for it would have been
a point of honor, if the paper could possibly have
been brought back to Concord, that it should have
remained here forever.

But it was only about twenty-five years ago, at
or near the time of the centennial celebration of
Concord Fight, that Dr. Clark offered to sell this
same document for twenty-five dollars to Concord.
I remember the incident quite distinctly, and also
that the Doctor showed me the paper, — as also
some other Concord papers (to be spoken of later)
that had come into his possession. I had no funds
to buy it with, but the matter was referred to some
of the principal public-spirited men of the town (I
have the impression that it was to the Trustees of
the Public Library, but I am not confident on that
point), and they concluded that it was not worth
while to invest, and not dignified to buy on specu-
lation, so the purchase was not made.

Dr. Clark was at that time just beginning his
collection of American portraits, prints, autographs,

etc., especially of those connected with the period
of the Revolution, — or rather, he was just beginning
to be known as a collector, for, as he told me, he
had been from his boyhood addicted to picking up
such things as he could find them, an easier thing
to do then, and earlier, than it is now — and in the
following years he got together a mass of such
material, hardly equalled by any collection in the
country, so large, indeed, that the catalogue com-
prised over 2,000 numbers, and it took three days
to dispose of them by auction. I think from watch-
ing a part of the sale that, considered merely as a
money-making business, it would hardly have been
possible for him to have invested in any recognized
mercantile business the same money he put into
this collection, in the same amounts and at the
same times, and to have realized so great a profit
from his investment.

Since the Society's last meeting, perhaps on
account of the sale of this very document, I have
had inquiries from three different persons, in widely
separated places, as to the Concord Minute Men, of
whom there is no list in the Massachusetts Revo-
lutionary archives at the State House, though there
are rolls of all the minute men who turned out
from other towns on the 19th of April, 1775.
Obiter dicta, these rolls are docketed and indexed
" Lexington Alarm " lists, when in point of fact
Lexington was only an incident in the affair of that
date. Concord was the objective point of General
Gage's raid into the country, and Lexington, as well
as Cambridge and Menotomy, happened to be on
the road that led thither. Nobody in the whole

Province was alarmed about Lexington, — everybody
was anxious for Concord and the precious war
material there deposited, the very heart and vitals
of the incipient rebellion. The minute men of Essex
and Worcester and Middlesex, when they turned
out that morning, turned out for the defense of
Concord, not of Lexington ; they all knew where
Concord was and the road that led to it, but out-
side of our own county, it is doubtful if one
minute man in a dozen had ever heard of Lexing-
ton, or at any rate could tell whether it was north,
south, east, or west of Concord. (I always think it
my duty to protest the claims of Lexington, even
though the official archives of the Commonwealth
appear as her indorser.) The reason that the list
of Concord Minute Men does not appear in the so-
called " Lexington Alarm " lists, however, is not as
might perhaps appear to a superficial observer,
because Concord was not alarmed about the safety
of Lexington. It was because, some years after the
event, an appropriation of money was made to pay
the men who had rushed to the defense of Concord
for their military service and travel, and the Captains
from all over the Province sent in their properly
attested muster rolls, most, if not all, of which have
been preserved to this day. Concord paid her own
soldiers, and though I know of no other enlistment
roll than this one of which I have been speaking,
the names of nearly all of them appear in the
Town's records, scattered along through several
pages, as they were paid by the Town Treasurer
from time to time, but not so arranged as to make
it certain what particular company any individual
soldier belonged to.

One of my correspondents appears to be a little
confused by the following paragraph, which he quotes
from Shattuck's " History of Concord," page iio: —

" There were at this time in this vicinity, under
rather imperfect organization, a regiment of militia
and a reg't of minute men. The ofificers of the
militia were James Barrett, Col.; Nathan Barrett and
Geo. Minott of Concord Captains," [and others from
other towns whom it is not necessary to name here].
" The officers of the minute men were Abijah Pierce
of Lincoln, Col. ; Thos. Nixon of Framingham, Lt.
Col. ; John Buttrick and Jacob Miller, Majors ; Thos.
Hurd of Ea. Sudbury, Adj't; David Brown and Chas.
Miles of Concord, Isaac Davis of Acton, Wm. Smith
of Lincoln, Jonathan Wilson of Bedford, John Nixon
of Sudbury, Captains. The officers of the minute
men had no commissions ; their authority was de-
rived solely from the suffrages of their companions.
Nor were any of the companies formed in regular
order " \_i.e., as the line was formed on the hill by
Lieut. Joseph Hosmer, acting as Adjutant].

Our common use of the word " militia " to
designate a certain organized, disciplined, and uni-
formed foi'ce, such as is called in most of the States
the " National Guard," is responsible for this con-
fusion. The " militia," then as now, was the entire
body of citizens of military age (with certain excep-
tions, such as clergymen and paupers, for instance).
This body of militia was mustered and paraded one
or more times in the year, under officers whose com-
missions ran in the name of the King, and were
signed by the royal Governor. They were then, as
now, a part of the authorized forces of the govern-

8

ment, liable to be called out en masse, or by means
of a draft, at the call of the constituted authorities.
Many of us remember how in the late Civil War, a
draft was made from the militia of the United
States, to fill up the depleted army. The same
process of drafting from the militia had been fol-
lowed in the various Indian wars of the Colony, and
later, in the Province wars of the eighteenth century.
The custom of mustering the militia annually or
semi-annually continued until about half a century
ago, until it became an object of popular ridicule
and degenerated simply to burlesque, when it was
very properly discontinued. I remember in my boy-
hood that the walls of my grandfather's shop were
papered with citations, calling him and his workmen
and apprentices to military duty. He was merely a
militia man, and his citations called upon him as
"being duly enrolled" . . . " to appear armed and
equipped," while Clark Munroe, who worked for him,
being a member of the Light Infantry, a " chartered
company," was cited as "duly enlisted" . . . " to
appear armed, equipped and uniformed."

Long before the outbreak of actual hostilities in
1775, General Gage, acting Governor of the Province,
had become suspicious of the militia. He had the
authority to call them out, whenever necessary, for
the forcible suppression of mob violence, and the
enforcement of law and order, exactly as the Governor
of the Commonwealth has today. But in the then
temper of the people he was inclined, as was Hotspur
in the matter of the spirits, to ask "will they come
when I do call for them ? " and was obliged to
acknowledge to himself that they most certainly

would not, or if they did, they would range them-
selves on the side of revolution rather than on that
of the established legal authorities. So, as far as
possible, the assembling of the militia was prevented,
and the annual musterings were discontinued. Even
" the chartered companies," answering somewhat to
our " Volunteer Militia " or " National Guard " of
today, were frowned upon, and as far as possible
disarmed, though they did manage to save to them-
selves some pieces of artillery, the property of the
Province, which afterward did their duty in the pro-
vincial army. The commissions of the militia offi-
cers were revoked in some few cases, but for the
most part had not been recalled. Practically these
commissions were all that was left of the organiza-
tion of the militia of the Province, months before the
19th of April, 1775, and owing to the long discon-
tinuance of " trainings," it was simply this skeleton
of a few commissions that formed the " Regiment
of Militia under rather imperfect organization," and
commanded by Col. James Barrett, of which Shattuck
speaks.

The throttling, by Governor Gage, of the Gen-
eral Court, the constitutional legislature of the Prov-
ince, led to the assembling in Concord on the iith
of October, 1774, of a body of delegates chosen from
the several towns in the same manner as the Repre-
sentatives in General Court were chosen, and for
much the same purposes as were the deliberations
and actions of that body. This new body of dele-
gates called itself a Provincial Congress, and held
three sessions : the first, of five days in October, at
Concord ; the second, of two weeks in the same

lO

month ; and the third, of nearly three weeks in
November and December, at Cambridge. One of
the first proceedings of this body was to take into
consideration the disorganized condition of the
mihtia, and to take measures to form a new force,
under its own orders, and independent of the royal
governor. The committee's report on this matter,
which was adopted unanimously, sets forth that,
whereas a formidable body of troops are already
arrived at the metropolis of the Province, and more
are on the way, with the express design of sub-
verting the constitution of the Province ; and
whereas the Governor has attempted to use his
troops against the inhabitants of Salem, and has
fortified Boston against the country, and has unlaw-
fully seized upon and kept certain arms and am-
munition provided at the public cost for the use of
the Province, "at the same time having neglected
and altogether disregarded the assurances from this
Congress of the pacific disposition of the inhabitants
of this Province," ..." notwithstanding that the
Province has not the most distant design of attack-
ing, annoying or molesting his Majesty's troops
aforesaid" — in view of all these things a Committee
of Safety shall be appointed, who shall, among other
powers and duties, "have power and they are hereby
directed whenever they shall judge it necessary for
the safety and defense of the inhabitants of this
Province and their property, to alarm, muster and
cause to be assembled, with the utmost expedition,
and completely armed, accoutred and supplied with
provisions sufficient for their support in their march
to the 23lace of rendezvous, such and so many of

II

the militia as they shall judge necessary for the
ends aforesaid, and at such place or places as they
shall judge proper, and them to discharge as soon
as the safety of this Province shall permit."

Other resolutions provided for the purchase of
arms, ammunition, provisions and all kinds of mili-
tary stores, and for their accumulation and care at
Concord and Worcester. The new force was to be
"enlisted" to the number of at least one fourth of
the militia. That is to say, it was to comprise one
fourth of the men of military age in the Province,
and was to be raised not by a draft, but by volun-
tary enlistment. This was practically necessary.
There were, as the Congress well knew, and as sub-
sequent events amply proved, very many citizens
who were opposed to the action of the Congress, and
to any measures which looked like forcible resist-
ance to the established government, even though
they might not entirely approve of the course of
Governor Gage and the constituted authorities. It
was to keep these citizens quiet and to stifle their
objections to measures that were plainly revolu-
tionary, and that in the very nature of things must
lead inevitably to open hostilities, that the Congress
declared that it " will consider all measures tending
to prevent a reconciliation between Britain and these
Colonies, as the highest degree of enmity to the
Province." The committee that drew up this reso-
lution, and the Congress that adopted it, knew per-
fectly well that the very measures they were taking
would tend and were tending to " prevent a recon-
ciliation between Britain and her Colonies." They
knew also that in the clash of arms for which they

12

were preparing with such feverish haste, it would
be imperatively necessary that they should have a
military force on which they could depend, a force
of men who had taken up arms of their own
volition, and with full knowledge that such taking
of arms might, and almost certainly would, lead to
open rebellion and treason. So, by the process of
voluntary enlistment in the new force, the Congress
weeded out the loyalists from the ranks of the
militia, and assured itself of an army that could be
relied upon, made up of men who knew the risk
that they were assuming.

It was this force of men to which the name
of Minute Men was applied. This appears to have
been at first a popular name for the force, doubt-
less derived from the terms of the enlistment paper,
which was as follows : —

I. We, whose names are hereunto subscribed,
will to the utmost of our power defend His Majesty
King George the Third, his person, crown and
dignity.

II. We will at the same time, to the utmost
of our power and abilities, defend all and every of
our charter rights, liberties and privileges ; and will
hold ourselves in readiness at a minute s warning,
with arms and ammunition thus to do.

III. We will at all times and in all places
obey our officers chosen by us, and our superior
officers, in ordering and disciplining us, when and
where said officers shall think proper.

These terms of enlistment were drawn up by a
committee of this Town of Concord, and reported
to a town meeting, January 9, 1775, on which date

13

and at which meeting the town voted to pay each
"minute man" at a certain rate per diem for ten
months. This is the first use of the word " minute
man " that I have been able to find in any officially
recorded document or recoi'd of proceedings, from
which fact I am led to infer that the word was
coined in Concord; a happy inspiration of some one
of our local patriots, to distinguish this yet-to-be-
created army of volunteers, and that the apposite-
ness and significance of the term caused it to spread
all over the Province, from this great centre and
vital spot of the organization of the revolutionary
movement.

If I am correct in this inference (and I am
fairly sure that I am), to Concord belongs not only
the honor of being the spot on which " was made
the first forcible resistance to British aggression,"
but also of being the birthplace of the very name
which for 125 years has been the synonym for a
soldier of liberty. The term " minute man " appears
for the first time on the records of the Provincial
Congress, in the minutes of its proceedings of April
10, 1775, when that body was sitting in Concord,
but little more than a week before the minute men
received their " baptism of fire."

Mr. Shattuck informs us that on Thursday,
January 12, 1775, a meeting was held to enlist the
men, under the articles that I have just read, at
which the Rev. Wm. Emerson preached a sermon
from Psalms Ixiii: 2, and about sixty enlisted. They
could n't do anything in those days except with the
concomitance of more or less preaching, but I con-
fess I am not theologian enough, nor soldier enough,

14

to see the peculiar appositeness to the occasion, of
the text, " To see thy power and thy glory, so as I
have seen thee in the sanctuary," and if Shattuck
were not so thoroughly trustworthy in theological
matters, albeit sometimes a little bit shaky in his-
torical statements, I should be inclined to fancy that
he had cited the wrong chapter and verse.

However, this date, January 12, 1775, and its
story of sixty enlistments, brings us back once more
to our own text, from which I fear we have widely
divagated, the Muster Roll of Captain Charles Miles'
Company. Doubtless his Company was the first
one to be filled up, and includes the larger part of
the sixty who enlisted on January 12 — a circum-
stance which makes it doubly to be regretted that
the original roll of honor of the Revolutionary War
has passed irrevocably out of our possible possession.
The document begins : —

"Concord, January 17th, 1775, then we chose our
officers and settled the Company of Minute Men
under the command of Capt. Charles Miles." Then
follow the names which I will read here ; though in
general a list of names is uninteresting reading, still
it is well to remember that these men were the
pioneers, the very advance guard of that great army
"which gave liberty to these United States;" They
were: Captain, Charles Miles; Lieutenants, Jonathan
Farrar and Francis Wheeler ; Sergeants David Hart-
well, Amos Hosmer, Silas Walker, Edward Richard-
son ; Corporals, Simeon Hayward, Nathan Peirce,
James Cogswell ; Drummer, Daniel Brown ; Fifer,
Samuel Derby ; Privates, Joseph Cleasby, Simeon
Burrage, Israel Barrett, Daniel Hoar, Ephraim

IS

Brooks, Wm. Burrage, Joseph Stratton, Stephen
Brooks, Simon Wheeler, Ebenezer Johnson, Stephen
Stearns, Wm. Brown, Jeremiah Clark, Jacob Ames,
Benjamin Hosmer, Joel Hosmer, Samuel Wheeler,
Wareham Wheeler, Oliver Wheeler, Jesse Hosmer,
Amos Darby, Solomon Rice, Thaddeus Bancroft,
Amos Melvin, Samuel Melvin, Nathan Dudley,
Oliver Parlin, John Flag, Samuel Emery, John Cole,
Daniel Cole, Barnabas Davis, Major Raly, Edward
Wilkins, Daniel Farrar, Oliver Harris, Samuel Jewel,
Daniel Wheat, John Corneall, Levi Hosmer.

There they are, fifty-two of them in all. You
will have noticed how many of the fa))iily names are
still upon our list of inhabitants, — how many of
them are to be found also in Concord's latest list
of young heroes and patriots, our boys who turned
out at their country's call, less than three years ago.
There are thirty-six family names in this muster
roll of Captain Miles' Company, and of these, twenty-
one are names of families that had been settled in
Concord for more than one hundred years. Other
old families (Buttrick, Flint, Hunt, Stow, Wood,
Wright, for instance) are absent from this roll, but
appear with full representation in the other com-
panies that were formed about the same time.

Following the list of names I have just read,
is a record of the meetings of the Company, twice
a week until the end of February, giving the names
of those who were " missing " at each meeting, —
that is, of those who did not turn out for drill, —
not many at any particular drill, showing quite
distinctly the conscientious enthusiasm with which
these young farmers applied themselves to the busi-

i6

ness, unfamiliar to most of them, of learning the
military exercise, and preparing to fire the cele-
brated "shot heard round the world" — which par-
ticular shot, by the way, I notice with great regret,
the newspaper and magazine writers have lately been
locating at Lexington. A separate slip of paper,
attached to the record as above, and in the same
handwriting, reads : —

"Concord, April 19, 1775, then the battel
begune, then we ware caled away to Cambridg —
and April the 20th then we was caled to arms to
Concord — and April the 21 then we was caled to
Arms to Concord — and April the 30 then we was
cald to Cambridge — and May the 5, 1775, then we
went on Card and stood twenty four ours — May
the 6, 1775 then went on Card and stood twenty four
ours, and found ourselves."

This standing on guard May 5 and 6 was, of
course, at the camp at Cambridge, and was doubtless
the last service performed by the Company ; at all
events, it finishes the record. From the fact that
they had to " find " themselves on the last day — that
is to say, that they were not furnished with rations
from the camp — I infer that that day's service was
" over time," as it were ; that they remained on duty
one day longer than they were absolutely required
to. Most of the names in Captain Miles' roll appear
immediately afterward in the muster roll of Captain
Abishai Brown's Company, which was with the army
at Cambridge until after the battle of Bunker Hill,
as appears from the orderly book of Sergeant
Nathan Stow. The name of " Minute Man " had by
that time been outgrown ; the men were no longer

17

emergency men ; the flimsy and sophistical pretense,
so long maintained by the Provincial Congress, of
loyalty to the person and crown of George the
Third had been once for all abandoned ; the men in
arms at Cambridge were ofificially recognized and
spoken of as " the army ; " henceforward there was
to be no argument but war, no softening of terms
and phrases, no veiling of rebellion and revolution
under any equivoque, no peace but such as could be
conquered.

It may perhaps be not out of the way to say
that Captain Miles and his fifty-one men were not
the only minute men of Concord. Another Com-
pany was raised by Captain David Brown at the
same time and on the same terms of enlistment, and
at a town meeting a few days later, it was reported
that the number in both companies was just one
hundred. The names of ninety-nine men appear
on the town records as having been paid by the
Town for their service as " minute men," but there
are seven names in the list I have just read of
Captain Miles' command that do not show in these
lists of payments. Possibly there were also some
men in Captain Brown's Company who did not
trouble themselves to draw from the Town the few
shillings to which they were entitled, but it is prob-
able that the list of names here given is practically
the muster roll of the company, which comprised : —
David Brown, Captain ; David Wheeler and Silas
Man, Lieutenants ; Abishai Brown, Emerson Cogs-
well and Amos Wood, Sera:eants ; Amos Barrett,
Stephen Barrett, Reuben Hunt and Stephen Jones,
Corporals; John Buttrick, Jr., Fifer, and Phineas

i8

Alin, Humphrey Barrett, Jr., Elias Barron, Jonas
Bateman, John Brown, Jr., Jonas Brown, Purchase
Brown, Abiel Buttrick, Daniel Buttrick, Oliver But-
trick, Tilly Buttrick, VVillard Buttrick, Wm. Buttrick,
Daniel Cray, Amos Davis, Abraham Davis, Joseph
Davis, Jr., Joseph Dudley, Charles Flint, Edward
Flint, Edward Flint, Jr., Nathan Flint, Ezekiel
Hagar, Isaac Hoar, David Hubbard, John Laughton,
David Melvin, Jr., William Mercer, John Minot, Jr.,
Thos. Prescott, Bradbury Robinson, Ebenezer Stow,
Nathan Stow, Thomas Thurston, Jotham Wheeler,
Peter Wheeler, Zachary Wheeler, Ammi White,
John White, Jonas Whitney, Aaron Wright. John
Buttrick was a Major of Minute Men, and he com-
pletes, as far as is now possible, the list of Concord's
soldiers who are entitled to that distinctive name.

This list is even more representative of Concord
than is that of Captain Miles' company, for forty-
one of the fifty-two names comprised in it are of
members of the old Concord families, men whose
ancestors had lived hez^e for at least three genera-
tions.

There were also two companies of the regular
" militia " in the town, which had charters and com-
missions under the royal authority, and which had
all along maintained some degree of organization
and were now recruited up to their full strength, be-
fore the organization of the minute men was begun.
One of these was a " horse company," a relic of the
old Indian fighting days, and this company, after-
ward as the Concord Light Infantry, kept up its
existence under its old charter until about fifty years
ago, when it was unfortunately disbanded, being at

19

the time of its disbandment the oldest chartered
miHtary company in New England, save and except-
ing only the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Com-
pany of Boston. Of these two Concord militia
companies, Nathan Barrett and George Minott were
Captains ; Joseph Hosmer, who acted as Adjutant at
the Bridge, was a Lieutenant in one of them, and
James Barrett was Colonel of the regiment to which
they both belonged.

All these Concord companies, both of minute
men and militia, were together once, before the 19th
of April, 1775, viz.: on the 13th of March, and the
battalion went through with some military exercises ;
of which, the one that seemed most important to
be mentioned by the devout historian of Concord
was the listening to a sermon by the Rev. Mr.
Emerson from the text, " Behold God himself is with
us for our Captain, and his Priests with sounding
trumpets to cry alarm against you," a highly appro-
priate text for a sermon just at that time : something
on the lines of Cromwell's order to " trust in God,
but keep your powder dry," only while Cromwell
seemed to imply that the latter part of the order
was of paramount importance, the minister, as per-
haps bound by his priestly ofifice, appears to rely
much more upon his assurance of the divine favor
than upon the practical matter of detail implied in
the condition of the ammunition.

This 13th of March was a Sunday. It was on
the very next Sunday, — the 20th — that two of
General Game's engfineer ofificers visited Concord in
disguise, and were entertained by the Hon. Daniel
Bliss, with the result that, their business being dis-

20

covered, the second Sunday was hardly less full of
excitement than the first.

When the line of the patriots came to be
formed on the slope of Punkatasset Hill on the
morning of the 19th of April, there were present
companies or parts of companies from Concord and
from the adjacent towns, her daughters; but what
with the mixture of regular militia and minute men,
and the fact that so many of Concord's men were
absent from the field in the morning, engaged in
the paramount duty of removing to places of greater
security the precious stores of war material, the loss
of which would be a severer blow to the patriot
cause than would be any merely military defeat, it is
not to be wondered at that, as Shattuck says, " none
of the companies were formed in regular order."

It can never be known with any certainty, who
of the Concord soldiers were at the bridge when
the fight took place there. We have no muster
rolls of the two militia companies, and there are
many names preserved by tradition as having borne
arms on that day which are not to be found in the
lists I have read ; most of these persons were doubt-
less militiamen, like Thaddeus Blood, who died in
1844, and is recorded as " the last man in this town
that was at Concord Fight."

For many hours before the arrival of the British
soldiers, every man in the town (practically) had been
actively engaged in carting away to Stow and Acton
and Littleton, and even farther, the provisions and
military stores of which the town had been the
place of deposit. As the feeble and scattered line
began to form itself on the further side of the river,

21

these men came back from their errand singly or
in small groups, and sought as nearly as they could
their proper place in the ranks. Many of them of
course did not get back at all until after the little
skirmish at the bridge was over. But even those
did their duty as much, and doubtless with much
the same spirit, as did our Captain Charles Miles,
who, we are told, went into the battle with the same
feelings with which he went to church. The safety
of the military stores and supplies was the all-im-
portant object, which by vote of the Provincial Con-
gress had been made the especial duty of Colonel
James Barrett. If this object could have been
secured without firing a gun. Colonel Barrett and
his men would have been better pleased, for the
hastily formed, undisciplined and straggling little
army was far from being prepared, in any respect
of personnel or of war material, to lock horns with
the royal regiments, even if it had known how much
of military incompetence was concentrated in the
brain of the British General-in-Chief. It was Gen-
eral Gage's absolutely colossal faculty of blundering
that precipitated Concord Fight and the siege of
Boston. The patriots had been inclined to give
him some credit as a strategist and as a tactician,
and would willingly have postponed for a time the
wager of battle. This was evidently the meaning
of the often repeated and somewhat supererogatory
protestations of loyalty to "our gracious sovereign,
King Georsre the Third."

But if fighting must be precipitated, we cannot
doubt that every captain of minute men in the entire
Province was equally ready to declare, and equally

22

justified in declaring, with Captain Isaac Davis of
Acton, that he " had n't a man that was afraid to
go." You remember that besides Captain Davis,
Captain Smith of Lincoln and Captain Wilson of
Bedford had their companies at the scene of action
before the invading expedition got here, and that
Captain Parker had his men out on the Lexington
Common before that expedition had got out of the
mud of East Cambridge.

But to come back again within hailing distance
of our text; we have seen that the Minute Men
were to hold themselves in readiness at all times
" at a minute's warnins^ with arms and ammunition."
So strictly was this construed, that, on the authority
of tradition, it is stated that no man, after being
duly mustered in, allowed himself to be separated
from his arms for one moment, sleeping or waking.
At church, at the shop, on the farm or at the
market, the trusty gun, that had perhaps seen ser-
vice at Louisbourg thirty years before, or in Nova
Scotia in 1755, or had been carried by one of
Colonel John Cuming's men in the Northern ex-
pedition of 1758, or by one of Colonel Jonathan
Hoar's soldiers during the closing campaign of the
French war in 1760, now carefully repaired and put
in order for another spell of activity, stood always
ready to its owner's hand. What the new army of
freedom lacked in the niceties of military drill, it
made up for in knowing something of marksman-
ship ; what it wanted in formality, it compensated
for in constant readiness and watchfulness.

The men were to be assembled for drill twice
in each week, for three hours at each time, at /.$■.

23

8d., afterward increased to 2s., for each attendance,
not a high rate of pay, as we look at things today,
especially as each man found his own gun, the
"cartouch-box " alone being furnished at public
expense. Still, compared with what the town was
then paying for labor on the roads, and with the
ordinary going rates for mechanics' labor, it is
probably as much money as the most of them
would have earned at their regular vocations. A
few of the men had no firearms, and no funds to
buy any, and they were provided at the public ex-
pense ; only fifteen of them in all, for in those days
every farmer and mechanic owned some sort of a
gun, and generally knew how to shoot fairly well
with it. That was a point in which the rebels had
a decided advantage over the King's troops, among
whom marksmanship was considered no part of a
soldier's qualifications. (Even since the American
Civil War of less than forty years ago, a general
ofificer of the English army has declared in print,
in the pages of the United Service Gazette, that
" all that is necessary for an enlisted man to know
about shooting is to be able to point his gun
straight in front of him, and pull the trigger.")

Among the arms which the Province had caused
to be deposited at Concord, General Gage's spies
found here, as by their report to that commander,
"fourteen pieces of cannon (ten iron and four brass)
and two coehorns," or small mortars. Forty of the
Town's soldiers were detailed " to learn the exercise
of the cannon," and were called the Alarm Company.
There is no separate list of their names, but I find
one recorded reference to George Minott as Captain

24

of the Alarm Company, so I conclude that this
company was not really of minute men, but was one
of the regular militia companies of the town. They
could not have learned much of the artillery exercise
in the few weeks of late winter and early spring
that were ojDen to them, and, so far as I have been
able to discover, none of the Concord names appear
on the lists of " matrosses " in the army at Cam-
bridge after the investment of Boston began.

It was only two days before the fight at the
bridge, that the Province Committee of Safety, then
in session here, directed Colonel James Barrett to
have two of the cannon mounted for use, and the
others conveyed further into the country, and on
the morning of the 19th four of them were hastily
deported to Stow, and six of them were carried to
the outer districts of the town and carefully con-
cealed. It is a tradition that some of them were
hidden on Colonel Barrett's farm by laying them in
a furrow of a field that was being ploughed, and
turning another furrow over on them, and that this
operation was performed while the detachment of
British soldiers that had been to search the Colonel's
place were in plain sight of the field. Three of
the largest guns, twenty-four pounders, perhaps too
heavy to be quickly got out of the way, were
captured by the British in the village and disabled,
— but not so thoroughly that they could not be
repaired.

The existence of the organization of the Minute
Men, as such, was short, though their enlistment was
originally for the term of ten months. With the
shutting up of General Gage's army in Boston and

25

the establishment of the siege of that place, their
work was practically over. Their organization was
plainly meant to be merely temporary, — to provide
for a force of men who should remain in their own
homes, and pursue their regular employments, but
who should be ready at all times to meet the first
alarm of danger and face the first shock of battle,

— and nobly and bravely did they perform that duty,
not only the Minute Men of Concord, but those of
every other town in the Province. But for the
tedious life in an established camp, — for the trying
duty of keeping watch over a strong and resource-
ful enemy and preventing his escape from the trap
into which his own foolishness had led him, — for
the hard practical conditions of a besieging army

— there was needed a firmer and more military body,
with more perfect organization and a more conven-
tional standard of discipline. So the minute men
gradually faded away, and even before the battle of
Bunker Hill, only two months later, we find most
of the commissions vacant and the companies largely
broken up. A large part, indeed, much the larger
part, of the men re-entered the service, but it was
in newly constructed companies, and in very many
cases with new officers. In the case of some com-
panies, this change was almost imperceptible, and in
all it appears to have been gradual, and it was not
until the war was well advanced, certainly not until
after the Northern campaign of 1777, that the
"minute man" spirit and influence may be said to
have finally lapsed.

In the beginning of this paper, I spoke of some
other Concord documents in Dr. Clark's collection.

26

They have nothing to do with the minute men or
with the American revolution, but they are of some
interest to us, nevertheless. One of them, the most
valuable by far, was an original manuscript account
of the celebrated Lovewell's Fight with the Indians
at Pequawket in 1725, in the handwriting of Eleazer
Melvin of Concord, who with six others from this
place, of whom two were killed and two were
wounded, had a conspicuous share in that disastrous
battle. This is the only contemporaneous account
of the fight, written by one of the participants, that
has come down to our day. It has never been
printed, and has been entirely unknown. It was
doubtless the basis of the Rev. Thos. Symmes' uni-
versally accepted historical account, for Mr. Symmes
follows Melvin's manuscript verbatim in several
pages. This paper also brought a fabulous price at
the sale, and like the list of Captain Miles' minute
men, is now forever out of our reach. Another paper
that was in Dr. Clark's possession twenty-five years
ago, was a portion of the records of the old District
of Carlisle ; these leaves turned up later in the
Woburn Public Library, from which, I think, they
have since been redeemed.

All these papers were bought by Dr. Clark for a
very small sum, from a Lowell junk dealer about 1863.
At that time paper and paper-stock were enormously
high ; more than three times as much as before the
war, and about twelve times as much as now.
Country attics were rummaged by frugal and thrifty
housewives, to whom the temptation of ten or twelve
cents a pound for a lot of musty old letters and
account books that had cluttered up the garrets for

27

years, was irresistible. There was money in these
old things, and the good, ignorant people never
stopped to think, indeed, they did not know enough
to think, that they might even have a higher value
than for mere paper rags. Here and there was a
junk man who did know something, or who had
fallen in with some antiquary who had a liking for
old documents, — and those junk men got rich.
But for the most part the stuff was hauled away
to the nearest paper mill and converted into pulp.
It fairly brings the tears to one's eyes to think how
many priceless documents, how much of the raw
material of history, was irrecoverably disposed of in
that way — and how little there is now left.

All these papers of Dr. Clark's came in a lot
of such stuff cleared out as waste paper from the
house once occupied by John Hartwell, Clerk of
Old Carlisle, and by several generations of his de-
scendants. Captain Miles' muster roll is in the hand-
writing of David Hartwell, orderly sergeant of the
company, and son of this John. A Melvin marriage
in the Hartwell tribe brought Captain Eleazer's
account of the Lovewell Fight into the Hartwell
house. This accounts for all these papers, and for
their preservation down to the time they got into
the hands of the Lowell junk man, whose acquaint-
ance I am sorry not to have made thirty-eight years
ago, as Dr. Clark found him a very valuable and
profitable addition to his circle of acquaintance.

MAY 29 190/

11^'!^'^'^ °'' CONGRESS

0 014 014 590 7

T. Todd, Printer
Boston