Benoni Chapin - Revolutionary War grave - Chicopee, Massachusetts

Old Burying Ground, Chicopee, Mass. - photo by JT Lynch

There was a village green in front of the first Meeting House in 1775. In Colonial times, every able-bodied man was required to attend training for the militia, and here is where they drilled. When the Revolution came, some 38 men of this village would fight in battles from the eastern part of the state to as far away as Fort Ticonderoga. The Chicopee Street Burying Ground, not too far from where they first drilled, is the final resting place of many of these men. 
In this photo we see the top of the headstone of Edward Chapin, Jr., who is buried with his father, Deacon Edward Chapin (who fought in the French and Indian War), and behind them, the grave of Benoni Chapin. We know little about Edward, Jr.'s service, but Benoni enlisted on Christmas Day 1776 as part of the Hampshire County Militia. He was 51 years old when he enlisted. 
In those days, there was no Hampden County; we were all part of Hampshire County then. Here is Benoni Chapin's service record: Private, Capt. Daniel Caldwell's co., Col. Timothy Robinson's detachment of Hampshire Co. militia; enlisted Dec. 25, 1776; discharged April 2, 1777; roll sworn to at Springfield; also, Capt. John Morgan's co.; enlisted Jan. 5, 1778; discharged July 1, 1778; service, 5 mos. 26 days; company detached from militia of Hampshire and Worcester counties to guard stores and magazines at Springfield and Brookfield; also, Capt. Joseph Browning's co., Col. Seth Murray's (Hampshire Co.) regt.; enlisted July 21, 1780; discharged Oct. 10, 1780; service 2 mos. 27 days; enlistment, 3 months; company raised to reinforce Continental Army; roll sworn to in Suffolk Co.; also, Corporal, same co. and regt.; order dated Springfield, March 22, 1782. for wages for 3 months service in 1780. Benoni, Private, Capt. Samuel Burt's co., Col. Elisha Porter's (Hampshire Co.) regt; enlisted July 22, 1779; discharged Aug. 25, 1779; service, 1 mo. 7 days, at New London, Conn. 
Source: Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution, 17 Vols., pp 304, 307.

He died in 1799 at the age of 73, at the dawning of the 19th century in a new country just 18 years old, that he helped to create.
Jaqueline T. Lynch is the author of States of Mind: New England; The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts; Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain - 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts; and Beside the Still Waters, a novel of the making of the Quabbin Reservoir

Minuteman Statue - Mosman book - Concord and Chicopee, Mass.

Happy Independence Day! The Minuteman statue at the Concord Bridge in Minute Man National Park was made here in Chicopee under the direction of Silas Mosman, Jr. and his son, Melzar Mosman at the Ames Manufacturing Company, designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French. It commemorates the stand the local farmers took against the British Army in the first days of the Revolutionary War. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson called it "The Shot Heard Round the World." I'm currently writing a book on the work of Melzar Mosman, and welcome input in the research process from any collector, or knowledgeable source in history, sculpture, or bronze casting. Thank you! Photo by Jacqueline T. Lynch.

Washington's message on the Touro Synagogue

George Washington visited the oldest synagogue in this nation (founded in the 1600s) at Newport, Rhode Island.  His remarks on the Touro Synagogue are a reflection of, and support for, the new Bill of Rights.

“...every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

He wrote this in August 1790.

"For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.^"

He meant it.  We should mean it, too. 

Happy Hanukkah and blessings to all our countrymen of all faiths.

Prince Hall - Revolutionary Soldier, Patriot, and Advocate for Civil Rights- Boston, Mass.

Photo by JT Lynch

Prince Hall was a Revolutionary soldier, born a slave in 1735, and freed a month after the Boston Massacre.  He earned his living, in part, as a leather craftsman, and created five leather drum heads for the Boston Regiment of Artillery in 1777.

Mr. Hall was a Bostonian who enlisted, who may have fought at Bunker Hill.  He was a voter, a taxpayer, owned his own leather shop and a house in Boston.  He got involved in advocacy for the rights of Boston’s African American community, and founded the world’s first lodge of black Masons, African Lodge No. 1, now named the Prince Hall Grand Lodge—the African Lodge of the Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons of Boston.  This was the world's first organized society in America devoted to social, political, and economic improvement.  He spoke out against slavery, and spoke out against the lack of schools for black children, and created one in his own home.

He had hoped that blacks who served in the Continental Army during the Revolution would earn full citizenship as a result of their loyalty and sacrifice.

In his senior years, he spoke at the African Lodge in June 1797, about mob violence against blacks: 

Patience, I say; for were we not possessed of a great measure of it, we could not bear up under the daily insults we meet with in the streets of Boston, much more on public days of recreation. How, at such times, are we shamefully abused, and that to such a degree, that we may truly be said to carry our lives in our hands, and the arrows of death are flying about our heads....tis not for want of courage in you, for they know that they dare not face you man for man, but in a mob, which we despise...

Photo by JT Lynch

He died in 1807 at the age of 72.  He is buried at the Copps Hill Burial Ground in Boston, a cemetery on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.  The revolution continues, in South Carolina, and everywhere a human being yearns for Independence Day from those are inhuman.

I wish you all a happy Independence Day.

************************************

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer. You can also order it from my Etsy shop.

If, however, you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

Yankee Lingo Trivia

A few fun trivia questions from Yankee Talk - A Dictionary of New England Expressions, compiled by Robert Hendrickson and published by Facts On File, Inc., 1996.


See if you can identify these words or expressions:


afterclap

all smiles and johnnycake

Boston strong boy

bulkhead

Downeaster

muckle

Watch Night


Answers next week.

Revolutionary War Grave - Coventry, Connecticut

In honor of the coming Memorial Day holiday, a lonely windswept hilltop grave in Coventry, Connecticut.  Here lies Major Thomas Brown, who saw action in the Revolutionary War, and survived the conflict.

Connecticut River Valley Tobacco Growing

This sign showing a giant green splotch on the Connecticut River Valley, illustrates the extent of commercial tobacco growing in western New England.  From about Portland, Connecticut, following the river up to lower Vermont, we see a huge swath of land that more or less replicates the gouging of the glacier that once sat here.  Maybe its peeling back layers of earth as it retreated is the reason for this area’s having some of the most fertile growing land in New England.  Certainly left behind a lot of dinosaur footprints.

The first European settlers here were quick to notice, and quick to exploit, the fertile land, and started growing tobacco as early as the 1650s.  The native tribes hereabouts, however, had grown tobacco for their own use long before that.

Photo Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum

The colonists smoked it in clay pipes then, and some was shipped back to the mother country, but it is said that Connecticut’s Revolutionary War hero (and French and Indian War) Israel Putnam, bringing tobacco seeds back from Cuba was the start of the growing of this special tobacco for rolling into cigars.  We visted his monument in this previous post.

 

Photo Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum

Commercial tobacco growing, mainly on small family farms, took off in the 1800s, when cigar smoking among men became popular.  The kind grown here was called Broadleaf, the outer wrapper of the cigar.  Competition from Sumatra later in the century inspired growers hereabouts to turn over a new leaf, so to speak, in tobacco growing.  In the early 1900s they came up with the idea of erecting enormous light cloth tents over the tobacco fields, which by cutting direct sunlight and increasing the humidity of the atmosphere underneath the tenting, replicated the growing conditions in Sumatra.  This is called Shade tobacco, and it is considered the finest cigar wrapper.

The tobacco farms, not just small family farms anymore but also large commercial plantations (part of Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts was once the site of the American Sumatra company plantation), was a huge influence on the economy of the Connecticut River Valley, and provided thousands of jobs.
 

Photo Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum

Local folks, including many teens, found work here, but tobacco growing is such a labor-intensive project, with a lot of work done by hand, that workers were sought from other parts of the country to work here seasonally.  One of the first drives to bring in outside workers occurred during World War II, when of course a lot of local men were called into the service.  During these years, many young people arrived from the South. One of them a young Martin Luther King, Jr.
 

Religious services, Photo Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum 

He arrived here in 1944, when he was just 15 years old.  He obtained a job on a tobacco farm in Simsbury, Connecticut that summer to earn money for college.  In The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (ed. Clayborne Carson, IPM, Time Warner, 1998), Dr. King recounts that he was surprised that he could attend a “white” church, and eat in any restaurant he wanted, because there were no segregation laws in the north.  “I had never thought that a person of my race could eat anywhere, but we ate in one of the finest restaurants in Hartford.”

He wrote home to his parents in June, 1944:

I am very sorry I am so long about writing but I have been working most of the time.  We are really having a fine time here and the work is very easy.  We have to get up every day at 6:00.  We have very good food.  And I am working kitchen so you see I get better food.

We have service here every Sunday about 8:00 and I am the religious leader we have a Boys choir here and we are going to sing on the air soon.  Sunday I went to church in Simsbury it was a white church…On our way here we saw some things I had never anticipated to see.  After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all the white people here are very nice.  We go to any place we want to and sit any where we want to.

Tell everybody I said hello and I am still thinking of the church and reading my bible.  And I am not doing any thing I would not do in front of you…

Your Son...

The adult Dr. King continues in his autobiography, “After that summer in Connecticut, it was a bitter feeling going back to segregation…I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect.”

Obviously, not all learning experiences on the tobacco farms were quite as profound as this young man’s, and later decades came to know labor unrest, with conditions that were not always satisfactory in the larger work camps.  Waves of other newcomers came to the Valley as temporary tobacco workers and stayed to make a home here, from Jamaica, from Puerto Rico, as well as from Central America, Haiti, Mexico, and Africa.

 Choir, workers from Jamaica, Photo Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum

The height of tobacco growing occurred in early 1920s when some 30,800 acres in Connecticut alone were devoted to this crop.  Today, there are only about 2,000 acres left.

This is due to a number of factors, in part to the value of real estate turning land over to industrial parks and shopping plazas, to the fact that cigarette smoking eclipsed the popularity of cigar smoking, and that younger generations have come to understand that smoking will kill you.

 Exhibit Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum, photo JT Lynch

Two excellent sources of information on the history of tobacco growing in the Connecticut River Valley, used for this article, are the Connecticut Public Television documentary “Connecticut’s Tobacco Valley” (produced and directed by Frank Borres,  2001), and the Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum.

 

Photo JT Lynch

 

This museum is comprised of a tobacco shed with machinery, implements, and tobacco, and a separate archives building containing many artifacts, exhibits, photos and books on this interesting aspect of western New England history.  It’s located in Windsor, Connecticut.  Have a look here at the website.

Another viewpoint of the story of tobacco farms in Connecticut will be discussed this Thursday on my Another Old Movie Blog when we take a look at “Parrish” (1961), which starred Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, Claudette Colbert, and Karl Malden.  It’s a lavish, Hollywood version of tobacco growing, but a lot of it was filmed right here in Windsor, Connecticut.  I hope you can join us.
 

First Christmas Tree in Windsor Locks, Connecticut

Local legend has it that the first time a Christmas tree was put up and decorated in the United States of America appears to have occurred in Windsor, Connecticut.  A German POW in the Revolutionary War wanted to mark Christmas with a symbol of home.

He was a mercenary soldier, part of the Hessian troops employed by the British.  His name was Hendrick Roddemore.  He was taken captive during the Battle of Bennington, Vermont in August 1777, where American commander General John Stark’s colonial troops defeated the British.  Have a look here at our previous post on the Bennington Battle Monument.

Hundreds of Hessian troops were taken prisoner, and many were transported to Boston, then transferred in small groups around the region.  Hendrick Roddemore was sent to the Pine Meadows section of Windsor, Connecticut on the Connecticut River.  Later the area became the separate town of Windsor Locks.

He was put in custody of Samuel Denslow, who owned a 100-acre farm.  In a small cabin here, perhaps a day or two before Christmas, 1777, Roddemore took the extraordinary action of cutting a small growing tree from outdoors and put it inside the cabin.  We can imagine simple decorations, and may well imagine the curiosity of his captors.  Not only were Christmas trees not used to celebrate Christmas in the United States at that time, but Christmas itself wasn’t usually celebrated in New England, where our Puritan founders still held sway over our consciousness.  Christmas was not widely celebrated here until the following century.  Even up until around World War II, Thanksgiving was the larger holiday in New England.

Christmas was something those New Yorkers did.

The small cabin on West Street is no longer there, but the Noden-Reed Farm is now the home of the Windsor Locks Historical Society, and there is a stone marker planted on what is reckoned to be the site of the first indoor Christmas tree in the United States.

USS Constitution - Old Ironsides

You can see Boston through the masts, which are truncated in this shot. The USS Constitution was undergoing a little refurbishment when these photos were taken two years ago. She’s presentable again, now on the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, when Constitution came to fame.

She was launched long before, however, in October 1797, in Boston, not far from where Constitution remains berthed, still a commissioned ship in the US Navy, still the oldest commissioned warship afloat. She last sailed, briefly, under her own power in 1997 as part of her 200th anniversary. That had been for the first time since 1881.

The War of 1812 was such a convoluted episode in our history. President James Madison declared war on Great Britain over “Free Trade and Sailors Rights”, the latter a complaint over the nasty habit of British warships to increase the size of their navy by kidnapping US sailors.

New England nearly seceded over the war at the Hartford Convention, not wanting an interruption of trade with Great Britain.

We invaded Canada a few times, and were repelled each occasion. The final hopes of an autonomous state of Indian tribal control in the Midwest (or Northwest Territory as it was called then) -- supported by Great Britain, were dashed.

The peace treaty was finally signed in Belgium in 1815, but the Battle of New Orleans happened after that. Britain juggled the Napoleonic War at the same time, but when they finally dispatched Napoleon in 1814, they found time to burn Washington, D.C. And Francis Scott Key observed from the deck of a ship wondering in poetic form if the flag, or “Star Spangled Banner” was still there.


That’s a lot of unrelated, overlapping stuff to happen in war not often remembered today.

Though she did defeat four British warships in battle, the USS Constitution’s contributions did not affect the outcome of the War of 1812, but it provided enormous symbolism of a strong new nation. If the Revolutionary War gave us our independence from Great Britain, the War of 1812 solidified it politically, militarily, and especially psychologically. It was really our first taste of nationalism. A few decades after that Era of Good Feeling, national unity dissipated, bitter regionalism came back and led to the American Civil War.

The USS Constitution continues to remain an important symbol. “Old Ironsides”, a nickname earned in the War of 1812 after defeating the HMS Guerriere because the enemy’s cannonballs seemed to bounce off her, was also immortalized, of course, in poetry. This famous work of 1830 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was used to promote the ship’s value for American prestige and to stir public support for it not to be decommissioned. The public responded, as it always does, to this sleek frigate with the patriotic legend attached.

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

She is not plucked apart, or when she is, she’s always put back together again. For more on the USS Constitution, have at look at the official Navy website, and here for the museum at the Charlestown Navy Yard where you can visit the ship.

Bunker Hill Monument - Charlestown, Massachusetts

Pausing to chat, a couple of Colonial soldiers visit with the statue of one of their leaders, Major General Joseph Warren here inside the monument at Bunker Hill.

The battle in June 1775 was actually won by the British, but it was a hollow victory. They lost many more men, and the Colonials -- specifically the militias of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire -- proved they could stand up to the British regular army.  They carried the flag of New England, which you can see in this previous post.

Warren, who had received his promotion to Major General only days before, had actually fought as a volunteer private. He was President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and his death was a great loss to the Colonials. Historical artist John Trumbull depicted the event in his famous painting: The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17,1775.

Original in collection of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Photographic reproduction in Public Domain.

Happy Independence Day. Remember what it cost.

Old Granary Burial Ground - Boston

The small boy dressed in Colonial clothing striding across the Old Granary Burial Ground is not a ghost, even though the modern-dressed boys in the background don’t appear to see him.

Here on Tremont Street in Boston, the burial ground dates from 1660, and among the famous names you’ll see on some of the headstones is John Hancock and Paul Revere. You might meet the occasional historical interpreter as well, dressed appropriately and giving you a tour.

Unless it’s a ghost.

For more on the Old Granary Burial Ground, have a look at this site.



A Stroll from New Hampshire to Vermont

A little walk from New Hampshire to Vermont involves a little bridge.  Here we begin in Hanover, New Hampshire in the northern part of the state.

Across the Connecticut River in Norwich, Vermont, we come upon the site of a first settler, cabin long gone.  Only the historical marker to tell the tale.







Brick and Mortar, Steel and Glass - Boston Architecture

A bastion of stalwart, stubborn history, a Federalist style building is flanked, almost threateningly, by later 19th century examples of architectural prowess.  I love the flag.  It is like an exclamation point on the little building.

But, the bigger brick buildings shouldn't be too cocky. 

What goes around, comes around, as the 19th century gets dwarfed by the 20th.



Hessians in North New Salem, Massachusetts

On this day, like the rock says, 1,000 Hessian mercenaries passed through the small village of North New Salem in central Massachusetts.   It was early days in the Revolutionary War, so any victory, such as their defeat and surrender at Saratoga, New York, was welcome news.   They were marched to Boston.   I wonder how many made it back to their homes in Europe, or lived to fight another day?

Massachusetts Old State House - Original and One Copy

A copy can sometimes tell its own original story. We mentioned the Avenue of States at the Eastern States Exposition a couple of weeks ago in this post. Above is the replica of the Old Massachusetts State House.

Here is the original. Built in 1713, it was the scene of the debate for Revolution by men such as John Hancock, James Otis, John Adams, and Sam Adams. Just outside its door one terrible night, the Boston Massacre roused a colony to rebel.

There had once been the figure of a lion atop the building’s façade, with a unicorn on the other side. These were symbols of the British monarchy. They’re not here now.

But you see them on the replica at the fairgrounds in West Springfield, which was built in 1919.

The Old Statehouse served until 1798, when the new one was built, and this building was turned over to a variety of uses, such as Boston’s city hall, a merchant exchange, and shops. Since 1881 when the Bostonian Society restored the building, it has served as a museum, one of the stops on the Freedom Trail.

The replica, back in western Mass., is noted for selling quantities of maple syrup during the fair, and for this unwieldy but impressive replica of The Mayflower.

No massacre occurred outside its door, but there are quite long lines during the fair. We may have a different sense of hardship in the 21st century.

For more on the Old Statehouse (the real one), have a look at this website.

Paul Revere's Ride

Before we say goodbye to April, we might recall that solid, rhythmic dirge, “On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five/Hardly a man is now alive/Who remembers that famous day and year.”

Many of us remember that famous day and year only because of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”. We coming into several months (and years, probably), of Civil War commemorations on the 150th anniversary of that war, but one thing we might also remember is that the turmoil between the North and South, even before the war actually started, coincided with a renewed interest in the American Revolution. Longfellow’s poem, published in 1860, was part of this nostalgia for a time when American ideals seemed more cohesive and the country moved as one with a greater sense of purpose.

The Old North Church

It may not have really been that way, of course. The days of the Revolution were just as fraught with disagreement and tension among Americans as in later days, but nostalgia always makes us think the olden days were better, and people were better.

Paul Revere, though a man of some repute in Boston for being a craftsman, businessman, solid citizen, and like many of his generation, a Revolutionary War vet, really didn’t come into the national pantheon of American heroes until Longfellow made him a hero in his poem.

His deed was to be sent by Dr. Joseph Warren, on the night of April 18, 1775, to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that they were about to be arrested by British soldiers. Revere was rowed across the Charles River from Boston to Charleston by two other revolutionaries, borrowed a horse, saw that the signal of two lanterns hanging in the church bell tower meant the British were going to cross into Cambridge over the water route rather than on the march out Boston Neck, and delivered the warning.

Then a couple of other riders joined in spreading the alarm, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott. The trio decided to continue on to Concord. All three of them were arrested by British soldiers, and Prescott and Dawes managed to escape, but Paul Revere was held for a time, then released, though they confiscated his borrowed horse.

We don’t hear too much about Dawes or Dr. Prescott, not having poems written about them, but Dawes’ part in the adventure is recounted here on his grave marker at the King’s Chapel Burial Ground in Boston.

Paul Revere’s grave marker, at the Old Granary Burial Ground is without any such description, but you don’t need a commemorative marker when Longfellow writes a poem about you.

Oh, and he’s also got this equestrian statue, and that’s the Old North Church in the background. As you can see, he still rides to spread the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm.

Have a look here for more on Paul Revere at this website. Longfellow’s poem is below, for we can never think of Paul Revere without thinking of the poem. 

Paul Revere's Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860.


LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.


He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."


Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.


Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.


Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the somber rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.


Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"


A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.


Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and somber and still.


And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!


A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.


He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.


It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.


It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.


It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.


And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.


You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled, --
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.


So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!


For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.