P 74 
 
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 THE CONCORD 
 MINUTE MAN 
 
 ...By... 
 
 GEORGE TOLMAN 
 
» J » •■ » ,' ■ • > ■ • • 
 
 THE 
 
 CONCORD MINUTE MEN 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 CONCORD ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY 
 
 March 4, 1901 
 
 By GEORGE TOLMAN 
 
 Secretary of the Society 
 
 Published by the Society 
 
r' 
 
 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 
 
 '-ar-e 
 
 A d 
 
 t-c^-r 
 
 '^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 ment of its funds in historical documents of this 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 
 
 014 014 590 7 
 
 T. Todd, Printer 
 Boston