The holiday known as Patriots Day marks the anniversary of the Battle of Concord and Lexington.
While the Fourth of July celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking the formal separation from England, Patriots Day commemorates the first battle of the Revolutionary War. And yet Patriots Day is only a state holiday, and a Monday holiday at that.
There were a great many Wilmington men who responded for the call to arms on the night of April 18-19, 1775. And while Concord and Lexington are not in Wilmingtons back yard, they are close neighbors. The Minute Men from Wilmington had only 17 miles to march that night.
Boston and the towns of Eastern Massachusetts were hotbeds of action in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War. The Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party are well-known events that occurred in the years before the actual fighting began.
The division between the colonists and the King began over the issue of taxation. About 1761, the British began an effort to be more efficient in collecting taxes on molasses on ships entering the port of Boston. Molasses might not seem like much of an issue, unless you consider that it was used to make rum, which meant that a lot of molasses went through the port.
Subsequently, more taxes were implemented. In 1765, the Stamp Act placed a tax on all documents. That same year, riots broke out. In one instance, a mob attacked the Boston home of the tax collector, doing considerable damage. Soon thereafter, the home of the lieutenant governor was targeted, with severe damage.
The Stamp Act was repealed on Feb. 22, 1766, which resulted in a wild celebration when word reached Boston three months later. But parliament soon replaced the Stamp Act with the Townshend Act, placing taxes on goods going through the port.
In 1768, the ship Liberty, owned by Hancock, arrived in Boston with a cargo of wine. The captain declared it to be of much less volume than was true, and when an inspector arrived aboard to check the amount, the crew seized him and nailed him in a cabin. He was held there until the excess wine was unloaded.
On Oct. 1, 1768, British troops arrived in Boston, initiating what became known as the Occupation.
Things continued to heat up, leading to the Boston Massacre, on March 5, 1770. A mob of Yankees had surrounded a British patrol, which had come to the rescue of a sentry. Although the patrol officer did not give an order to fire, a shot was fired, and the eight soldiers fired into the crowd. Five men were killed.
Probably the best-known event leading up to the Revolution came on Dec. 16, 1771. Hundreds of Yankees dressed as Mohawk Indians raided three tea ships at Griffins Wharf on the Boston waterfront. In three hours, they cleaned the ships of tea, dumping the tea and chests into the harbor. The event, known as the Boston Tea Party, came to symbolize the colonists despise for British taxes. The British, who do enjoy their tea, did not enjoy the tea party. There were demands for payment for the tea and for punishment of the ringleaders.
The matter of payment for the tea became quite a cause for the British, to the point where they closed the port of Boston as punishment. The Port Act took effect on June 1, 1774, and later that month, two more regiments of British troops arrived in Boston, swelling the military ranks to 4,000 in a town of only 17,000.
In the winter of 1775, the colonists in Massachusetts towns formed committees of men who would respond at a minutes notice, should a call to arms go out. They were known as the Minute Men.
On Feb. 25, 1775, the first such call came forth in Salem. General Gage, the British commander in Boston, ordered troops to seize 19 cannon which patriots had collected at Salem Forge. The British sailed to Marblehead, then marched to Salem.
The residents of Salem had been alerted by a rider, though, and set to work moving the cannon. When the British troops arrived, there was little they could do. The bridge they had to cross was drawn, and all boats had been taken to the opposite shore. The British were able to negotiate an arrangement where they were allowed to cross the bridge, but they could not go within 150 yards of the cannon.
Not a shot was fired, but the event was not without significance. The British had tipped their hand, and the patriots knew their alarm system worked. Another point was that the British believed that the Colonists would not shoot.
There were other British incursions into the countryside, seeking stores of powder, cannon and muskets.
But the raid that began on the evening of April 18 was different. British troops headed for Lexington in hopes of capturing two prominent leaders of the revolutionary movement, John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
Adams, a maltmeister, was a church deacon in Boston and unquestionably the strongest leader in the Sons of Liberty. Hancock was a well-known merchant, better described as a smuggler, and a very wealthy one at that.
The movement of British troops in Boston were closely watched, and riders were ready to alert the countryside should movement become imminent. On the evening of April 18, William Dawes set out on horseback by way of Boston Neck. Paul Revere, meanwhile, had a church deacon display two lanterns in the steeple of Old North Church, giving the famous One if by land, two if by sea signal. The British troops were crossing the Charles River. Revere also crossed the Charles, borrowed a horse, and set forth on his famous ride.
Hancock and Adams were at Clarkes Tavern in Lexington, and that is where the British hoped to find them. And once Revere had warned them, Hancock and Adams at first said they would not flee. Before long, however, they were convinced that they were more valuable to the cause if they were kept alive. They left in a carriage for Woburn. Later they went to Billerica.
Wilmington had two groups that responded, although not everyone was from Wilmington. The Militia, under Capt. Timothy Walker, had about 50 men. The Minute Men, commanded by Capt. Cadwallader Ford, Jr. consisted of 27 men.
In the wee hours of April 19, a rider alerted residents that the British were on the march. The Minute Men gathered at their training ground, a field at the corner of Federal Street and Middlesex Avenue. The town had no common at that time. From there they marched to Bedford, joining along the way with other Minute Men.
The British troops, meanwhile, had arrived at Lexington, where a skirmish ensued and eight Minute Men were killed. The British then proceeded to Concord, where they took positions on two bridges. By that time, hundreds of Minute Men were swarming to the battle. At Old North Bridge, the British troops were backed up to the bridge by hundreds of Minute Men. No order was given to fire, but the British fired, killing two Yankees, and wounding a drummer. The Yankees returned the fire, killing three soldiers and wounding four. The British then started their march back to Boston.
At Bedford, the Minute Men from Wilmington learned of the skirmish at Lexington, and were told that the British had proceeded to Concord. Col. Ebenezer Bridge of Billerica took command of the several groups of Minutemen, and ordered them to Meriams Farm in Concord, at a point where the road crossed a bridge.
Shortly after noon, the British came marching down the road. At Meriams Corner, they had to form a narrow column to cross a bridge. The Minute Men took advantage of this formation and opened fire. From then on, it was virtually a shooting gallery for the Minute Men, firing from positions alongside the road.
The British troops, whose uniforms and equipment were more for show than for battle, dropped their packs and ran.
The British finally reached Lexington, where they were able to regroup and await reinforcements. But those reinforcements were delayed through a series of snafus.
The reinforcements were hardly enough to stop the carnage for the British. They limped back into Cambridge, where they were at last under the protection of the guns of the warship Samoset.
The Minute Men also had a case of delayed troops that day. The Minute Men from Salem and Marblehead stood and waited, while their captain awaited orders that never came. They arrived a half hour after the British reached Cambridge.
The Americans suffered heavy casualties that day, but the British fared much worse. There were 49 Americans killed, and 39 were wounded. The British lost 73 men, and 174 were wounded.
One of the Minute Men who responded from Wilmington that day was Daniel Gowing, who lived on what is now Park Street. His house still stands, and has for many years been the home of the Andersens. Gowing, as he departed his house early that morning on horseback, pulled a sapling as a switch. When he returned home that night, the switch was still in the saddle of his horse. He planted the sapling near his house, and it became known as the Lexington Elm. It lived for nearly 150 years, and was finally cut down about the time of World War I.
Capt. Cadwallader Ford, Jr. became a courier in the Revolutionary War, replacing Paul Revere, who had become too well-known to the British.
The Minute Men companies were soon disbanded, and many of the men then fought in the Continental Army.
Many of Wilmingtons Minute Men are buried in Wildwood Cemetery, in the lot next to the old Town Hall. The late William Meyer, a longtime member of the re-created Wilmington Company of Minute Men, did an exhaustive study of the grave sites.
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History: Wilmington men responded to 1775 Concord alarm | News - Tewksbury town crier