THE BRITISH RETREAT

During the whole affair the Rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution. ~ British Lieutenant General Hugh Percy

leaving Concord

After the debacles at Lexington and Concord, the British had only one plan in mind: to get back to Boston as quickly and safely as possible. Realizing that the American milita companies coming to join the battle might steadily increase by the hour, British General Gage sent word to General Percy in Boston that reinforcements were needed. He was right. The alarm had spread far and wide.

As the British made their retreat, both ordinary militia companies and minutemen assembled along the British route from Concord to Boston. In his diary, our cousin Major Loammi Baldwin (3C7X) described the beginning of the long trek:

. . .we proceeded down the road and could see behind us the Regulars following. We came to Tauner Brook, at Lincoln Bridge, and then concluded to scatter and make use of trees and walls for to defend us, and attack them. We did so and pursued on, flanking them (Mr. Daniel Thompson was killed, and others), till we came to Lexington. I had several good shots. The enemy marched very fast and left many dead and wounded and a few tired. . .

Note: One of the first American men killed during the British retreat was Daniel Thompson, a cousin of our cousin Benjamin Thompson (3C7X). Benjamin, who was a lifelong friend of Loammi Baldwin, will also feature in many of our future posts.

While there were casualties on both sides during the 17 mile trek, the British suffered the worst of it. The American troops had the luxury of sheltering behind walls, rocks, trees and houses. The Redcoats, on the other hand were forced to march out in the open, dodging the sniper fire that came from all directions.

Meriam's Corner, about two miles east of Concord, is considered the beginning of what became known as Battle Road. Below is a map of the British Retreat with the various battles that took place starting at Meriam's Corner, shown on the left.

According to the National Park Service, "Meriam's Corner is where April 19 changed from a day of small violent skirmishes to a running 16 mile long battle that marked the opening salvo of an eight year war." There, the British columns were attacked by fresh companies of militia and Minutemen from Reading, Chelmsford and Billerica. When the British slowed to cross a stream, Captain John Brooks of Reading didn't wait to see who was going to shoot first. He ordered his Minutemen to open fire. That made the fight at Meriam's Corner the first offensive action taken by the colonists in the war. From there the fighting would only get worse as the British continued on toward Boston.

The town of Billerica had two companies that took part in the battle at Meriam's Corner One, headed by Lieutenant Oliver Crosby (4C9X), had twelve men. Captain Jonathan Stickney (2C8X) led the other company with fifty-four men. Cousins William (2C8X) and Francis Kittredge (3C7X) were part of the Tewkbury contingent of thirty-five men. From Chelmsford came Colonel Moses Parker (2C7X) with forty-three men.

Note: Our cousin Mary Stickney Crosby (2C8X) was married Lt. Oliver Crosby and sister of Captain Jonathan Stickney. Mary and Jonathan descended from both our Stickney and Hill families of Billerica.

the Bloody Angle

About a mile from Meriam's Corner, the British columns reached Brook's Hill. By this time, companies from Framingham and Sudbury had entered the action. Men from Lincoln, Bedford, Concord and Acton who had fought on the North Bridge in Concord also arrived to rejoin the fight. And three companies from Woburn were beginning to make their presence felt.

On the map above, you can see the spot that is now referred to as the "Bloody Angle." There, where the road takes a dangerous curve, the three militia companies from Woburn led by our cousin Major Loammi Baldwin positioned themselves on the southeast side of the bend while other companies lay in wait on the other side. Loammi's company alone had between 180 – 200 men. As the British marched by, they were caught in a terrific crossfire of musket balls.

In his article about the events of that day, historian Douglas L. Gifford writes that, "[t]he Redcoats had entered Bloody Angle as an organized military formation and emerged a bloodied mob. It is a testament to the British leaders and soldiers’ resolve and professionalism that they survived at all." Edmund Foster, a minuteman from Reading, wrote an account of what he witnessed:

We arrived just in time to meet the enemy. These were then on the opposite side of the road, a young growth of wood well filled with Americans. The enemy was now completely between two fires, renewed and briskly kept up. They ordered out a flank guard on the left to dislodge the Americans from their posts behind larger trees, but they only became a better mark to be shot at. A short but sharp contest ensued, at which the enemy received

more deadly injury than at any one place from Concord to Charlestown.

Thirty British soldiers were killed or wounded and the rest only escaped by "breaking into a trot." The wounded were left where they lay. Four of the colonial militia were killed, among them our cousin Nathaniel Wyman (4C7X) of Lexington.

Below is a photograph of a marker commemorating the curve in the road known as the Bloody Angle:

saving grace for the British

By three in the afternoon, the British had only made it as far as Lexington, about halfway to Boston. Their reappearance in that town was met with a renewed fury. Only one British officer remained uninjured among the three companies as the British column approached the town where the first shots had been fired. Earlier in the day, seeing that his troops were outnumbered, Gage had sent back to Boston for reinforcements. In a later account, Gage wrote that "[t]here were very few men had any ammunition left, and so fatigued that we could not keep flanking parties out, so that we must soon have laid down our arms, or been picked off by the Rebels at their pleasure—nearer to—and we were not able to keep them off." Luckily for Gage's men, General Hugh Percey had received Gage's message and he arrived in Lexington just in time with 1,000 British reinforcements.

our Eaton cousins

Three of our Eaton cousins were on the road to Boston at the time of the British retreat. I came across two strories about these cousins. The first story, about Reuben Eaton (3C8X), was passed down through the generations from an account written by one of Ruben's sons. Evidently, Reuben was a duck hunter. When the alarm sounded, he took time to prepare his gun just as if he was going out to shoot ducks. By the time he got out to the road between Concord and Lexington, the British were making their way back to Boston. Reuben took careful aim and afterwards declared that "it was glorious picking." When he returned home, he told his son that this was the happiest day of his life.

J.L. Bell in his Boston 1775 blog recounts a story of a deserter going home with Reuben's 2nd (and our 4th) cousin Noah Eaton (4C7X) who lived in the town of Framingham. Bell found the story in a history of Framingham by William Barry:

The story goes that, as the British re-entered Lexington on their way back to Boston, Noah and his brother Jonas were taking potshots at the retreating Redcoats. Noah ran out of ammunition and hid behind a knoll to reload. Just then, a British soldier came up on the other side of the knoll with a loaded musket. Thinking quickly, Noah put his gun to his shoulder and demanded the soldiers surrender. The soldier put down his musket and Noah calming returned to reloading. According to family lore, the soldier remaked to Noah, "My gun is empty, but I could have loaded in half the time you take, as I have cartridges." The soldier returned to Framingham with Noah and continued there in his service.

Menotomy

As the column entered the town of Menotomy, six miles past Lexington, the fighting only intensified. Here, rebel companies from Watertown, Medford, Malden, Dedham, Needham, Lynn, Beverly, Danvers, Roxbury, Brookline and Menotomy joined the battle. Snipers from homes along the road may have been the last straw for the British troops. Many broke ranks to storm inside house and taverns. Officers had difficulty stopping their exhausted, enraged men from killing everyone they found inside these buildings.

The unbridled fighting at Menotomy was the bloodiest phase of the retreat so far for both the British and the Patriots. There could be no turning back.

no unruly mob

It's clear to see, from later accounts written by the British officers and regulars who made the difficult trek from Concord to Boston, that the hide and shoot tactics of the rebels was taking its toll. Almost every British account complained about the colonial militiamen firing at them from behind trees and stone walls instead of confronting them like "real soldiers" lined up in formation.

There was, however, coordination to the rebel fighting. Each company had a leader and, as more and more towns responded to the alarm, there was method to the madness of their attack. British General Hugh Percy recognized how effective the American minutemen and militia had been:

During the whole affair the Rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution, nor did they ever dare to form into any regular body. Indeed, they knew too well what was proper, to do so. Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about, having been employed as Rangers against the Indians & Canadians, & this country being much covered with wood, and hilly, is very advantageous for their method of fighting.

Cambridge

The brutal take cover, shoot and scatter tactics of the rebels continued to wear on the British as they marched the two miles from Menotomy to Cambridge. Cooper's Tavern in Cambridge just happened to lie on the path the British were taking. Our cousin Jabez Wyman (4C7X), 68 at the time, had the bad luck to be enjoying a drink with a friend at the tavern just as the weary, highly provoked British troops trudged by. A month later, Mrs. Cooper whose husband owned the tavern, described what happened:

. . .the King’s regular troops under the command of General Gage, upon their return from blood and slaughter, which they had made at Lexington and Concord, fired more than one hundred bullets into the house where we dwell, through doors, and windows. . .The two aged gentlemen (one of them Cousin Jabez) were immediately most barbarously and inhumanly murdered by them, being stabbed through in many places, their heads mangled, skulls broke, and their brains out on the floor and walls of the house.

Both men were were buried at the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge. It turns out that Jabez wasn't our only relative killed by the British in Cambridge that day.

Cousin Moses Richardson

Not far beyond Cooper's Tavern, at a place called Watson’s Corner, three militiamen took cover behind a pile of empty casks in the yard of a blacksmith. One of these men was our cousin Moses Richardson (4C7X). Their choice of a hiding place turned out to be a very bad decision.

From an account by the Cambridge Historical Commission:

At Watson's Corner, several older men (Moses was 53) from Cambridge. . .positioned themselves behind a barracade of dry casks in the yard of the Watson house. Isaac Gardner, John Hicks, and Moses Richardson were bayonetted by Btitish troops, while simple-minded William Marcy, who thought he was seeing a parade, was shot as he sat on a wall and cheered. . .Hicks, Richardson and Marcy were buried in an unmarked grave and were soon forgotten as Cambridge became an armed camp of several thousand minutemen. . .

A marker at 2154 Massachusetts Avenue commemorates the skirmish.

In 1870 the city of Cambridge erected a monument to those who fell there on April 19, 1775.

Note: Moses Richardson's son-in-law, William Russell, was one of the participants in the Boston Tea Party. We'll hear more about William, who was captured by the British and taken to Mill prison in England, in a future post.

our family on that first day

Estimates for the numbers of militia and minutemen that marched out to the alarm sounded by Paul Revere and friends run to about 2,000. Of those, I estimate that between 300 and 500 were related to us. The 300 comes from a rather painstaking poring over a book called Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War. In that book, I was able to find 304 confirmed members of our family that marched on the alarm of April 19. That number, however, doesn't include family members that lived in other states or family members with names other than the names of our grandfathers who immigrated to this country. I estimate between 100 and 200 cousins not counted.

The family with the most representation is, by far, the Richardsons. 105 of our Richardson relatives participated on the day of the alarm. The town of Woburn itself is well represented as the Wyman family is next with 32 men. The prolific Richardson and Wyman brothers all settled in Woburn in the early 1630s. Other families of note are the Brighams with 31, the Stickneys with 32 and the Kidders with 17.

Three of our grandfathers marched out to confront the British that day. Grandpa Daniel Sherwin (5GGF) of Townsend responded to the alarm with his sons, John Sherwin (4U) and Daniel Sherwin, Jr. (4U). Grandpa Daniel's brother, Jonathan (5U) of Dunstable, also marched on the alarm.

Grandpa Isaac Kidder (5GGF), also from Townsend, took part in the march as well.

Grandpa Abraham Stickney (6GGF) was there along with his with his son Abraham, Jr. (5U)

Two of our uncles participating that day were brothers Daniel (5U) and Azariah Proctor (5U) of Chelmsford.

Cousin Jonathan Proctor (2C7X) was a drummer from Woburn who alerted the nearby countryside. Jonathan's daughter, Betsey Proctor Taylor (3C7X) lived to 100. She was the last person in town who remembered the battles of April 19, 1775.

Cousin Issac Parker (4C6X) was a fifteen year old drummer boy from Westford MA. In later days, he "often told his children he saw the eight dead men, killed at the battle of Lexington." Isaac was also a drummer boy at Bunker Hill two months later.

Captain William Brigham (5C9X) from Marlborough commanded one of the three companies from Marlborough.

We wrote about our cousin Isaac Wyman's (4C9X) tavern in our "Family Stories" post. Isaac, a captain in the militia, lived in Keene, NH. When news of the battles at Lexington and Concord came to Keene, Isaac mustered 29 Keene militiamen and led them to Cambridge where he participated in the siege of Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

the siege of Boston begins

Once the British had arrived back to the safety of Boston, the Americans immediately pressed their advantage. With the hundreds of men who had responded to the alarm, they sealed off the city and thus began a year-long siege. Word of the fighting at Lexington and Concord had spread throughout the colonies and militia companies from parts far and wide marched to aid in the siege at Boston. It's estimated that around 20,000 rebel troops in all participated in keeping the British in check during the siege.

Although the British still maintained control of the harbor, conditions within the city were difficult for anyone who remained. The Americans set up camp in Cambridge on the other side of the Charles River which created a see-saw effect as Patriots moved out of Boston and nearby Loyalists moved in. Musket fire and cannon balls flying across the river became a common hazard as skirmishes continually flared up during the year long siege.

(1) Boston (2) Cambridge

First in command of the siege forces was our cousin Artemas Ward (4C10X). It was in his role as commander in chief of the Patriot army that Atremas took charge. While his tenure as commander in chief was brief, it was Cousin Artemas who first organized and maintained the siege that became so important to the rebel cause.

Cousin Artemas has fallen through the cracks in the pages of history. Who exactly was Artemas Ward? We'll find out in a future post.