On the morning of April 19, 1775, 71-year-old Martha Moulton witnessed a terrifying scene: hundreds of red-coated British Regulars marching into the town of Concord. These men were on orders from British General Thomas Gage to seize and destroy contraband military supplies stockpiled by the Provincial Congress. The ensuing conflict between the Regulars and Provincials sparked the American Revolution.
For Moulton, the sounds of the fife and drum signaled imminent danger. By her account, the army of Regulars, “in a hostile manner, entered the town and drawed up in formation before the door of the house where I live...” While several companies split up to secure the North and South Bridges and search James Barrett’s farm, the remainder hunted for Provincial military supplies in the town center. They set on fire or threw in the mill pond what little they found, including wooden spoons, barrels of shovels, and cannonballs.
Amos Barrett powder horn. Concord Museum Collection, Gift of Frederick S. Richardson, Peter H. Richardson, and Joan R. Fay 1994.63
Moulton watched in disbelief as the Regulars set fire to the gun carriages by the Town House, which spread to the building itself. Describing herself as an “unfortunate widow” and “very infirm,” she then “put her life, as it were, in her hand” and begged the men to put out the fire, knowing that it endangered the entire row of houses, including the school house. At last, “by one pail of water after another, they sent and did extinguish the fire.”
Moulton recounted this brief episode in a petition to the General Court of Massachusetts to seek reimbursement for damages to her home. This legal document, tucked away in the state archives, provides historians a wealth of detail about the events of April 19th. Letters, diaries, and interviews also offer first-person insights into what people experienced on that day. Yet while these documents reflect a range of perspectives—Provincials, Regulars, men, women, young, old— many voices remain unheard. The historic record is weighted toward the most powerful members of 1770s society: land-owning white men. The contributions of women and the less wealthy are harder to track. The most significant omission, however, is that of people of color, especially if they were enslaved.
Hannah Fayerweather Winthrop, Witness to April 19th
A decendant of the first Massachusetts Bay colonists, Winthrop avidly supported the Provincial cause. In a letter to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, she described the scene of “frightened women & children” fleeing from the violence of April 19th.
In 1775, Concord was home to about 1,500 inhabitants, including at least 24 enslaved men, women, and children. Concord’s white residents considered themselves British, not American. Their daily life reflected British fashions and customs, and this extended to the exportation of lumber, tobacco, and fur in exchange for goods and enslaved labor. Uncovering the experiences of the enslaved inhabitants requires deep investigation. While people of color are not easily located in the archives, they left their mark on the material world. Objects provide clues about how they lived and worked in Concord and help to tell a more inclusive story about those who risked everything on April 19th.
A high chest in the collection of the Concord Museum offers one way of thinking about Concord in the 1770s. One of about a dozen pieces produced at Thomas Barrett’s sawmill by an unknown woodworker, this elegant form belonged to the upper echelon of Concord society. However, its construction was not at all typical. Most notably, the maker did not use any glue, thus adding many hours of work to the building process. The extra expense was apparently not added to the cost of the chest, suggesting the maker was not compensated for their work, nor were they brought up within New England’s cabinetmaking tradition. The exact identity of this maker may be a mystery, but the signs point to them being enslaved by Barrett, who used their labor to produce highly-sought-after furniture for the local economy. Based on the inscribed date of 1776 on the inside of the chest, it’s entirely possible that its maker joined the extended Barrett family at the North Bridge on April 19th, fighting for the liberties denied to others in their community.
In the absence of written sources, objects are often the only tangible record we have of a person’s life. A looking glass collected by Cummings E. Davis in 1854 contains a label claiming that it belonged to Case Whitney, an enslaved man who died in 1822 at the age of 90. Aided by the memories of those who knew him, Davis held onto this object, one of a few documented possessions of an African American from the 1700s. Case Whitney’s alleged enslaver, Samuel Whitney, was a delegate to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and stored ammunition on his property. There’s little doubt that both Whitneys witnessed “the shot heard round the world” at the North Bridge. Case Whitney’s looking glass may have even followed him into military service as a volunteer in the Continental Army, through which he emancipated himself. The looking glass ultimately reflected the face of a free man.
Chest-on-chest. Concord, about 1776. Concord Museum Collection, Gift of Cummings E. Davis (1886); F803
Objects also carry the artistic legacies of otherwise forgotten figures. On April 19th, nearly every Provincial militiaman carried a powder horn for storing gunpowder. These horns frequently contained elaborate incised designs, the work of professional carvers, in a tradition stretching back to the French and Indian War. While earlier carved powder horns featured fanciful creatures or maps of forts, by the 1770s bold and stylized copperplate script was the fashion, attributed to the work of John Bush, a free man of color from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who served at Fort William Henry. Bush’s decorated powder horns laid the groundwork for what’s now regarded as the Lake George School. His calligraphic style and decorative devices secured his reputation as one of the most important powder horn carvers in Colonial America. Powder horns carved before and after April 19th feature several of his signature elements, suggesting that many of his decorated horns were brought back to Massachusetts and inspired others during subsequent military conflicts.
Approximately 40 men of color served the Provincial cause on April 19th. Archival records identify some of them, though they often paint an incomplete picture. One Brookline payroll lists three enslaved men who fought in the conflict, but identifies them via their enslaver, such as “Esq. Gardener’s Adam.” Meanwhile, a broadside listing the Provincial dead and wounded identifies “Prince Estabrook, a Negro man” as one of the militia men wounded on Lexington Common. In other cases, these people emerge in probate records, like Philip, an enslaved member of Col. James Barrett’s household who was 14 years old on April 19th; or a child named Nancy sold by one Concord resident to their neighbor in 1740, and who would have been in her thirties when the Regulars marched into town.
Few documentary records or objects survive to represent the range of experiences had by the men and women of color who lived in Concord on the eve of the Revolution. There is no equivalent to the pair of silk shoes belonging to twelve-year-old Hannah Hunt, another child who witnessed the raid on Concord; nor is there a similar testimonial to the one made by Martha Moulton. Yet, this does not mean giving up altogether. The Concord Museum is fortunate to have a collection of artifacts from April 19, 1775 that its curators use to tell different kinds of stories and center on new individuals. This ongoing work ensures that those whose voices remain unheard are not forgotten.
The Concord Museum’s unrivaled collection of objects related to April 19, 1775 can be found in their new permanent galleries, open to the public in April 2021. “The new April 19, 1775 exhibition marries the Museum’s iconic artifacts with a multi-dimensional narrative to the foundational story like it has never been told before,” stated Concord Museum’s President, Ralph Earle. These galleries are the latest step in the Museum’s ongoing mission to explore new and different stories in Concord’s history. The Museum is committed to inclusivity at all levels of interpretation and programming.
All photos courtesy of Concord Museum
