The Civilian Evacuation of April 19, 1775
H
BY ALEXANDER CAIN
most residents recognized that a hostile military force was marching directly toward them. With the possibility of the town being subjected to plunder and destruction, a panic set in. Many who lived along the Bay Road (present-day Massachusetts Avenue and Route 2A) prepared to evacuate. Sergeant William Munroe’s wife, Anna Munroe, started baking bread for her husband. Later she confessed, “I mixed my bread last night with tears coming, for I feared I should have no husband when the next mixing came.”1 The panic quickly spread to neighboring communities. The Reverend William Gordon of Roxbury noted that colonists from Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord who
At eleven o’clock, alarm rider Paul Revere arrived in Lexington, warning of a military expedition advancing from Boston. A second alarm rider, William Dawes, came approximately an hour later and confirmed Revere’s report. As a result, Captain John Parker ordered his militia company to assemble. When Lexington’s alarm bell began to toll as a call to arms,
lived along the Bay Road fled for safety. In Lincoln, Mary Hoar Farrar and her family ran away to a retired piece of forest land called “Oakey Bottom.” While hiding, she and her family occasionally emerged from the woods to see whether the British had burned her homestead. Martha Moulton of Concord recalled that upon receiving word of the regulars advancing on the town, many
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Historians have often overlooked a critical aspect of the Battles of Lexington and Concord; the psychological and physical impact on the civilian populace. Hours before the engagement, at approximately six o’clock in the evening of April 18, 1775, Lexington resident Solomon Brown observed nine British officers riding slowly along the country road before him. The night was not very cold, yet Brown noted that each officer was wearing a heavy wool blue overcoat under which he could see the shape of their pistols. Taken aback, Brown passed the officers and galloped towards Lexington. He rode directly to Munroe’s Tavern, informing Sergeant William Munroe of what he had observed.
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women and children gathered whatever personal belongings they could carry and fled either to nearby woods or towns. For some women, the flight was arduous. Lexington’s Sarah Marrett, Amity Pierce, Sarah Reed, and Betty White were recovering, having given birth over the past month. Three other women from the same town, Dorcus Parker, Elizabeth Estabrook, and Lydia Harrington, were all over eight months pregnant. In Menotomy, Hannah Adams and Hannah Bradish had each given birth less than two weeks earlier and were bedridden. Unlike their Lexington counterparts, the two Hannahs were too weak to flee and, later that same day, were caught in the middle of a bloody firefight as British and Massachusetts soldiers fought through their village. Upon hearing the exchange of musketry from the Battle of Lexington, Lydia Parker sent her eldest son to the top of a nearby hill to see whether the British regulars were moving to plunder Lexington homes.2 Once confident the British column had moved on to Concord, many returned to the town common. Upon arrival, they discovered that over two hundred men from Woburn’s militia and minuteman companies had arrived and were assisting in treating the wounded. By mid-morning, residents of Lexington buried their dead in a makeshift grave. After the fight at Concord’s North Bridge, many residents from Lincoln, Lexington, Menotomy, and Cambridge correctly concluded that the British regulars would be marching back through their respective towns again and prepared to flee to safety for a second time. At the height of the flight, one witness recalled the roads clogged with child and female refugees weeping.3 Another witness described homes far away from the fight, overwhelmed by women and infants wailing in despair and unsure of the fate of their spouses or male relatives who were off fighting the regulars. Unfortunately, some families waited until the last moment to escape and collided with