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Major John
Pitcairn’s
HIGH ROAD to Concord & LOW ROAD
HOME
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BY JAIMEE LEIGH JOROFF
There are places where you can stand for a moment between worlds. Concord Center’s Main Street is one of them. Over it, on April 19th, 1775, British officer Major John Pitcairn crossed from a world securely under English sovereignty and into one at war, fast on its way to American Independence. Pitcairn’s road to Concord started in Scotland where he was born in 1722. Scotland was divided with some Scots (Jacobites) loyal to an exiled King James Stuart, others (Loyalists) to the reigning monarch King George II. Pitcairn’s father was a local minister, and although family lineage traced back to ancient Scottish King Robert the Bruce, the Pitcairns were loyal to King George. In his twenties, Pitcairn joined His Majesty’s 7th Marines of Cornwall and soon found his regiment involved in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. This rebellion ended with the Jacobites’ defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
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After the battle, legend tells of two Jacobite brothers, one mortally injured, awaiting execution in England’s Carlisle prison. Knowing he would die, the injured man told his brother to escape without him, saying, “‘You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland before you.” His words referenced the old Celtic belief that the spirit of a soldier who died in a foreign land would be carried home on “the low road” through the fairy world, an unseen place below the “high roads” of the living. With the rebellion over, Pitcairn returned home, married, and had a large family before he was sent to Canada in 1755 during the French and Indian War. Around that time, unrest was growing in America, the colonies divided between Loyalists and Patriots favoring independence. After the 1773 “Boston Tea Party,” Parliament sent a full army to occupy Boston and quash further rebellion. In 1774, Pitcairn, now a
Major, was dispatched from Canada to Boston to command 600 marines. Upon arrival, Pitcairn discovered a disorderly bunch; the marines were bored and drunk. In Pitcairn’s words, the men were “animals”— and they were short. Pitcairn wrote to the Earl of Sandwich, “I am a great deal hurt and mortified to find the marines so much shorter than men are in the regiments.” Complained Pitcairn, why couldn’t he have anyone over 5’6” tall? Pitcairn sobered and hardened up his “animals” with marches through the countryside and disciplined drills. His justness and interest in each man soon earned him their respect. Fondness for Pitcairn extended into the Colonist community. Pitcairn was billeted with Francis Shaw, an ardent Patriot and neighbor of Paul Revere. Despite their political differences, Shaw observed Pitcairn’s pleasant demeanor and fairness, especially to
