Looking Back at Medford History with John Bell

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Host Laura Duggan interviewed author and historian John Bell about his book, 'The Road to Concord.' The discussion explored how the British search for four stolen brass cannons ultimately sparked the onset of the American Revolution.

0:26 Introduction of Guest John Bell — Host Laura Duggan introduced historian John Bell to discuss his webpage, background, and book on the American Revolution.
1:57 Bell's Interest in the American Revolution — Bell explained how growing up in Middlesex County during the Bicentennial and researching the death of Christopher Sider sparked his interest in lesser-known historical narratives.
9:19 The Powder Alarm and Provincial Congress — Bell outlined how the 1774 Somerville Powder Alarm prompted Patriots to form a shadow provincial government and begin collecting cannons.
19:02 The Hunt for Stolen Artillery — The speakers discussed why Royal Governor Thomas Gage prioritized recovering stolen colonial cannons over arresting prominent Patriot leaders.
25:09 Leslie's Retreat in Salem — Bell recounted 'Leslie's Retreat' in February 1775, when British troops were blocked at a Salem drawbridge while searching for hidden weapons.
29:50 The Search at Barrett Farm — Bell explained that the British marched to the Barrett Farm in Concord specifically because intelligence indicated the stolen Boston cannons were hidden there.
36:38 Paul Revere and the Medford Connection — The speakers discussed Paul Revere's stop at the Isaac Hall House in Medford and the flight of local loyalist Isaac Royall.
39:05 The Structure of Colonial Militias — Bell described how colonial militias were organized, trained, and quickly mobilized through structured local networks during emergencies.
49:01 Mechanics, Trains, and Henry Knox — Bell defined historical terms like 'mechanics' and 'trains' and detailed how Henry Knox used militia service to elevate his social standing.
57:43 History of the 'Hancock' and 'Adams' Cannons — Bell traced the postwar history of two recovered brass cannons that were displayed at the Bunker Hill Monument before being moved to museums.
59:56 The Boston Common Gun House Theft — Bell detailed how Patriots stole two heavy cannons from a Boston Common gun house and hid them inside a school firewood chest directly under the noses of British guards.
1:08:16 The Exposure of Spy Benjamin Church — Bell explained how a intercepted ciphered letter in late 1775 eventually proved that high-ranking Patriot Dr. Benjamin Church was spying for General Gage.
1:14:19 The Concord Spy and Medford Connection — Bell identified merchant Duncan Ingraham as his top suspect for the Concord spy, noting his post-war move to Medford and election to the legislature.

[Unidentified]: Over the river and through the wood, to Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood, oh how the wind does blow. It stings the toes and bites the nose and over the ground.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Welcome to Looking Back at Medford History. I'm Laura Duggan, your hostess. Today's guest is John Bell, a writer and speaker who specializes in the American Revolution's start in New England. I recently met him at the Medford Library when he was delivering a very entertaining talk about Paul Revere. As many of my viewers know, the American Revolution is a favorite topic of mine, so I'm happy to report Mr. Bell said yes when I asked him to come on the show. Mr. Bell has a very interesting and informative webpage that can be found at www.boston1775.net.

It's dedicated to history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in New England. He is also a fellow of the Massachusetts Society, a fellow of the American Antiquarian Society, and a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. John also has a very good book entitled, The Road to Concord, How Four Stolen Cannons Ignited the Revolutionary War. We'll be discussing it and also touch on some of his articles. Mr. John Bell, welcome to Looking Back at Medford History.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, my first question for you is, how did you get interested in the American Revolution?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure I had a choice about being interested in the American Revolution because I grew up in another part of Middlesex County, Newton, Massachusetts, during the Bicentennial. And in fact, I was in fifth grade during the start of the Bicentennial. And as you know, the fifth grade is when the Massachusetts curriculum calls for social studies to cover the revolution. So here I was near where the revolution started, studying the American Revolution at the bicentennial, so I was getting this triple dose of local revolutionary history. And so it was very deeply imprinted on me, I realized. I would go to parades. Do you remember Bicentennial fire hydrants? I was here.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, I remember the Bicentennial. I remember President Ford came. I was there at Northridge, and I had a picture of it somewhere, too, when he spoke. And, yeah, that was a really exciting time.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't attend those events, but I, of course, heard about them. The class went to see the movie 1776 on a field trip. We did, you know, the chorus did songs. It was inescapable. So I grew up knowing this story, the New England side of the story. I found it very interesting. I had books. I had a replica of the Declaration. I had a cut and fold and put together Independence Hall. I still haven't put that together.

And so I had all those stories in my mind. I read some books later. And I thought it was a great story, but I also thought that all the stories had been told before. that this, the beginning of the revolution, because it's the American origin story, because Paul Revere has been so famous, he's a household word, all this, that there was very little left to discover. And then, late 90s, I found a reference in a biography of Samuel Adams to a story that I hadn't heard before. The death of a little boy named Christopher Sider, who was actually shot during a disturbance in Boston, about a week and a half before the Boston Massacre. And I thought, you know, he was killed when he was about 10 or 11. I was about 10 or 11 at the time of the bicentennial. Why wasn't that part? Well, of course, A, they might have told me. I just didn't remember. You can never say.

[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing is I don't think they were talking about it. I mean, there's a reason you might not want to tell 10-year-olds about a 10-year-old being killed. But in any case, I didn't get that side of the story. I thought, oh, if that wasn't part of what I studied and what I, you know, thought the whole story had been told, that means the whole story hasn't been told. And so let me.

[SPEAKER_01]: There had to be other stories. There had to be other potential. I started looking into that first, actually, as a possibility for fiction. But then I came, it's fiction, because it's, I was thinking, I was writing children's books at the time, and I was thinking, and yes, and articles, and there I was thinking, okay, how often do you get any story in history where a child is an It has agency, as the historians say, or has.

Christopher Sider was actually made a choice to go to this demonstration in Boston. He was said to have picked up a stone and was about to throw it at a customs man's house when the customs man shot into the crowd and he was fatally wounded. So what is the story behind him? And so I started looking into it more. I came across the story of another boy who was wounded in that same demonstration. He was 19 years old. And then the story. That second boy, a man named Samuel Gore, just a few years later was involved in stealing cannon out of a militia gun house in Boston. And that's where I started to research the story which became Road to Copper.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So that started very early. You're looking into the cannons, the angle of the cannons.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was, oh, more than 25 years ago now, but yes, that was, I came across that story pretty early, and that was one of the first things, it was I think in 2001 I first presented that paper at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which has been, has great sources, and is very lovely.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I love that place. I go to everything I can. It seems to me that you are really like a historian detective. And from what you're saying now, I guess my impression I think is valid. And much of your writing turns up unknown or buried stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really like doing that, and I think all historians are in some ways detectives, but I am especially interested in things like finding out what is the, you know, truth behind a certain quotation or a certain anecdote, how, when did it appear in the historical record, how much support is there, how much it might contradict what was going on. What are the connections? So, for instance, for the Road to Concord, that involved going to look at General Gage's papers in Michigan. That involved going to look at General Haldeman's papers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. In the early 20th century, an American industrialist named William Clements went around aristocratic British families and to some old American families and said, do you have any papers? Really? And he bought like three dozen trunks from the family seat of Thomas Gage, the general who was the commander in chief. That's fascinating. And he brought them to Michigan. This is the man who was commander in chief from the end of the Seven Years' War all the way to the beginning of the war.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: No historian, because the Brits are wonderful historians.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but for this sort of thing, you need access and you need money. And so the family that descended, in which these papers descended, they decided they needed the money. And they, and also, I mean, it was, these papers are of most interest to Americans. So it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. So they sold the papers. And they are now at a library called the Clements Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And it's a wonderful library.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they have been studied for a number of years. So I came across, oh, this was before Google. Well, I started. These days, actually, these days, many of those papers are actually online. They are scanned. They have been digitized. So it is possible to look and see without getting up from your seat, without having to get dressed up.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So if anybody out there would like to read some of General Gage's letters you can probably go online.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, earlier this year I was looking through them and I realized okay here's this letter to John Hancock. Why is it in General Gage's files? Well it's because one of General Gage's spies intercepted the letter. He was supposed to take it out to John Hancock and instead he turned it over to the General.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's fascinating. Oh, well. So we're going to turn our attention now to your book about General Gage's quest for the four missing cannons. Okay, so what's the story here about? You mentioned how you found out about the cannons, because that's kind of the thesis of your book.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. The book starts with the first uprising in the Massachusetts countryside, something called the Powder Alarm, which started with an event that a British army came and emptied the Powder House, which is still on a hill in Somerville.

[SPEAKER_01]: That caused a militia uprising, Middlesex County Militia, marching into Cambridge, huge numbers, demanding all the royal appointees in town resign. And at that point, it became clear that General Gage had authority in Boston. He could tell people what to do there. He had soldiers there. Everywhere else was just no longer going to be following his decrees. And within a month or a month and a half, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress started meeting. This was a sort of shadow government.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because I remember in your book, you bring out that there's a law that they passed, the Brits passed, that they couldn't operate governments, their own governments. Sort of did away with it, but the charter was sort of like thrown out.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Massachusetts Government Act, which arrived in August 1774. It was Parliament attempting to reform, from their point of view, the Constitution of Massachusetts Bay Colony so that it was no longer quite so obtrusquerous, no longer quite so uppity. So that more, the crown, the royal government in London had more power, they could appoint more people, they had more authority, they could, you couldn't, one of the provisions of this new law was that a town anywhere in Massachusetts could not have a town meeting except once a year without prior approval from the governor.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But why don't you go over how the Patriots got around that?

[SPEAKER_01]: So instead of simply adjourning and ending a meeting, they decided, okay, we're going to adjourn to a new date. And so legally, they weren't, they didn't need a new meeting. They were just doing an old meeting again, exactly. And General Gage, who had, he had first been the military commander in North America, and then he came back as the royal governor. He was supposed to be in charge of enforcing this law, making sure the Massachusetts people followed it. And he was enough of a stickler for the rules that he didn't, he would not say, oh, That's not what they meant.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was, yeah, I mean, he found a loophole in the rules. He gritted his teeth and obeyed it.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, he did. But there's also like the shadow government you mentioned, the provisional.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the Provincial Congress, as they were called. Provincial Congress, okay. They were sort of like the regular Massachusetts legislature, except they did not have the authority. They were not supposed to be meeting the governor.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So they said, you won't let us represent? We'll go form our own on the side.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, more towns were participating in this extra legal legislature than usually sent delegates to the regular Massachusetts General Court. That's how much loyalty it had immediately. And within a month, they started meeting in October 1774. Within a month, they were starting to take control of the tax revenue. They were starting to tell towns, reorganize your militia so that loyalist officers are purged. And around that time, secretly, at least one man began to collect cannon for this government. Because if you were going to war in the 18th century, you needed cannon.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's right. That was the biggest battlefield weapon that you could have. And now that was after the people of the of eastern Massachusetts had already started to collect cannon there by themselves. People in Charlestown went to the battery which was next to their harbor pointing out to protect the battery and they pulled those cannon out.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They really they did they knew something was going to come down.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: The handwriting was on the wall, as you might say. Now, I know the Medford men got their powder out of the, before the men came down to grab the.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they were the last people to take the powder out just before the British soldiers arrived.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't look like they were deliberately tipped off by this raid, because what happened, the Medford men took away their powder. They might have been taking it just because in early September, that's where a lot of towns had militia drills, so you need your powder to distribute and everybody gets- I think it was a really good call by the Medford men.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or they might have seen, yeah, we want to make sure that we have control of this. We have control. Because other towns were also taking it, so it was a movement.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think it was a good move on their part, just saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the general in charge of the Middlesex County Militia, a man from Cambridge named William Brattle, he wrote to General Gage, Governor Gage, and said, you know, they've taken away all the powder. There's no powder in the tower left except what belongs to the province. And so if you want to keep control of that, you should come take it. And that's what the soldiers on September 1st, 1774, came and took.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They came over. And that's been reenacted, I think, a number of times.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You know, so you have this canon interest because what a lot of people wonder for a long time, or at least I did, is why didn't General Gage arrest Sam Adams, John Hancock, or Joseph Warren, Dr. Joseph Warren? I mean, as I understand it, he was being told from Parliament saying, you've got to arrest those guys. And why didn't he arrest them?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was, again, because he was being a stickler for the rules. And there was actually, back after the Tea Party, the British government went to the top legal officers in the government, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, put forward all the evidence they had about what was going on, or what had gone on in the destruction of the T, and asked, can we indict, who can we indict? And these top people said, well actually it's, you know, you can't indict John Hancock because clearly witnesses said he was not on the docks, he was at Old South Meeting House that whole time. You can't, and they said it would be very difficult to indict any of these people.

[SPEAKER_01]: He would have, I mean, they were smart. The top echelon of leadership stayed in front of the crowd at Old South for an hour after some men had gone down to the docks.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they were giving themselves an alibi. There was only one top leader among the Boston organizers, a man named William Molyneux. who actually, he was probably down at the docks because his whereabouts could not be found. He was at the Old South.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: No, but for other things. He was organizing constantly.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the British government told Gage, okay, we can't indict him for this, but I think it was understood that he was going to keep his eyes open, and as soon as they did anything which was clearly illegal,

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the problem is, you know, what constitutes evidence? You have to be, you have to get the solid evidence. And this was, I mean, Gage was, some people say that he was a military governor. Well, he was military and he was a governor, but he did not put in place a military government. He had not suspended laws. He still wanted to follow the British Constitution.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because the American wife, you know, the American born wife.

[SPEAKER_01]: True, but I think it was at that time it was still following the British rules. And so he did not, I mean he was watching, obviously he was dealing with all these men, but he did not have his spies out looking for them. He had a very high ranking spy among the Boston Whigs, a man named Dr. Benjamin Church. at the level of Dr. Joseph Warren in terms of being part of this organization.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: See, this is my opinion why he didn't arrest them. Because he's got, he's got a spy planted with with all these guys. And if you if you arrest them, then they'll just go get other other leadership will come in and you won't have a spy to listen in on all may possibly, if you can follow what all of them are doing, then it's better to keep that in place.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I think. That's my opinion. I mean, I think that he, you're quite right that in the letters which told him it was time to act that arrived in April 1775, a letter from his boss, the Secretary of State, he was told it's time to arrest people. Lord Dartmouth.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Earl of Dartmouth. Yeah, yeah. He told people it's time to arrest people and he didn't do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now part of it is because, you know, it was, there had been enough warning, enough worry by the Boston Patriots that most of them had left, or left very quickly after that message arrived. So Dr. Joseph Warren was practically the only one who was still within reach. But I also think that by that time, General Gage was more focused on these cannons. I think you're right.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I agree. I kind of think it's a personal investment here. He wanted to save his career.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because these cannons had been secreted out under his nose and he had troops there. I mean, it was a bad luck for him, for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Bad luck. Back in September, shortly after the powder alarm, shortly after this uprising, Gage realizes how bad it is. People in Charlestown, people in Dorchester, people in Salem start to grab their cannon back. Well, the Boston Militia Company had four small cannon that they were holding in two small armories, which were sort of the size of a two-car garage. Those, in the middle of September, 1774, one pair disappeared overnight during a dark and stormy night. Somebody had broken into the back of the building.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Was that just in Charlestown? Was it in Charlestown, the first two disappeared?

[SPEAKER_01]: And there were no soldiers in Charlestown. So they were just dragged out. That was easier. That was an easier.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really amazing. Gage put soldiers as sentries out in front of these gun houses, as they were called.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yet somehow on this dark and stormy night in September, somebody broke into the back of one of those gun houses and took out the two guns. So Gage went to the other one, doubled the guard there, And then went to the man in charge of the Boston Militia Company that used these guns, who was a loyalist, and said, you know, give me the key. And so he turned over the, the major turned over, the militia major turned over the key to the Royal Artillery. They sent an officer there. they opened up the, you know, gun houses under guard and the other two cannon were gone.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And the other two are gone too, so that's just, oh my god.

[SPEAKER_01]: And our main witness for, who later, you know, almost 50, 49 years later, told the story of how the second pair of cannon disappeared was Samuel Gore, the boy, the second boy who was wounded back in 1770. And so that's how I got hold of the story.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's sort of a roundabout. That's really interesting how you got that. And I had one other question too. You know, we always hear how basically they wanted, the Patriots were being warned that Hancock and Sam Adams were going to be grabbed. Did they get their information from somebody in London? I believe, I believe, I mean, they did, they seem to be so, I mean, so fixated and worried that that gauge was actually going to his mission was to grab those two in Lexington. And they just that way. And from all accounts, that was not what he wanted. He had his eyes set on Concord, to get to Concord, not Lexington. And he just, he just so happened to end up with a somebody shot fired. And so there was people blood was shed, you know,

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I believe that there were sources in London who let the Massachusetts Patriots know that they're talking about arresting your leaders. Because that is indeed what Lord Dartmouth said. And so as soon as the orders are known to have arrived in Massachusetts, you can see Samuel Adams and John Hancock were already staying outside of Gages Bridge.

[SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as those orders arrived, the Reverend Samuel Cooper leaves in the middle of Sunday. He gives a morning sermon and he's out of there. His brother, William Cooper, the town clerk, packs up all of the Boston records and leaves. Isaiah Thomas, the printer, packs up his printer and moves to Worcester. Benjamin Eads, another printer, packs up and leaves. They are streaming out and leaving basically Dr. Church and Dr. Warren. I'm not even sure Dr. Church was in Boston anymore because his mistress was out in Brighton. and he'd like to be there. But Dr. Warren was behind, still in Boston, Paul Revere.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because Warren's giving, his instructions from what you said and other people have said was very, very exact. Get to Lexington and warn Sam Adams and John Hancock that you get to get out of town quick.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Get out of town. And he's so fixated. He says nothing about Concord.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And in your wonderful talk, I loved how you went down the letter, plan A, plan B, plan C, how basically Revere and Warren, they all had to improvise. And then when they decide at a certain point, let's go to Concord after, you know. We think that's where they're heading, to warn them. And so I think you're right. They must have gotten some kind of. I like that whole improvising. Because that's what you had to do back then.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: If you don't, changing situations, you don't change and it's not working and it's, what is it they say, insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results?

[SPEAKER_01]: On the march? Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, who was in charge of the march, he very early on was hearing alarm shots and alarm bells. He knew that it was no longer a secret mission. He knew that the militia was coming out, and yet he felt he needed to keep on. He needed to get to fulfill his mission, which was indeed to go all the way to Concord. And so the appearance of the Lexington Militia Company on their common,

which the road just happened to pass by, that was a disruption. But what Smith did was he, you know, after the shooting, I mean, he didn't order the shooting, he tried to, after it happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: Got all his men together and kept moving because his, he, his mission was to get.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: People had already died. And that was like, that's really why they said it triggered it, you know, because there was, I guess, another event earlier in, what was it, the, it's the Mars, Salem, what is it, Salem and Gloucester, yeah, they were sent out on an earlier mission to looking for cannons. And they get all the way there and there's a bridge. That story, you want to tell that story?

[SPEAKER_01]: That is in February 1775. Yes, well one of the things, one of the reasons I argue that the cannon were so important for General Gage is that whenever he heard about cannon, He would send out spies. He would send out scouts. He would send out troops. And so he got a message, probably from Dr. Church, that there were cannons being prepared for use in Salem. And in fact, there's even a reference that they might be brass guns, which were the ones from Boston. Those specific ones he was looking for, right? That's right. Those were the only brass ones around in Massachusetts at the time. So, in February 1775, on a Sunday, he ordered an expedition, which means, you know, fast. A ship arrived in Marblehead Harbor. People went into their meeting houses, and suddenly hundreds of British soldiers came up out of the ship and started marching through Marblehead to Salem, heading for where they knew these cannon were being prepared.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was over the North River in Salem, and there was a drawbridge over the river.

[SPEAKER_01]: They pulled up the river. They pulled it up. The Patriot organized. The man who had been organizing Cannon for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress since the previous November, he was there. He pulled up the bridge and wouldn't let it down. And so the British march stalled on the south side of the river. You could see across the river. Meanwhile, the patriots on the other side were dragging these cannon out of the smithy where they were being fixed up and hiding them in woods. The local militia companies from other towns were starting to mobilize.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They're standing there holding their muskets right there and so you got the British here and you got the Patriots with their muskets. It could have started there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It could have started and Marblehead and Salem were a very, together they were the second largest settlement in New England. They were, it would have been quite a different story if there had been, you know, if this Revolutionary War had started with urban fighting. As it was, the Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Leslie, the British officer in charge of the expedition, he realized that he didn't have a strong hand. And so, but he, once again, he insisted on being able to fulfill his orders. So a local minister worked out this compromise

the patriots who knew, you know, they'd taken the cannon away, they would let down the bridge, he would be allowed to march across the bridge with his men, get to the smithy, look around, say, no cannon here, turn back around, march through Salem, march through Marblehead, get on their ships, and go back to Maple Austin.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Salem, they even call it Leslie's Retreat, because it was Lieutenant Colonel Leslie retreating. They also claim, and I'm not saying that they're wrong about this, it's just a way of looking at it, that because there were some pricking of bayonets during this event, that this was the first blood she had in the Revolutionary War.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah. I'd like to bring up the picture of John's book. I want everybody to see it. So I think we have a, they'll bring it up. I have it here too. But they have, they're working on it. There it is. There it is. Okay. I really urge, this is what we're talking about. It's all found in this book here. It's about how the cannons, General Gage's search for the cannons has really triggered the American Revolution. But as we've been talking, it could have happened almost any place. It was, you know, anything could have set it off. But the key thing, bloodshed, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, as soon as somebody was killed, that turned up the notch. But even then, it's interesting that even after people in Concord knew that there had been shooting on Lexington Green and then word got back that people had died, The Concord and Acton and Bedford, the other, the minute companies that had gathered on the far side of the North Bridge, they held back. They did not attack until they saw smoke rising in the center of town.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because they thought they were burning, but they weren't actually burning the town down.

[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't trying to burn their town down. They were trying to burn the military supplies they'd come there to destroy. The fire did spread to the townhouse and then the soldiers, the British soldiers, were actually putting out the fire. But when you put out a fire, that creates more smoke.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So, because as you were writing and other people have written too, the American strategy in this is they want to look like they're being victimized by the British. And you can't look like a victim if you fire first, can you?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's why they were so like, we're not going to fire first. So you have somebody, we don't know who in Lexington, That's right. And then here we are in Concord, and as things are going on, meanwhile, they send, I guess, the Brits sent some soldiers up to the Barrett Farm. Let's see the Barrett Farm, if we have that here. Which was, here it is, because, and they were looking for

[SPEAKER_01]: They were looking for the cannons and other cannons and other weapons and other weapons. This was the farm that was owned by the colonel in charge of the Middlesex regiment. And he was also part of the militia. So he was part he was both on the political and on the military side of the resistance. He and his family were hiding a cannon here up until just a couple of days before the British arrived because they had gotten enough of a warning that they had actually started to move the most important material out away, further out west. But this is as far, this was where British spies told General Gage that he would find the cannon from Boston and other war materials.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: This is an interesting thing because I know you're such a detective looking, trying to find the answer and you end your book about, you know, maybe someday we'll find out who that spy was, who was writing in broken French, you said?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Terrible French, and to gauge, and reporting to him that he believed the cannons were in the Barrett farm, which is why he immediately sends people off there, soldiers, and they leave some to try to guard the bridge.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the bridge was just a narrow spot on the way to Barrett's farm. Barrett's farm was the, like, if you were going to the moon, Center of Concord was lunar orbit. Barrett's Farm was on the surface of the moon. You had to get all the way out there.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You had to get out there. Now that's still standing, I assume.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is still standing, and in fact, based on the research in this book, that was purchased and given to the National Park Service about 20 years ago, so that is now part of Minuteman National Historical Park. It became, it remained in the Barrett family up until the beginning of this century and then they generously made a deal with Save Our Heritage in Concord and with the Minuteman Park. So that has become part of the park for the first time.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: You know, John, I had always heard that they sent troops up to the Barrett Farm, but I didn't understand at the time the significance until I read your book, that they were looking for the cannon. Because I said, oh, why did that particular house, and then I didn't revisit it. So that's a great thing that your book answers. You know, why would they send people, why not to somebody else's house?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly, and why, I also grew up with the story that they were looking for military supplies, they were sort of vague. Very vague, vague stuff. But in fact, they were very specific. At the top of General Gage's list of what to look for are these four brass cannon from Boston. That's what he wanted most to find.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because he downplayed the missing of them, he did not really report that to Gage.

[SPEAKER_01]: He never told Lord Dartmouth, he never told Lord Barrington, the Secretary of War, that this had happened. And one of the things I tried to do in this story, I'm arguing in this book that Because he never told the superiors in London, he wanted to get those back before they found out.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, it's better to get it back and said, yeah, they took it, but I got them back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas saying, okay, I put guards on the gun house and they disappeared anyway. I had the whole town ringed and they got them out of town. I had spies going out there and they moved them away before we got there. Now that's not a great story to tell. So he never mentioned those canon in his dispatches and yet he was sending spies out, he was sending his whole expedition to Salem.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: These papers, letters of gauge that you have gotten, doesn't he write in those, some of those or not?

[SPEAKER_01]: He writes in his official letters. Not the official maybe. Lord Dartmouth and Lord Barrington never mentioned the word. In his notes, in his intelligence notes, in his.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god. His orders to his spies, what his spies are reporting to him on. And of course this list of what the soldiers should look for in Concord, it's all about the cannon from Boston.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he's not keeping track of where Samuel Adams and John Hancock are. He's not keeping track of gunpowder, which is harder to track because it all looks the same. But yeah.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But we can understand why Dr. Warren would think that's what they were doing. Yes. And protect them, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. And so Dr. Warren sent William Dawes and Paul Revere out to Hancock and Adams to say be careful. There were other people sending them warnings. And then on their own, once Paul Revere and then William Dawes arrived in Lexington, they gave the warning. They thought, okay, we've done our job. We're already out here. Why don't we go on to Concord? Because both those men knew about what was going on in Concord. And they decided on their own to go beyond the instructions they got from Warren and give more warnings.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That whole story that you told about Paul Revere, I think I told you, I think maybe my hand went up and I said, it should be made into a movie.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is now one of the very good books, one of the books I read in the 90s and I loved was Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fisher.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That was my introduction to, I read that too and it opened my eyes to there's a bigger story here than I ever knew. Like you, you said there's more story here.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, on the one hand, it's a bigger story. On the other hand, he does talk, Professor Fisher makes a very good point that the story of Paul Revere riding out is a really good story. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a very strong protagonist. He's up against obstacles. He's getting around things. And it also has a dramatic unity because it takes place more or less in the amount of time you can read it, several hours. from when he leaves Boston to when the shooting takes place.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And us here in Medford are very proud. His very first stop was at the Isaac Hall House here in where? Medford!

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: No, this is a detour and we explain that because you know every year my organization, I have a non-profit, the same name as my show, but with an ink on it. Looking back at Medford history, ink. and we basically work with, collaborate with the Islamic Cultural Center, which bought that house, which is good, because then we're able to preserve it. We collaborate every Patriot's Day, and I'm usually up in the window playing Mistress Hall. I don't know if you know that. No, that's wonderful. Yeah, and my buddy Bob Hilbert, who is my vice president on the non-president, he's usually playing the Captain Isaac Hall. So I usually get up there, and I get to look when he comes down, open up the door. I mean, I've had the fun of doing that for the last three years now.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: The first time was completely impromptu, and I got pulled in to do it. And then we got organized, and we started the nonprofit, and then we basically collaborated. So we've basically expanded. But I have to tell you, when I looked at the exhibit at the Massachusetts Historic Society, and I love them, they had a map, and they show a map of Medford. They have a picture of a house there. It's not of the Isaac Hall House. It was of the Royal House.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I was like, and I tried to get them to correct it. And I obviously told them about it. I said, that was the home of a Tory. Why are you putting, the royals, they left. They were not part of, he would not have knocked on that door. That's the last door they would knock on.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think it's even on the route. But that's, yes, I mean that is a, Isaac Ryle was the sort of person who would have been purged from the militia. in the previous month.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And he left, you know, when they sailed off. But, you know, there's still things that are not correct, even by something of the standard that they have, you know. And I don't know, I mean, I tried to tell him about that, but I don't know if they really, I tried several times. I'll tell you that, John. I didn't say it just, anybody who knows me knows I didn't say it just once.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I imagine if the exhibit had already been put in place, then they need to talk to you beforehand.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I thought about getting some white out and writing out and just, you know, and just drawing in because I can draw and draw the Isaac Hull House in. But I guess my husband didn't want me to get arrested for vandalism or something.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But I was sorely tempted, you know. Anyway, so we're going back here to And interesting about The Malicious, there's a really good book, it was called The Malicious, and I was directed, I don't have the author's name with me, but I learned about it because I was hiring reenactors from Minuteman, and one fellow was a drummer, and he told me, his name is Jim, and he lives in Medford, but he's one of the drummers for the The Middlesex Fife and Drum Corps, the big one, they actually performed during the 4th of July with the Boston Pops. I saw them there. But anyway, Jim told me, you need to read that book and find out about the militias. And that was another eye-opener, too, because basically every town was required to have a militia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. So, yeah. There was, it was, back in colonial times, there was, it was a participatory society. So, there was no fire company, or there was no municipal fire department.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, when there was a fire, everybody was supposed to come out with their buckets and help. Sure. There was no police. If there was somebody causing a crime, then everybody was supposed to help. And there was no, for the most part, there was no soldiers stationed nearby. So if there was an emergency, an attack from the native nations to the west, from France to the north, from Spain.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then it was the responsibility of the community, the young men especially, to come and defend the community. And that was the militia. And everybody, well, almost every male, white male between age 16 and 60, was required to drill four times a year with the militia and have their own weapons and be ready to defend the society. Interestingly, we can see that the, although the law said that African men, native men were not required to drill. Clearly they are part of the militia companies that turn out. So they had probably been practicing with their neighbors before then. The other group of people who were exempted from militia training were the people at the very top of society. If you were a minister, if you were an elected official, if you were a Harvard graduate of any kind, Or if you were a miller, you were not required to do militia training. Because in some cases you were just thought to be too important. Or if you were a minister, you weren't a man of violence. In other parts, I think that they were exempting these top people because It was thought to be awkward for, you know, I'm a selectman. Should I be taking orders from this farmer who just happens to be a sergeant and I'm a private? That might have been part of it.

Or they might have been thinking, okay, if you are so high up in society, you already know everything, right? You're a gentleman. You already know how to drill, so you don't need to do the training. I, whatever the reasons, whatever the thinking, if there was thinking about it, the law allowed these men to be exempt from training. And then in an emergency, everybody was supposed to turn out with their weapons. And that is what happened in September 1774 at the powder alarm. That's what happened in April 1775. That's what happened in February 1775 in Essex County when they heard that the soldiers were searching Salem.

That happened after Bunker Hill, when there was a fear that the British would keep coming and they didn't. It happened when they heard a couple years later about General John Burgoyne and a big force coming down from Canada. And we can see, you know, this system allowed for thousands of armed trained men to start moving towards the emergency place within days.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, this book points out is that they were clearly established. There was a whole network system of communication to call in reinforcements or whatever, and that a subgroup was the Minutemen, a subgroup. That's right.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that you might be thinking of the book by John Galvin called The Minutemen. It's quite a good book. He was a military man. He was a Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the Cold War at times. So he knew the military side. And yes, there was, starting in the summer of 1774, the Worcester Committee of Safety, which was really the most radical.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: My husband's from Worcester. You have radical groups there, Steve.

[SPEAKER_01]: They started to push for military preparation. And one of the ideas they proposed was that companies would train and be ready to respond. Eventually, it came down to at a minute's warning. And that was then taken up, without the word minute, but taken up in theory by the Provincial Congress and they told towns that they should be ready very quickly to respond and that became the minute companies and eventually the minute men.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, the point is when we were kids learning about the revolution, I didn't visualize that the guys, oh, honey, I have to go. I'll just grab my musket and I got to go down there because I hear a warning. I have to go out. I didn't realize how organized it was. And because it would have to be for them to mobilize as quickly as they did. I mean, the numbers that showed up. I mean, here, you know, Smith is like surrounded by thousands and thousands.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, I mean, there is a concept, a legal concept in America called the unorganized militia. That all men are part of the unorganized militia and therefore that's how we have the second amendment rights. Because the second amendment says a militia being necessary. Well, unorganized militia is a contradiction in terms. The whole point of a militia is that it's organized, that you know who your sergeant is, who your lieutenants and captain are, where you go, where you gather when there's an emergency, when there's an alarm. You know what the alarm is. It's the church bell or it's a shot being fired off. And that was what happened in each of these towns on April 18th and April 19th, 1775. And that was how this system, without, you know, without telegraph, without telephone, without, was able to get thousands of men out.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I mean, they had all kinds of systems, firing, you know. But it also brings up the point that much of the mob that the British were facing were actually the militia. I think you pointed out in your book. I mean, oh, can we call out the militia to stop this? Oh, they're the mob.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's right. There were times in 1747 and 1765 when the royal governor of Massachusetts in Boston was facing a riot and thinking, okay, we should call out the militia. And the locals, the council, had to tell him, the people out in the streets, that is the militia. There is no way. There is no stronger force.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They're not available because we can't, you know, it's this kind of thing. Now, I don't know if we really talked about the Cambridge Common incident. I mean, this happened also before Lexington and Concord.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, the powder, but there was one when they, oh yeah, that was a response. Wasn't when they had lots of, yeah, you sort of described this already.

[SPEAKER_01]: The powder was taken away and then the alarm part was this militia uprising where up to 5,000 men were marching into Cambridge and demanding all the royal appointees in town resign. The sheriff apologized for turning over the gunpowder. They chased a customs official who happened to be coming through town all the way back to the gates of Boston. And this was really the moment when it became clear. Oh, you came around this way. The lieutenant governor, they surrounded his house, which is still there. It's called Elmwood. It's where the Harvard president lives. They surrounded his house.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just off Brattle Street. It's on Gary. Brattle Street used to take that turn. They've changed Brattle Street. So it was on Brattle Street. And so they had 4,000 men around this man's house, pounding on his windows, causing his daughters upstairs to be crying, insisting that he resign. It's very scary. That had all happened not because there had been a, you know, a word came out from Boston or from Cambridge or any official saying, oh, we need to, it happened because spontaneously when people heard news of a British attack, a false rumor.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They also did that so people got hurt. They said, there are rumors going about.

[SPEAKER_01]: There have been rumors that the seizure of powder had caused deaths in some way, a second Boston massacre.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it hadn't, so they were, they, calm down a bit, but they still saw, okay, we've got 4,000, 5,000 guys here, we might as well accomplish something.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That must have scared Gage. I mean, he had people's eyes there.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was the moment when he changed, and he started immediately writing to Lord Dartmouth and Lord Barington, his bosses, saying, this is bad. This is worse than you think.

[SPEAKER_01]: You need to send me more troops. You need to make a bigger military budget. You do not understand how bad it is. And he wasn't able to get their attention.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, let's go back to like now, trains, you mentioned trains, I think we need to define two terms when you read your book, trains and mechanics. I come across mechanics before. For the audience, just tell them the classification of mechanics.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mechanic at the time, that was a term for people who worked with, men who worked with their hands. And so Paul Revere was a mechanic. Now he and George Robert 12 Hughes who was a shoemaker who left a couple of great memoirs and the subject of a book called The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, he was a mechanic. Anybody who works with him now Paul Revere because he has a silversmith. He was working in the luxury items He was dealing with the top echelon of society. He was dealing with the merchants and he was trying to make it good And he managed to get into that top gentleman category, so that's right. Yeah, he wasn't there yet, but he was he was

[SPEAKER_01]: And he was aiming for it, and he was dealing with those people as well as fellow people working with their hands. George Robert Twelves Hughes, he was a poor, poor shoemaker. Shoemakers were not a prestigious profession. He was towards the bottom of the mechanics class. So even within mechanics, there was this big. There were tiers.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this was the big middle class of Boston society. Mechanics. Mechanics. The ambitious mechanics were the men who signed up in the militia companies to be part of the train. The train was the term that they used for the artillery company because they would be dragging their cannon

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, so that's where you get, I see, because I was trying, how did they get train and I couldn't put it together.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly. Thank you for explaining that. We have these, today when we use mechanic, when we use the word train, we know what we mean, it's not that. And so, but if they were dragging their, or pulling along their cannon on carriages.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because of all the stuff that goes along with the cannon.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's right. And so they needed all this equipment. And so they would be at the end, you'd have a militia training march, and you'd have many, many companies making a regiment of infantry marching along with their muskets. And then at the end, you'd have the train of the artillery company marching with their wagons of guns.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So you want, some of the people would like to get in that and become like more the leadership of that and then you could sort of bump yourself up a tier, a couple of tiers in the mechanic category and try to see if you can get into the gentleman category.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Prestige thing. If you prove your leadership, prove your capability and in the artillery it was more of an intellectual type of service because you had to know mathematics for, how to aim things, lay out fortifications. So it was a way to take your skill as a mechanic, to take your practical skills and people skills, and if you could make yourself, convince your fellow militiamen that you should be their sergeant, you should be their lieutenant, eventually up to your captain, at that point you're getting into the ranks of gentility, you're getting to be a gentleman.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It's this movement, you know, and based on merit, you know, because the British didn't really operate on merit. It was like, you know, who do you know, I mean, in terms of nobility, who was the, I mean, the generals, they're all from the nobility.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was quite rare for a British enlisted man to get, become an officer. The officers just started at the genteel level. They were often within military families. Sometimes your lieutenant would be like 14 or 15 years old and you were, you know, a sergeant at 30 who had been all this experience. But because you were not a gentleman and the kid was, he was your boss.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They say, if anything you read about George Washington, because he, in the French and Indian War, he could not get promoted because he was, you know, he was born in the colonies. He was discriminated against.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He felt that. But I think a lot of people felt like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he was the highest ranking officer in the Virginia Army, the Virginia Regiment. He was the colonel. And he wanted to be treated as the equivalent of a colonel in the British Army.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the British Army did not, the other British officers did not see those as equivalents. They did not, a British captain who had years of training, was almost certainly a gentleman, did not wish to be answering to a man from Virginia who just happened to be called a colonel because he knew the governor in Virginia.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, this built in a lot of resentment, and it explains a lot the motivation of people joining the Patriots.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I mean, you go back to, like, your charter doesn't count anymore, you don't get to have meetings, we can grab your property with impunity, because they said, even getting the gunpowder, they said, well, we paid for it, and they're taking it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the gunpowder was an interesting case because under the Massachusetts Constitution, what even the patriots agreed was the right thing. Governor Gage was the commander-in-chief of the militia, so he was legally entitled to move that gunpowder around. It was still seen as taking away the people's ability to defend themselves. So they couldn't make a legal argument, but they could certainly make a political argument. This was something they wanted to apply.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you were able to make yourself a militia officer, you were on your way up in society. James Barrett did out in Concord when he was the colonel, that's what Isaac Hall did, that's what Henry Knox actually co-founded a new militia company in Boston.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was, but he was ambitious and by helping to found this new And he proved his merit. He got those cans down from Fort Ticonderoga, man. What a feat. was he caught the eye of Lucy Flocker, who was the daughter of the Royal Secretary, the third ranking official in the Massachusetts civilian government. And they married in 1774. And that was because, according to the stories told later, she saw him and liked what she saw. And then he, yes.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: A little romance. We have to put romance in some story, don't you think, John?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, indeed. And then they snuck out of Boston together in May 1775. He attached himself to the continental, or at that point, the Massachusetts Provincial Army. And interestingly, he was a gentleman volunteer. He had reached, he had started,

[SPEAKER_01]: He started as a bookseller. Yeah. He was a poor, he came from a poor family, but between the books, between the militia company, then this good marriage to a very genteel family, yes, and his service, I think secret service for the Patriots, he got himself up into, so he is being seen as a gentleman volunteer. He had become

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He had become a gentleman. He had made the moves there, but he was also, I think, self-educated a lot.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: My grandfather was self-educated. He only went to the third grade, and yet he studied auto mechanics and opened up the first repair shop. He's out in California. And he went on and also studied about electrical repairs. He thought electric cars might come in way back then.

[SPEAKER_01]: I drove here in an electric car, so. Yeah, you know, so yeah. My son has one, too. He finally made it.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: No, but he finally, I was thinking, Grandpa, son, wherever you are, they finally got there, that direction.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: With just self, and that's the American dream, I guess, is that you can find a way.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that new technology at the end of the 19th century, bicycles and cars opened up new opportunities for men who wanted to take it.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Let's see some pictures of the cannons. Okay, and we're going to get back. I want to hear more in detail the story of how they got the cannons out of Boston Common. You know, let's see some of the cannons. Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this is, one of the reasons we know that this was one of the canon is that after the war, Henry Knox, who by that point had become Secretary of War, had them engraved with these stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and also christened them the Hancock and the Adams after the two men who were not being caught by the British. The cannon weren't being caught either. And then he sent them back to Boston and they went into the Massachusetts armaments and eventually they were put as basically ornaments in the chamber at the top of the Bunker Hill Monument.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I have actually climbed that four times. Because I used to take school groups up there. And I'd have to go up with them. So all those steps.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I don't have to do it again. I have nothing to prove. I've done it four times. But yeah. Yeah. So.

[SPEAKER_01]: And these cannon were up there until one of them was removed in the 1970s. The other was removed in the last ten years because well frankly because of my book, because I pointed out that okay these are not just ornaments, these are actual important historical artifacts that are in part of the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so one of them, there's a Hancock, that is now on display out at the Concord Visitor Center of Minuteman National Park. And the Adams, which was the The one that remains in the Bunker Hill Monument longest, that was taken down and is now on display in the Bunker Hill Museum across the street.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, when they're out, I mean, you know that the chamber up at the top of the monument, it's open to the elements.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: There's nobody up there, no attendance. It's a very small space, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very small space. It's cold in the winter. It's hot in the summer. And there were birds nesting in these things and so on. And so they are now being treated as the important historic artifacts they are.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Okay, so let's get back to this story. How did they actually get two of the cannons, two of them, out of the Boston Common? It's there. And that was, what was the name of the fellow that, you mentioned him, Gore? Yeah. Okay, he's the guy who was behind this, organizing it?

[SPEAKER_01]: He was the one, I don't think, the way he talked about it. In an 1823 book, in a footnote in an 1823 book, there is this story preserved from Samuel Gore of how the cannons were taken out of the second gun house. I think he just happened to be the longest survivor of the men who did that more than almost 50 years earlier in 1774. And he just happened to be a long life and he had this story, which he probably told that.

[SPEAKER_01]: that, let's see, the first gun house had been broken into, the cannons were gone, Gage put more sentries out in front of the second gun house. Furthermore, just across the street from the second gun house was the Boston Common where the King's own 4th Regiment and other British Army units were camped.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they're right there. The front door of this gun house that has soldiers in front of it and a whole army camp looking down on us.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And Gore wants to go snatch these cannons with all these guys, all these soldiers all around.

[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you get the cannon down there? It looked very secure. Well, this little, this gun house, it had a fence around, it shared a fenced yard with a school. With a school. One of Boston's five public schools.

[SPEAKER_01]: Probably the fenced yard was where they exercised, where you moved the cannon around when you had militia drills and you sent the boys out to run around during recess. Probably the outhouse was out there. In any case, it was an enclosed space. The men who wanted the cannon out, they were part of the trade, part of this company that used the cannon. They thought these were our cannons.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That was the group that usually would operate it, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: The company. And they believed they, this was the cannons that they thought belonged to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: The town paid for it. How are we going to make sure that it's not taken away by the royal government? They waited, I think, they waited until there was an assembly in the camp, in the army camp. So there were drums, there were sergeants yelling, there was roll call. All the sound, they went into the school through the school, out the back of the school, into this fenced yard. So now the fence, which was an obstacle before, they couldn't, how would they get over the fence without being seen? Well, now the fence was hiding them as they were in the yard.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Okay, so now they're behind the fence. Okay, what next?

[SPEAKER_01]: Then they snuck over to the side door of the gun house. side door okay which didn't have a lock on it it had no lock it had a uh it was bolted it had a uh a bar on the inside okay uh and they stuck a stick through the the uh uh slit of the door yeah and pushed up the bar and got that door open oh my gosh went in grabbed these cannon which are about 700 pounds

[SPEAKER_01]: He mentioned four names. Gore mentioned four names. One of whom was his brother-in-law. So that's the one he remembered most.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So there were four guys or five guys? Four guys. Carried the cannon out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you're walking trying to get through the town of Boston with a 700- You might be noticed. You might be noticed.

[SPEAKER_01]: But, they stopped in the school, they opened the chest of firewood next to the teacher's desk, took out the firewood, put the cannons inside, fired the firewood on top, went out empty-handed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And just left it there. when the British army arrived at the gun house with the key, opened the front door, found no cannon. The carriages were there, the equipment was there, the thing was all about.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was said that somebody said, oh the devil must have taken them away.

[SPEAKER_01]: And according to Gore's story, the officer then went into the school

[SPEAKER_01]: And he found probably, if the school was in session, those schools, they were one-room schools, but they had 200 boys. You talk about your teacher-student ratio. Two teachers, 200 boys, working on their handwriting and arithmetic, because that's all they were being taught. And they were looking around. They looked around. They didn't see any cannons. They saw this chest up near where, but the teacher had a bandage on his foot and he was resting his foot on the chest.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. It's a wonderful, wonderful detail. So they didn't want to disturb the teacher. and ask him and do any more searching. They couldn't see the cannon and they left. And a couple weeks later some patriot activists came by and took the cannon They came by probably with a chest of replacement firewood, brought it into the school, replenished the firewood, and by the way, just happened to take the cannon out, put it in the chest. And move those cannon to a forge in the south end of Boston belonging to a particular blacksmith named Obadiah Whiston.

[SPEAKER_01]: they moved the paper it somehow moved probably by boat the cannon out of Boston over to Roxbury or Dorchester sure and they were hidden for a while under a manure pile okay at a tavern in Dorchester in Dorchester I wonder where that did they have the name of that uh it's called the Liberty Tree Tavern Liberty Tree Tavern by Lemuel Robinson who was the He was the officer in charge of the train for that part of Middlesex, or sorry, Suffolk County. So he was an artillerist himself.

And then in January 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren got news, people were telling him that Obadiah Whiston, this blacksmith who was hiding the cannon for them for a while before they went out to Dorchester, that he was thinking of changing sides. So he wrote to Samuel Adams, and this letter still exists at the New York Public Library.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't, is that, I mean, that makes even less sense than Ann Arbor, doesn't it? A historian working on the revolution in the mid-1800s got all of Samuel Adams' papers and all of the Boston Committee of Correspondence papers. He was using them. And then when he was done, he gave them to the New York Public Library. So that's where they are now.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Can't they send a few to us? I guess we'd have to trade something.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. The Massachusetts Historical Society has a lot of Thomas Jefferson papers.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, so I guess Virginia probably wants those back big time.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this letter is in the Newark Public Library. It's Dr. Joseph Warren writing to Samuel Adams saying, Wiston is thinking of changing sides. We can't let the cannon stay in Dorchester. They're too close. They should be moved out

[SPEAKER_01]: That's when they were moved to Concord. And Dr. Warren says, I have told nobody about this except Dr. Church.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. And Gage had a spy out in Concord writing these letters in terrible French. He sent two officers in civilian clothing out to Concord to confirm this information. He knew that those cannon were out in Concord.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Now Church, they only found out, they only had definite proof that he was a spy. The turn of the century was it you said? It was later. I mean they kind of figured they had a letter.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: One letter. Washington saw the letter and went like oh my god or something.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a coded letter. It was a letter from a, okay. Where should I start? A man arrived at Washington's headquarters at the end of September, 1775, brought by General Nathaniel Green, a man from Newport, Rhode Island. He was a Prussian-born baker.

[SPEAKER_01]: Named Godfrey or Jeffrey Wynwood. And he came and said, I have this unusual story.

[SPEAKER_01]: I got suspicious. So I didn't send it. Then after a couple of, about a month, she came back and said, why haven't you sent my letter? So obviously she knew that his letter hadn't gone in.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there was clearly, she was getting information. Something was going on. So it's getting even more suspicious. Finally open the letter and it's in cipher.

[SPEAKER_01]: So just these symbols. Yes. Not letters, symbols. And so he finally got, after holding this letter for weeks, he got suspicious enough to go to the Rhode Island government. They sent him to General Green. General Green brought him to General Washington. General Washington said, OK, let us Take this woman, Mary Wynwood, arrest her in Brighton, bring her to headquarters and ask her who gave her this letter.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she held out for hours and hours and finally she admitted that it had been given to her by her lover, by her doctor church. by Dr. Church who was the Surgeon General of the Continental Army by this point, the highest ranking medical officer in the Army. And had his own military medical headquarters about half a block from General Washington's headquarters. That house still exists. They're both within sight of each other. Yet Church insisted that, okay, well, first he said, yes, I wrote the ciphered letter, but I don't have the key to the cipher anymore. I don't remember what it says. So they had to arrange for it to be deciphered. And a couple of, a minister who was very good at mathematical things and not many other things, was able to figure it out. He deciphered it, and it has information about the Continental Army, about the gunpowder supplies, and things like that. sent in to, church says, to my brother-in-law, who is a printer inside Boston.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And since it was, and she got it from church, so obviously.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So he could not deny that he had sent this letter. He insisted that it was an innocent letter to a relative. He insisted that if you look at what he was saying about the gunpowder supply, he's actually overstating how much gunpowder we had because he was trying to convince his contacts in Boston that they should, that the British military should back off. It was a lost cause.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he kept making this argument. And so there were also problems with the way the rules for the army had been written. So the American government, Massachusetts government, the Continental Congress, did not know what to do with Dr. Church. They kept him locked up, but they were not, they did not have complete proof that he had been

[SPEAKER_01]: William Clements bought these papers from General Gage. Oh, going back to the Gage papers. That's right. They were shipped over to Ann Arbor. Historians started to look at it, and a historian from Concord named Alan French looked at this.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was able to compare handwriting. He was able to compare where the, I mean these letters weren't signed, but they were able to say.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's right. And it was conclusive. I mean they were able to say okay whoever wrote this spy letter was about to go to Philadelphia. Church was about to go to Philadelphia. Whoever wrote this report, gave this report information on the Massachusetts Committee of Safety had just started meeting with the Massachusetts Committee on this date. That's when Church started to meet with them. Here is a letter from Rachel Revere sent out to her husband after the war had started saying, oh, it's, you know, but fortunately, Dr. Church is here and he's going to carry this letter to you. Well, instead, Dr. Church turned that letter over to General Gage. So it's conclusive proof now.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So is it not, so that is her letter then with a stash that they have?

[SPEAKER_01]: That is her letter and some other letters which clearly were given to the general.

[SPEAKER_01]: They have, they have some letter and they have copies of these letters.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is true. I mean in some ways it might belong there because it was written, I mean Rachel Revere wrote that letter in that house. On the other hand, it never got to Paul Revere.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it never got to Paul Revere. It was never Paul Revere's property. It was his wife's property.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It was supposed to go to Paul Revere, so it should come back to the Paul Revere house.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Everybody out there, raise your hand if you think Rachel's letter should go back to Paul Revere house. Raise your hand. Yeah? Yeah. OK, yes. I see everybody out there in the control room are raising their hands, of course. Anyway, this brings us to your final comment in your book. is about, okay, who was the spy in Concord? And I'm sure you would love to be the one to discover that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have my top, my top suspect is a merchant named, or a sea captain and then merchant named Duncan Ingraham. who had married a wealthy widow in Concord and moved out to that town just a couple years before the fighting started. And back inside Boston, his son had sold some cannon to William Molyneux, this radical who was probably at the Tea Party. without his say-so, and Ingraham at this point was leaning towards the British. He was hosting British officers at his wife's house in Concord. There was actually an incident where the locals piled,

awful sheep's guts and things like that on his carriage as a way to show their disapproval for what he was doing with the British officers. So if he was feeling any sort of, you know, they're taking away my cannon, they haven't paid for them yet, they're getting in trouble.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he is my top suspect. He's your top suspect, yes. I'm trying to find evidence. A couple things complicate this. One is that there are letters from him, which I've looked at in Concord, And I want to try to see if they match the handwriting on the terrible French letters out in Ann Arbor. Except that he might have disguised his handwriting, so that would be a problem. The other complication is that immediately after the war began, the Massachusetts authorities began to collect depositions, affidavits, testimony from the locals about what the British had done. and how badly they had behaved and how well we had behaved. And depositions have to be signed off, attested to by the justices of the peace. And one of the magistrates who attested that way was Duncan Ingram. So he was then almost immediately working with the Massachusetts authorities. He did not become a loyalist. He stayed in Massachusetts. After his wife died in Concord, he then married another widow and moved to her town of Medford.

And Medford. And Medford after the war elected him to the Massachusetts legislature.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so he was representing this town in the legislature and he got a law through to compensate him for the four cannon his son had sold back in 1774.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if he was the spy in early 1775 sending these French messages, he switched sides and he stayed a Massachusetts gentleman.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, Gage must have been sending him some money for doing this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Possibly. He seems to have been a man with a stubborn temper. There are a couple of moments when he's doing angry things inside Boston before he moved out. So he might have just been stubborn and doing it on his own. It could have been money. Certainly Dr. Church was very motivated by money. Half of his letters, or most, almost all the letters that he sent in, at some point he gets around to saying, by the way, I need more money, or I haven't gotten it yet.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: John, this has been a really fascinating conversation with you on this whole subject, because it's one that's been fascinating to me for more recent history, I think. I think probably I go back to the Fisher's book, I think Paul was right. I think that's what got me taking a second look, because I said, I never heard about a lot of the things that he writes about. It's a very exciting book. And a lot of the articles you have on your webpage, too, are really wonderful in terms of debunking myths and how things got started. So it's really great. Now, for coming on my show, you get a gift. Did you know that?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Everybody loves the bag. Come out. See what you have here.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can feel what it is. Just so you can remember us. It is a mug just like I have here.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: This has been terrific. Thank you so much. So I really urge everybody who's into the Revolutionary War to get this book. I got it on Amazon Prime. You can get there and probably other place bookstores, but it's a really good read. It's very detailed and you've done a lot of tremendous research on this and it's really and I still think we should make a movie out of this. This story about the cannons And then the other one about Paul Revere. And you wouldn't mind writing the script or consulting with the movie people?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, I wouldn't mind at all. Now, if I were a writer, it would probably end up being a two-season miniseries. Why not?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Look at Burns, look at Ken Burns did. And you can have me be a consultant on the side, couldn't you?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So that when they win an Academy Award, we can all go there? And that'll be fun. See, I have visions. You see, I'm a visionary. Anyway, so now it's time to say goodbye. This is Laura Duggan, hoping to see you again on Looking Back at Medford History.