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"Paul Revere (b. January 1, 1735? ? May 10, 1818) was an
American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution.
Because he was immortalized after his death for his role as a messenger
in the battles of Lexington and Concord, Revere's name and his "midnight
ride" are well-known in the United States as a patriotic symbol. In his
lifetime, Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston craftsman, who helped
organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British
military. Revere later served as an officer in one of the most disastrous
campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, a role for which he was later
exonerated. After the war, he was early to recognize the potential for
large-scale manufacturing of metal goods and is considered by some
historians to be the prototype of the American industrialist.
Early Years
Paul Revere was born on 30 January 1735. According to the records of the
New Brick Congregational Church in Boston, he was baptized on 22 December
1734. This date is given in the "Old Style" Julian Calendar that was used in
the British Empire until 1752. The date translates to 2 January, 1735 in the
"New Style" Gregorian Calendar. According to a handwritten notation in a
Bible owned by one of Revere's descendants, Paul Revere's birth date was
December 21, 1734 (Old Style) or January 1, 1735 (New Style). Since it is
debatable whether Revere was baptized on the day after he was born, his
actual birth date may have been a few days earlier in late December 1734.
Revere was the oldest surviving son of Apollos Rivoire, a Huguenot
refugee from Guyenne who had anglicized his name to Paul Revere. His mother,
Deborah Hitchbourn, was of English descent. Revere's father was sent by his
family to the New World in December 1715. Once in Boston, he apprenticed to
Mr. John Coney to learn the trade of a gold- and silversmith. In the 1720s,
Apollos established his own goldsmithing shop in the center of Boston, and
anglicized his name to Paul Revere. Soon after he moved his family into the
North End of Boston, his oldest son Paul was born.
Paul Revere attended a local writing school near his home and then
apprenticed with his father. In 1756, he served as a second lieutenant of
artillery in the expedition against Crown Point, and for several months was
stationed at Fort Edward in New York.
By his first wife, Sarah Orne (1736?1773), whom he married in 1754,
Revere had seven daughters and a son. After Sarah's death, he married Rachel
Walker (1745?1813) in 1773, and together they had five sons and three
daughters.
Revere became a proficient copper engraver in the years before the war.
As a close friend of Samuel Adams, he was involved in the earliest stages of
the struggle for liberty. He was an articulate exponent of republicanism,
making numerous drawings that displayed British contempt for American
rights. One of his best known engravings tells the patriot story of the
Boston Massacre. He was a
leader in the Boston Tea Party
of 1773.
In 1774, in one of his less famous rides, Revere delivered a copy of the
Suffolk Resolves by horseback from Milton, Massachusetts to the First
Continental Congress in Philadelphia, where it was adopted as a show of
colonial solidarity. He was one of the Boston grand jurors who refused to
serve in 1774 because Parliament had made the justices independent of the
people for their salaries; was one of the thirty North End mechanics who
patrolled the streets to watch the movements of the British troops and
Tories; and in December 1774 was sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to urge
the seizure of military stores there, and induced the colonists to attack
and capture Fort William and Mary ? one of the first acts of military force
in the war.
The Midnight Ride
The role for which he is most remembered today was as a night-time
messenger before the battles of Lexington and Concord. His famous "Midnight
Ride" occurred on the night of April 18/April 19, 1775, when he and William
Dawes were paid by Dr. Joseph Warren to
ride inland from Charlestown to warn the militias at Lexington and Concord
of the approach of British army troops from Boston. Robert Newman and
Captain John Pulling held the two lanterns in the
Old North Church, indicating
that the British soldiers were crossing the Charles River. Later, Dawes and
Revere were joined by Samuel Prescott, a doctor who was just returning from
a visit to Lexington. In acts of terrorist arson Revere set ablaze three
houses along his route being careful to make as little noise as possible.
Revere probably did not shout the famous phrase later attributed to him
("The British are coming!") because the colonists themselves were British;
his warning was: "The redcoats are coming!"
He reached Lexington around midnight and brought news of the British
advance to Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were spending the night at the
Hancock-Clarke House. Revere, Dawes, and Prescott were captured by British
troops in Lincoln at a roadblock on the way to nearby Concord. Prescott and
Dawes escaped, with Prescott able to reach Concord to deliver the warning.
Revere was detained longer and had his horse confiscated. He walked back to
Lexington and arrived in time to see the first shots of the battle the next
day. The warning delivered by the three riders successfully allowed the
militia to repel the British troops, who were harried by guerrilla fire
along the road back to Boston.
Revere's role was not particularly noted during his life. In 1860, over
forty years after his death, the ride became the subject of "Paul
Revere's Ride", a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem has
become one of the best known in American history and was memorized by
generations of schoolchildren. Its famous opening lines are:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year
Longfellow took many liberties with the events of the evening, most
especially giving credit to Revere for the collective achievements of the
three riders. As a result, historians in the 20th century sometimes
considered Revere's role in American history to have been exaggerated,
becoming a national myth. Other historians have since stressed his
importance, however, including David Hackett Fischer in his book Paul
Revere's Ride (1995), an important scholarly study of Revere's role in the
opening of the Revolution.
Revere's greatest contribution to the American Revolution was the alarm
and messenger system that he designed and implemented before the battles of
Lexington and Concord. He used his numerous contacts in eastern
Massachusetts to devise a system for the rapid call up of the militias to
oppose the British. Although several messengers rode longer and alerted more
soldiers than Revere that night, they were part of the organization that
Revere created and implemented in eastern New England.
Some claim that Paul Revere became famous while Dawes and
Prescott did not because Revere was better known and trusted by those who
knew him [citation needed]. Thus, people acted on his words instead of
ignoring the strangers waking them up after midnight. The army that
assembled during the night of his famous ride would become the nucleus of
the Continental Army. Paul Revere's house [still
stands] in Boston.
Today, parts of the ride are posted with signs marked "Revere's Ride".
The full ride used Main Street in Charlestown, Broadway and Main Street in
Somerville, Main Street and High Street in Medford, to Arlington center, and
Massachusetts Avenue the rest of the way (an old alignment through Arlington
Heights, Massachusetts is called "Paul Revere Road").
War Years
In 1775, Revere was sent by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to
Philadelphia to study the working of the only powder mill in the colonies,
and although he was allowed only to pass through the building, obtained
sufficient information to enable him to set up a powder mill at Canton.
He was commissioned a Major of infantry in the Massachusetts militia in
April 1776; was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of artillery in
November; was stationed at Castle William, defending Boston harbor, and
finally received command of this fort. He served in an expedition to Rhode
Island in 1778, and in the following year participated in the disastrous
Penobscot Expedition. After his return he was accused of having disobeyed
the orders of one of his commanding officers, and dismissed from the
militia. He later obtained a formal court-martial which exonerated him.
Later Years
After the war, he engaged in the manufacture of gold and silver ware. He
was early to recognize the appeal of fine metal goods beyond the upper class
to the growing middle class. As a foundryman, he recognized a burgeoning
market for church bells in the religious revival that followed the war, and
became one of the best-known metal casters of that instrument, working with
sons Paul Jr. and Joseph Warren Revere in the firm Paul Revere & Sons. This
firm cast the first bell made in Boston and produced over 900 in total.
Additionally, Revere became a pioneer in the production in America of copper
plating, covering the original wooden dome of the Massachusetts
State House in copper in 1802, and
of copper spikes for ships?most notably the
USS Constitution.
His business plans in the late 1780s were stymied by a shortage of
adequate money in circulation. His future plans rested on his
entrepreneurial role as a manufacturer of cast iron, brass, and copper
products. Alexander Hamilton's national policies regarding banks and
industrialization exactly matched his dreams, and he became an ardent
Federalist committed to building a robust economy and a powerful nation. His
copper and brass works, established in Canton, Massachusetts in 1801,
eventually grew into a large national corporation, Revere Copper and Brass,
Inc. He died from a disease that is now known as sideroblastic anemia.
Despite Revere's financial success, some considered him a second-class
member of the gentry because he was a craftsman. His family was known to
actually hide the John Singleton Copley portrait (seen at the top of the
article) in later years, as it showed him working with his hands.
In 1795, as grandmaster of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Masons, he
laid the cornerstone of the new statehouse in Boston, and in this year also
helped found the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, becoming its
first president.
He died in Boston on May 10, 1818, aged 83; his death tolled by the bells
that he himself had manufactured.
Paul Revere appears on the $5,000 Series EE Savings Bond issued by the
United States Government. His likeness is also alleged to appear on some
labels of the popular Sam Adams beer. The copper works he founded in 1801
continues as Revere Copper Products, Inc. with manufacturing divisions in
Rome, New York, and New Bedford, Massachusetts.
His original silverware, engravings, and other works are highly revered
today and can be found on display at prominent museums such as the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts. Today
noted silversmiths such as Reed & Barton offer reproduction "Paul Revere
Bowls" for sale to the public."
Content courtesy of Wikipedia with
relevant CelebrateBoston internal links added. Distributed under the
GNU Free Documentation License. This page will not be indexed by search
engines. w200701
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