THE FIRST BRITISH PRISONER TAKEN IN THE REVOLUTION
Silvanus Wood of Woburn, Mass., on the alarm of the 19th of April, 1775, left his home at Kendall’s Mill and hastened to Lexington where he joined Capt. Parker’s company of thirty-seven minute-men on the Common at the time the British regulars fired upon them. He assisted in removing the dead and wounded from the field to the meeting-house and then followed the British troops to Concord, accompanied by a companion who was unarmed. When about a mile beyond the meeting-house, near Parkhurst’s Hill in Lexington, Wood observing a British soldier who had left the ranks and was resting by the roadside, ordered him to surrender, which he did, and taking from him his musket and equipment gave them to his companion. They then marched their prisoner to Lexington and delivered him into custody. Wood later enlisted in the army formed by Washington at Cambridge, and was at New York and in New Jersey, at the battle of Trenton [and was wounded at the battle of Pell’s Point (Pelham), Oct. 18, 1776. He was then an Ensign in Col. Loammi Baldwin’s regiment, the 26th Massachusetts.—Ed.].
Herbert W. Kimball.
Boston.