BOSTON AND VICINITY, 1775-6.
1—x Lieut.-Col. Smith's starting place.
2—x His landing place in Cambridge.
3. 3. 3. Earl Percy's route from Boston to Cambridge.
Top of the map is north.
Solomon Brown of Lexington, a young man nineteen years old, was the first to report in that town the unusual occurrence of so many officers along the highways in the night, and it was surmised there that the capture of Hancock and Adams was intended. Brown was returning home from Boston when they passed him on the road. Somehow gaining the front again he rode rapidly into Lexington village and reported what he had seen. Sergeant Munroe and eight men were sent to guard the parsonage where the patriot statesmen were stopping, and Solomon Brown, Jonathan Loring, and Elijah Sanderson, all members of Captain Parker's Company of Minute Men, were despatched to watch the officers after they had passed through Lexington toward Concord. They followed them on horseback into Lincoln, about two and a half miles from Lexington village, where they were ambushed by the ones they were following, and taken prisoners. It was then about 10 o'clock in the evening of April 18th. They were detained until Revere was also captured at the same place a few hours later, early in the morning of the 19th.
[THE BRITISH START FOR LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.]
The grenadiers and light infantry under command of Lieut.-Col. Francis Smith, of the 10th Regiment, augmented by a detachment of Marines under Major John Pitcairn, assembled at the foot of Boston Common, on the evening of April 18th, and at about half-past ten o'clock embarked for Lechmere Point, or, as it was often called at that time, Phip's Farm, in East Cambridge. They numbered about eight hundred men.[43]
The "Foot of the Common," was not far from the present corner of Boylston and Charles Streets, and just there was the shore line of the Back Bay, a large body of water opening out into the Charles River. Since then the Bay has been filled in and is now an attractive residential district bearing still its ancient aquatic name however.
The transportation was by means of the row boats connected with the British men-of-war and transports, and was thus necessarily slow, and undoubtedly required several trips. It seems probable that their course was westerly a little way, along the present Boylston Street, then northerly along the present Arlington Street, into the Charles River and across to Lechmere Point, a distance of about a mile and a quarter.
They landed in the marshes nearly opposite the Court House on Second Street, for East Cambridge also was much smaller then than now. The water was too shallow to allow the heavily loaded boats to reach dry land, so the troops waded knee deep to the shore. There they were halted in a "dirty road," as one of the British officers present termed it,[44] and detained still longer, that each might receive a day's rations and thirty-six rounds of ammunition.
[THE MESSENGERS OF ALARM.]
The invading army safely across the Charles River was now really on its way, but with all its precautions for secrecy, its coming was even at that moment being heralded in every direction. The ever-vigilant Sons of Liberty had noticed the unusual movements of the troops after dark, and so informed Dr. Warren. He quickly summoned William Dawes and Paul Revere. Dawes arriving first was the first to start, and his route to Lexington was through Roxbury. So to him belongs the credit of being the first messenger out of Boston bearing the alarm of the British invasion. Paul Revere came soon after and was carried over the Charles River considerably farther down than the British soldiers were crossing, and landed in Charlestown. His route to Lexington was much shorter than the one through Roxbury.