The home of Capt. Davis, was about a mile westerly from the meeting house in the centre of Acton, and about six miles from the North Bridge in Concord. His Company were assembling rapidly, and when about twenty had reported he was anxious to march. A man of serious mien, he seemed particularly so on the morning of April 19. One of his companions, speaking cheerily, perhaps lightly, was gently reproved by the brave Captain, who seemed to have a premonition of his own fate, and reminded the other of what the day might have in store for them. They were about to proceed when he turned to his wife, as if to speak, but he could only say:
"Take good care of the children."[81]
Then he turned and marched away with his little command. It might have been seven o'clock when he started,[82] to the lively tune of the "White Cockade" played by his fifer, Luther Blanchard, and his drummer, Francis Barker.
When they reached the westerly part of Concord they must have learned what the British were doing at the home of Col. Barrett, for they left the highway and passed into the fields to the northward of the Barrett home, stopping for a while a little way off to watch the King's soldiers in their work of destruction of the military stores. Continuing again, they marched through the fields until they came out into the highway at Widow Brown's Tavern,[83] which was situated across the river from Concord village, a mile away. From there they proceeded by way of the Back Road, so called, to the high ground now called Punkatasset Hill, rising about a quarter of a mile to the westward of the North Bridge.
Other companies of militia and minute-men were already assembled there, and Capt. Davis marched his men, who now numbered about forty, to the left of the line, a position that had been assigned to him at the muster a little while before.
From this position on Punkatasset, they looked down upon the gently flowing Concord River; upon the old North Bridge which crossed just in the immediate foreground; upon the red-coated soldiers who stood grimly on guard at the nearer end; and beyond, up the river to Concord village, three-quarters of a mile away, where curling volumes of smoke seemed to indicate the burning of American homes.
In Chelmsford, twenty-three miles northwesterly from Boston, the alarm was early given by a mounted messenger, upon which guns were fired and drums beat. Minute-men met at the Alarm-post, a rock standing where the hay-scales were placed in after years. Captain Moses Parker's Company, and Captain Oliver Barron's Company, marched, not in regular order, but in squads, and came into Concord at Meriam's Corner and on Hardy's Hill in time for the pursuit.
In Dracut, twenty-five miles from Boston, the alarm was given soon after two o'clock, by the firing of a gun by Capt. Trull across the Merrimac River in Tewksbury, a signal previously agreed upon, which aroused Gen. Varnum. Two companies marched immediately, one under Captain Peter Coburn, and the other under Captain Stephen Russell. They were, however, too remote from the scene of strife to meet the British, but continued their rapid march to Cambridge.
Littleton, twenty-five miles from Boston, was alarmed in the morning by the news of the British march on Concord. The messenger then hurried over Beaver Brook Bridge, and into the towns beyond on his mission.
Even in Pepperell, thirty-five miles northwesterly from Boston, the alarm went, reaching there about 9 o'clock. Gen. Prescott gave orders to the Pepperell and Hollis companies, to march to Groton, there to join others of the regiment.[84]