Volume 13 , Issue 23

1798 Paul Revere's Letter To Jeremy Belknap

Over at the Massachusetts Historical Society online you will find a manuscript written 23 years after the famous ride of 18 of April 1775. It was written at the request of Jeremy Belknap, Corresponding Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In it Paul Revere recounts his activities on the 18 and 19 of April 1775.

Revere tells how Dr. Joseph Warren urged him to ride to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of British troop movements. Revere had previously arranged with a fellow patriot to signal the direction of the movements of the British by placing a signal lantern in the steeple of the Old North Church. This is where the "one if by land,; two if by sea" comes in to play.

Revere also explains how he left Boston from the North part of the town and rowed across the Charles River by two friends, borrowing a horse to begin his ride through the countryside to warn the people that the British were coming.

Jeremy Belknap included some of his "interlineations" in the hand written copy purported to have been written in January 1798. Revere writes of avoiding British soldiers and reaching Lexington, where he conveyed information to Hancock and Adams as he met up with William Dawes. On their ride to Concord, Revere and Dawes were joined by Samuel Prescott, who helped them "alarm all the inhabitants." Revere's ride ended when he was captured by British soldiers, interrogated (at gun point to the head and chest) and eventually released in Lexington in time to hear the opening shots of the Revolutionary War. See Massachusetts Historical Society's manuscript below.

[If you have trouble reading the handwritten version, scrolled to the bottom of the window and click the transcription link for a more readable view.]
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