Paul Revere's Ride
as Lord Collingwood. He died in 1810.
    HMS
Somerset,
the mighty warship that blocked Paul Revere’s passage across the Charles River, came to a sad end. She was wrecked on the shoals of Cape Cod, and lost with many of her crew. From time to time, even today, the shifting sands of the Cape expose her shattered timbers of English oak, and then decently cover them again. Her heavy guns were salvaged and repaired by Paul Revere. 7
    On the American side, Dr. Joseph Warren was elected president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and appointed general of Massachusetts troops. Shortly before his commission was to take effect, the battle of Bunker Hill occurred. Warreninsisted on joining the fight as a private soldier. As on the day of Lexington and Concord, he deliberately sought the place of greatest danger, and during the final assault was killed in the American redoubt. He was buried by Captain Walter Laurie, the British commander at Concord’s North Bridge, who later said that he “stuffed the scoundrel with another rebel into one hole, and there he and his seditious principles may remain.” Many months later, two of Warren’s brothers and the ubiquitous Paul Revere rowed over to Charlestown in search of his remains. They exhumed the body, and identified it by the artifical teeth that Revere had wired into Doctor Warren’s jaw. His death was mourned as a national calamity. Paul Revere named his next-born son Joseph Warren Revere.

    The bones of HMS
Somerset
lie beneath the shifting sands of Cape Cod, where she was wrecked in a nor’easter on November 2, 1778. In a final irony, her guns were salvaged and repaired by Paul Revere, by then colonel of Massachusetts Artillery. In 1973, her timbers were briefly exposed by another storm, and photographed by Professor Nathaniel Champlin, who has kindly allowed this picture to be used here.
     
    Captain John Parker, the able commander of Lexington’s militia, was so gravely ill of consumption that he was unable to join his men at Bunker Hill. He died on September 17, 1775, at the age of forty-six. His musket passed to his grandson Theodore Parker,and is now an icon of American freedom in the Massachusetts State House.
    Many of Parker’s company of Lexington militia also died in the war. The Camp Fever took a heavy toll during the siege of Boston. Others died in combat. At the battle of Monmouth, Edmund Munroe and George Munroe were both killed by the same cannon ball, which also took off the leg of Joseph Cox of Lexington. Sergeant William Munroe, who met Revere at the end of the midnight ride, fought in the Saratoga campaign with many other Lexington men, and was present at the surrender of Bur-goyne’s army. Munroe rose from sergeant to the rank of colonel, then returned to his tavern, where he entertained George Washington at dinner in 1789. He held many high offices in Lexington and died in 1829.
    Benjamin Wellington, the Lexington militiaman who was captured by the Regulars on the road to Lexington before the battle, also served at Saratoga. After the war he came home to his farm, and was twice elected selectman of Lexington, where he died in 1812. Lexington’s African militiaman, Prince Estabrook, fought as a slave and was wounded on the Common. He won his freedom by his military service.
    The last survivor of the Lexington company was the boy fifer Jonathan Harrington, who died in 1854 at the age of ninety-six. More American troops marched in his funeral than had fought at Lexington and Concord. 8
    Jonas Clarke returned to his pulpit and continued to serve his town as minister until his death in 1805. Five of his young daughters married ministers, and raised more ministers in their turn.
    Dolly Quincy married John Hancock despite her misgivings, and her husband became president of the Continental Congress and governor of Massachusetts. He died in 1793 at the age of fifty-six, never having realized the promise of his early career. Two children were born of this
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