A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of January

Being Yourself

Born on January 1st in 1735 (modern calendar) in the city of Boston, Paul Revere was an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and a member of the Sons of Liberty. He is best known for his April 1775 midnight ride to alert the local colonial militia to the approach of the British forces. This event later became popularized by the publication of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 “Paul Revere’s Ride”. 

The second of eleven children, Paul Revere left school at the age of thirteen and became an silversmith apprentice at the workshop of his father, Apollos Riveire whose work is now housed in the collections of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the De Young Museum. Through the silversmith trade, Paul Revere made many connections across British society, which aided him when he became active in the American Revolution. Too young to officially be the master of the family silver shop after his father’s death in 1754, Revere enlisted in the provincial army in February of 1756. 

Commissioned a second lieutenant in the artillery regiment, Revere spent the summer of 1756 at Fort William Henry at New York’s Lake George. He did not stay long in the army; he returned to Boston and took control of the silver shop in his own name. Revere married Sarah Orne on the fourth of August in 1757. Together they had eight children of whom two died young. Revere’s business started to suffer when the British economy entered a recession due to the Seven Year’s War, a global conflict that involved most of Europe’s great powers. With the enactment of the Stamp Act of 1785 by the British government, the Massachusetts economy made a further downturn. 

Paul Revere did not participate in the more raucous protests against the policies of the British government; but he did become in 1765 a member of the Sons of Liberty, a loose organization active in the American colonies to advance the rights of colonists and fight taxation by the British government. From 1765 onwards, Revere produced engravinga and other artifacts with political theme, among which was one depicting the Boston Massacre in March of 1770. From 1773, the year of the Boston Tea Party, to November of 1775, he served as a courier for the Boston Committee of Public Service, a service in which he reported to New York and Philadelphia on the political unrest in Boston. 

In 1774, General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts, dissolved the provincial assembly, closed the port of Boston, and forced private citizens to provide lodging in their homes for British soldiers. At this time, Revere began meeting with others to coordinate the gathering and dissemination of intelligence on the movements of British soldiers. In December of 1774, a false alert prompted him to ride to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to warn its citizens of a British troop landing. This ride later sparked a rebel success with a gunpowder supply raid at Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth. 

Paul Revers’s famous midnight ride was an alert to the American colonial militia in April of 1775 as to the approach of British forces. The ride occurred on the night of April 18th immediately before the first engagements of the American Revolutionary War. When activity by the British Army indicate a crackdown on the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, Rever and William Dawes prepared the alert. Robert Newman used a lantern to alert colonist in Charlestown to the Army’s advance of the Charles River. 

Revere and Dawes rode ten miles to meet John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Lexington, a ride which alerted forty other riders along the way. Revere and Dawes, along with Samuel Prescott rode on to Concord. The three riders were captured by the British in Lincoln. Dawes and Prescott escaped but Revere was returned to Lexington and eventually freed after questioning. By giving the colonists advance waring of the British Army’s movement, the ride played a crucial role in the colonists’ victories in subsequent battles.