Bunker Hill

Ripley in
A History of the Fight at Concord
describes how Colonel Barrett ordered the provincials to march over the North Bridge to Punkatasset Hill (p. 16).
BAR
contains an account of the activities at the Barrett farm in anticipation of the arrival of the British soldiers (3:6–7); some of this account is drawn from the interview Benson J. Lossing had with Colonel Barrett’s grandson James in 1848, which is referred to in Lossing’s
Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution
, 1:551. Parson’s search of the Barrett farm under the watchful eyes of Mrs. Barrett is described in
BAR
, 3:23–24, 46. Robert Gross in
The Minutemen and Their World
writes of Lieutenant Joseph Hosmer’s prickly personality and his role as Concord’s “most dangerous man” (pp. 64–65). On the history of the Bedford flag, see Sharon Lawrence McDonald’s
The Bedford Flag Unfurled
, pp. 8–13, 33–39, 52–58. On the New Englanders’ uneasy relationship with their region’s native history and how “a white man in Indian costume could envision himself as an American ideal, both civilized and free,” see Benjamin Carp’s
Defiance of the Patriots
,
pp. 147–57, as well as my
Mayflower
, pp. 357–58. In 1850 Amos Baker (then known as “the last survivor” of the Concord fight) described James Nichols’s conversation with the regulars at the North Bridge and his decision not to participate in the fight in his “Affidavit of the Last Survivor,” printed in Joel Parker’s
Address to the Students of the University of Cambridge
, pp. 133–35. See also Michael Ryan’s “Mysterious Militia Man Deserts at Old North Bridge,”
Concord Magazine
, March/April 2001, available at http://www.concordma.com/magazine/marapr01/mysteryman.html.
    Affidavits about Isaac Davis’s actions on April 19 are in Josiah Adams,
Letter to Lemuel Shattuck
, pp. 14–20; Ellen Chase provides a useful distillation of this material in
BAR
, 3:24–28. See also Michael Ryan’s “The Concord Fight and a Fearless Isaac Davis,”
Concord Magazine
, May 1999, available at http://www.concordma.com/magazine/may99/davis.html. Ryan also writes about the tune the fifer in Davis’s company was reputedly playing in “White Cockade: A Jacobite Air at the North Bridge?” available at https://www2.bc.edu/~hafner/lmm/music-articles/white_cockade_ryan.html. Lemuel Shattuck tells of Joseph Hosmer “earnestly” inquiring, “Will you let them burn the town down?” in
History of Concord
, p. 111. In Gage’s official account of April 19, 1775, the townspeople of Concord are described as “sulky”;
JEPC
, p. 680. Martha Moulton’s testimony appears in Richard Frothingham’s
HSOB
, p. 369; Ellen Chase provides a good account of the activities of the British regulars in Concord in
BAR
, 3:19–21. George Bancroft writes that the Concord schoolmaster “could never afterwards find words strong enough to express how [Davis’s] face reddened at the word of command”; Bancroft also repeats Davis’s famous words, “I have not a man that is afraid to go,” in his
History of the United States
, 2:302. Lieutenant Jeremy Lister’s claim that the militiamen marched “with as much order as the best disciplined troops” is in Kehoe, p. 116. John Galvin describes how Laurie’s street-firing maneuver
should
have worked in
The Minute Men
, pp. 150–51. Lieutenant Sutherland’s description of what happened at the North Bridge is in Kehoe, pp. 142–43. Amos Doolittle’s engraving of the scene is titled “The Engagement at the North Bridge in Concord.” My thanks to William Fowler for his input regarding the muzzle velocity of a musket in a personal communication. Amos Barrett’s memory of how “their balls whistled well” is in his Narrative in
Journal and Letters of Henry True
, p. 33. Amos Baker’s statement that “we concluded they were firing jack-knives” can be found in his “Affidavit of the Last Survivor.” D. Hamilton Hurd in
History of Middlesex County
describes the death of Isaac Davis: “The ball passed quite through his body, making a very large wound, perhaps driving in a button of his coat. His blood gushed out in one great stream, flying, it is said, more than 10 feet, besprinkling and besmearing his own clothes . . . and the clothes of Orderly Sergeant David Forbush and a file leader, Thomas Thorpe” (1:261). Captain David Brown is credited with crying out, “God damn them, they are firing balls!” in Frederic Hudson, “The Concord