The Midnight Ride of Dr. Samuel Prescott

by Jaimee Leigh Joroff

“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Thus cried Shakespeare’s King Richard the III during the Battle of Bosworth as his horse was cut out from under him during England’s War of the Roses for control of the English throne. No horse came for Richard, and his kingdom was lost to Henry Tudor (Henry VII). But 290 years later, a horse did materialize in the darkness, galloped towards Concord, Massachusetts, and once again the power of the English throne was transformed.

It was April 19th, 1775, just past 1 AM when 23 year old Samuel Prescott, a young doctor from Concord, Massachusetts, stepped out of a clockmaker’s house in nearby Lexington, MA. Legend says the young doctor had been on a courtship visit to the clockmaker’s daughter, Lydia Mulliken. Upon leaving, Prescott mounted his horse and set out in the moonlight on the road to Concord, headed to his own house six miles away.

As Prescott started for home, the sounds of the night surrounded him; occasional owl calls mixed with the mundane thudding clop clop of his horse’s hooves on the dirt road. Ahead of him the darkness moved, shapes formed, and Prescott shortly found himself in the company of two horsemen from Boston; Dr. William Dawes and Silversmith and Son of Liberty Paul Revere. The Bostonians were en route to Concord, spreading the word that the King’s Troops were close behind, intent on finding and destroying rumored stockpiles of Colonist weapons and supplies in Concord.

As Revere later wrote in a letter, “I knew right away he [Prescott] was a true Son of Liberty!” And quite likely, Prescott was! In his detailed book Legend of the Third Horseman, author Charles E. Caes theorizes that the country doctor from Concord was deeply involved in the Sons of Liberty, the secret society established in Boston in response to increasing English restrictions, and “taxation without representation” actions that were chipping away at the Colonists’ autonomy and local governments. As suggested by Caes, the Sons of Liberty membership was so secretive that it was likely that neither Revere nor Dawes had met Prescott before this encounter on the road, but it is possible all three had been directed to that place by the Sons of Liberty Leader Doctor Joseph Warren. Knowing General Gage would lead the English army to Concord at some point, Warren prepared a network of riders to stand by to carry the alarm to Concord the moment the King’s troops set forth from their encampment in Boston. Caes suggests that Warren’s riders may have included Prescott, who was summoned to stand by in Lexington until he was needed. Under the guise of a country doctor returning from a late night call, or courting a young lady, Prescott could justify being on the roads if stopped. Additionally, the doctor and his horse would know the backroads and paths weaving into Concord.

Time ticking with the King’s troops not far behind, Prescott, Dawes, and Revere rode on together towards Concord. Revere warned his companions that they might encounter a patrol sent out by General Gage to intercept anyone carrying the message to Concord. Eyes and ears straining in the darkness, the three horsemen rode on. When they were halfway to Concord, in the town of Lincoln, Dawes and Prescott stopped at a house to rouse the owner. Revere was about 200 yards ahead of them on the road when, suddenly, two English soldiers jumped from the shadows into the moonlit road before him. Revere called back a warning to Dawes and Prescott.

Copyright Jaimee Leigh Joroff

The two English soldiers quickly became four, and then more, as a scouting patrol on the watch for colonist spies seeking to warn Concord joined the soldiers confronting Revere. Behind them, Dawes spurred his horse to the left, galloping into the trees and away towards Lincoln, MA. Too late, Prescott’s horse skidded to halt next to Revere. Bayonets flashed in the moonlight, a pistol cocked, and a red-coated English Officer shouted, “G-d D—n you stop! If you go an inch further, you are a dead man!” Having laid a trap of fence posts, the English Patrol drove Revere’s and Prescott’s horses into a confined area.

Now in the fenced paddock, Prescott shouted to Revere “put on!” According to Revere, “He [Prescott] took to the left, I to the right towards a Wood, at the bottom of the Pasture, intending, when I gained that, to jump my horse…. just as I reached it, out started six officers, siesed [sic] my bridle, put their pistols to my breast, [and] ordered me to dismount.” Across the field, more soldiers tried to stop Prescott. Spurring his horse onward, Prescott rode hard for a stone wall at the edge of the paddock. His horse soared through the air, cleared the wall, and disappeared into the dark, racing free along the swampy trails, woodland paths, and shortcuts into Concord well known by both the doctor and his horse.

Passing his own house on today’s Lexington Road, Prescott galloped into Concord center where he alerted Amos Melvin, the minuteman on duty that night. Melvin ran to the town house and rang the bells, awakening Concord. Onward rode Prescott; up modern day Monument Street, over the north bridge, and on to the towns of Acton and Stow, activating their minutemen and militia who assembled and marched to Concord just in time to be present a few hours later during the unexpected battle at the North Bridge where, with tensions and misunderstandings running high, a segment of the King’s Troops faced off against the Colonists. An unordered volley of musket fire flew from the King’s Troops across the bridge into the minutemen and militia. Acton’s Captain Isaac Davis was struck and killed, leading Concord’s Major John Buttrick to shout the fateful order, “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake, fire!” Still part of the English colony, this was the first time a technically stillEnglish subject had given an order to fire upon his fellow countrymen, an observation that leads some historians to regard the American Revolution as America’s first civil war.

Although eclipsed by the inaccuracies in Longfellow’s poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” the memory of Prescott and his horse lives on in a legacy of freedom. Without their success in carrying news of the King’s Troops’ approach to Concord, the famous shot heard round the world might never have been fired. As King George III read of General Cornwallis’s final surrender to George Washington in November 1781, perhaps the English monarch was left ruefully echoing Shakespeare’s words: “A horse. A horse. My kingdom for a horse.”

Follow-Up Places to Visit: • Paul Revere Capture Site, 108 North Great Road, Lincoln, MA 01773 • Outside view of Samuel Prescott’s home. Located on Lexington Road two houses away from the Louisa May Alcott Orchard House Museum, the Samuel Prescott home is now a private residence and not open to the public but may be viewed from the street. See the Commemorative plaque embedded in the stone wall in front of Prescott’s home. • Monument Square in Concord Center, site of the townhouse in which minuteman Amos Melvin rang the alarm bells. • The North Bridge battle site and visitor center where you’ll find knowledgeable rangers and historical interpreters.

Sources & Recommended Reading: • Letter form Paul Revere to Jeremy Belknap, (c. 1798). Retrieved from www.masshist.org • Revere, P. (1775) Paul Revere’s Sworn Deposition. Retrieved from www.masshist.org • Caes, C., (2009), LEGEND OF THE THIRD HORSEMAN, Xlibris Corporation, Bloomington, Indiana. • Scudder, T., (1947), CONCORD: AMERICAN TOWN, Little Brown & Co., Boston • Swayne, J.L., (1905), THE STORY OF CONCORD, E.F. Worcester Press, Boston, Massachusetts • Shattuck, L., (1835) HISTORY OF CONCORD MASSACHUSETTS, Russell, Odiorne, and Company, Boston, Massachusetts