The Dangerous Déjà vu

BY JAIMEE LEIGH JOROFF

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Have you ever sensed that something bad was about to happen? You don’t know how or why, but it’s as though an ancestral memory is shouting, “Awake! Danger is coming!” So it may have been for three men on April 19, 1775.

Several centuries before, clans Munroe and Mackenzie were two of the most powerful clans in the Scottish Highlands. King James IV of Scotland, seated far away in Edinburgh, relied on allies for news and to carry out his control in the Highlands. Clan Chief William Munroe was one of these allies, and when word reached King James of rebellious behavior by Chief Mackenzie, the King ordered Chief Munroe to punish the Mackenzies. Chief Munroe stealthily led a large force to Mackenzie land where

Hthey attacked the Mackenzies and burned their homes. As the exhausted Munroe forces headed home, word of their attack spread quickly, and Mackenzies descended from across the Highlands. Outnumbered by Munroe’s men, the Mackenzies spread out, surrounding Munroe’s column, and attacked! Ambushed, and with panic raining down as fast as the Mackenzies’ swords, Munroe’s men lost coordination, leading to high fatalities. Fighting between the Munros and Mackenzies continued for years until William’s son Hector married a Mackenzie woman and the clans made peace.

Over the next two centuries, the Scottish throne was seized by the king of England and the Munroe and Mackenzie clans fractured, with some loyal to the new English king and the will there will be a road a others pinning the white cockade (ribbon ornament) to their bonnets to display their Jacobite loyalty to displaced Scottish king James Stuart. A direct descendant of William and Hector Munroe was captured by English soldiers and deported to America as an indentured servant. He gained his freedom and became the grandfather of William Munroe of Lexington with whom we pick up this story on a day when Munroes and Mackenzies would find themselves in a dangerous déjà vu.

The day was April 19, 1775. Far from the English king in London, loyalist allies in the colonies had been sending messages back to England reporting on the growing rebellious activities of revolutionaries, particularly in Massachusetts, where an uncivilized tea party in 1773 led to the king sending 3,000 more troops and appointing General Thomas Gage as the Military Governor of the upstart colony.

Loyalist spies reported to Gage that the colonists were stashing weapons in Concord to support a continental army. Governor Gage ordered British troops to march to Concord and find and destroy the supplies. The plan was to move in secret, and around midnight on April 18, 1775, a column of nearly 700 British regulars under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith began the march to Concord. But patriot spies had been watching, and ahead of the column, a network of riders galloped through the countryside spreading the alarm to “Awake! The regulars are coming out!” Sensing their cover was blown, a second column of British soldiers was ordered to leave Boston and reinforce Smith’s men, but this column was slow to mobilize.

Up the road in Lexington, William Munroe, a tavern owner and an Orderly Sergeant in the Lexington militia, sensed danger. Fearing for the safety of patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were staying in Rev. Clark’s house, William Munroe summoned eight well-armed men to join him in guarding the house. Just after midnight, Paul Revere galloped into Lexington in search of Hancock and Adams to share the news, but Munroe refused to let him pass until his identity was confirmed. Alerted that the regulars were headed this way, the Lexington minutemen and militia assembled on the town green where they stood at 5:00 am when the king’s troops marched into town. A shot rang out, the shooter unknown; the regulars fired on the colonists, and eight Lexington men fell dead. The king’s troops marched on, following the road stretching from Lexington, through Lincoln, to Concord. Ahead of them rode more patriot messengers!

Around 5:30 am, the meeting house bell in Lincoln began to ring; from house to house, gunshots broke the dawn silence, the prearranged signal for minutemen and militia to gather at once on the town green. Fifty-two-year-old Benjamin Munroe seized his musket and ran to the town green with his son where they learned of the approaching king’s army and the carnage in Lexington. Like William Munroe of Lexington, Benjamin’s grandfather also hailed from the Munroes of the Scottish Highlands. With men from nearly half the households of Lincoln, Benjamin Munroe hurried to Concord, and joined the Concord men assembling on the hill behind the meeting house.

Near 7:00 am, a sea of glittering bayonets was spotted. Vastly outnumbered, the colonists fell back to higher ground above the North Bridge spanning the Concord River. Here, their numbers swelled as patriot companies from neighboring towns arrived. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Smith ordered the king’s troops to split up to search Concord and secure the bridges. Unbeknownst to Benjamin Munroe and those with him, out of their sight in Concord Center, the king’s troops had found and were burning military supplies. Sparks accidentally set the town house on fire. Benjamin Munroe and the colonists saw heavy black smoke rising from the town. Concord’s Lieutenant Joseph Hosmer cried, “Will you let them burn down the town?” No! To the town!

As Benjamin Munroe and the patriots advanced down the hill to the Concord Bridge, legend says their fifes and drums played the Scottish Jacobite march “The

White Cockade.” At the bridge, they encountered about 100 regulars. Without being ordered, several British soldiers fired on the colonists, killing two and triggering Concord’s Major John Buttrick to shout, “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake, fire!”

Casualties fell on both sides of the bridge; the king’s troops panicked, retreating in a disorderly column to Concord center. There, the now-exhausted British reformed their column and began the long march back to Boston.

By now, word was out and thousands of enraged militia from all over Massachusetts were descending. Arriving in small groups, they were no match for the British column and took up positions wherever they could; taking cover, firing on the British, and then running ahead to reposition. Fierce fighting occurred at Merriam’s Corner in Concord, and “Bloody Angle” in Lincoln. Near 2:00 pm, the column was back in Lexington, where, by now, having regained their footing, William Munroe and the Lexington companies were waiting to strike revenge. At that moment, marching into Lexington from Boston, came the longawaited British column of reinforcements. In their midst, leading a detachment from His Majesty’s 23rd Regiment of Foot, was Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie. Son of a Scottish merchant whose family hailed from the same Highlands where the Munroes and Mackenzies had fought two centuries ago, this time, Mackenzie found himself and the king’s column on the receiving end of a vengeful ambush from Munroes and colonists. Allowing the exhausted and wounded troops from the first column to get ahead of them, Mackenzie and his unit took up the rear guard, trying to fight off William Munroe’s militia and allies. Wrote Mackenzie, “During the whole of the March from Lexington [back to Boston] the Rebels kept an incessant irregular fire from all points at the Column… [firing] under cover of a stone wall, from behind a tree, or out of a house, and the moment they had fired they lay down out of sight until they had loaded again.”

Fighting and ambushing continued all the way back to Boston. The American Revolutionary War had officially begun. William and Benjamin Munroe survived the war and lived to see American revolutionaries appoint George Washington as president of the new nation. Frederick Mackenzie also survived and sailed home to a vastly smaller English empire. And the Brahn Seer Prophesy of Kenneth Mackenzie was fulfilled again.

The author extends thanks to Lincoln Public Library Librarian Robin Rapoport and Archivist Virginia Rundell for their help in accessing records.

A Concord native, Jaimee Joroff is manager of the Barrow Bookstore in Concord Center, which specializes in Concord history, Transcendentalism, and literary figures. She has been an interpreter at most of Concord’s historic sites and is a licensed town guide.

For a list of sources, email barrowbookstore@gmail.com.