Phebe Bliss Emerson Ripley

BY JIM SHERBLOM

Phebe watched out her bedroom window with shock, awe, fear, and trepidation. In his role as Concord militia chaplain, her husband, Rev. William Emerson, had gone out before dawn and was now a half mile away with the rebel forces on Punkatasset Hill. Minutes ago, Frank, an enslaved black man owned by the Emerson family, had burst into her bedroom to inform her that hundreds of British regulars were marching by the house. Phebe was 35 and pregnant as she gathered her four small children around her; little Phebe (8), little William (6), Hannah (5), and the baby, Mary Moody. They huddled together to watch British soldiers march towards the bridge with the rebels on the other side. Things were tense as smoke began to furl up from the village. A shot rang out, and then more shots were heard. The British troops began to run back towards the village, and soon Phebe discovered her life would be turned upside down by the shot heard ‘round the world.

Concord had been a center of resistance to Parliament’s Navigation Acts since at least 1770. In 1773, Concord established a Committee on Correspondence to coordinate resistance to Parliament across the colony and between the American colonies. In January 1774, following the Boston Tea Party, Concord voted to boycott English tea to avoid import taxes. In June 1774, with the arrival of many more British troops, Boston had become an armed military encampment. On August 30, 1774, Concord hosted an illegal county convention of 150 delegates from most of the towns of Middlesex County. Beginning in September 1774, both General Gage and the rebels began a race to capture military armaments in the colony, with many of the rebel supplies being sequestered in Concord. On November 15, 1774, Concord hosted the Second Provincial Congress presided over by John Hancock and Sam Adams. By Christmas, Concord was an armed camp with several cannons, 100 pounds of cannon balls, hundreds of rifles, 500 pounds of shot, and 420 pounds of gunpowder. These supplies are what the British came to capture.

April 19, 1775, had begun before dawn with the ringing of the bell in the First Parish steeple to call out Concord’s minutemen and militia, who were soon joined by militia from the nearest towns. As militia from more distant towns arrived, the rebel forces grew from a few hundred to 1,800 colonial militia, compared to 790 British regulars sent out to capture or destroy Concord’s military supplies. Throughout the afternoon fighting was fierce. By the end of the day the British suffered 73 killed, 172 wounded, and 26 missing. The rebels suffered 49 dead, 36 wounded, and five missing. This was a completely unexpected outcome from both sides as the British military at that time was considered the finest in the world.

Phebe was born in 1741, the oldest of Rev. Daniel and Phebe Walker Bliss’ nine children, and grew up with enslaved black people to perform domestic duties and farming for their household. Her father, Rev. Daniel Bliss, had been First Parish in Concord’s evangelical minister, but he died of tuberculosis in 1762 when Phebe was just 21. The congregation chose a 21-yearold minister, Rev William Emerson, as their next minister and, as was the custom, he boarded with the widow Bliss until he could get settled. Phebe and William fell in love, married, and had five children together, with William building a Manse beside the Old North Bridge for his growing family. The widow Bliss no longer needed her enslaved servants, so she sent Frank, Cato, and Phyllis to serve her daughter’s busy and growing household at the Manse.

When war broke out, General George Washington located his Continental army on the Harvard campus. As a result, for nine months Harvard College relocated to Concord where their classes were held in the meeting house and students and faculty boarded with various families. Several of the most serious students spent many hours in the minister’s library at the Manse, the finest library in Concord, especially Harvard senior Ezra Ripley, who grew quite fond of this young minister’s family and the town of Concord. In his role as militia chaplain, Rev. Emerson rode out with the Concord militia to capture Fort Ticonderoga, but while in camp he was exposed to an infectious disease and died in 1776 on his way to return home to Concord.

First Parish needed to choose a new minister, and they chose 27-year-old Ezra Ripley who, in traditional fashion, boarded with the widow Emerson until he could get settled. He, too, fell hopelessly in love with Phebe, even though she was nine years older than him. They soon married and would have three more children of their own. Ripley’s ministry of 63 years would be Concord’s longest, bridging Concord from a self-sustaining agricultural colony of the British Empire to becoming a center of manufacturing and commerce, exporting and finance, drawing much of the growing wealth from Concord’s involvement in the triangle slave trade. Upon graduating from Harvard, Ezra’s and Phebe’s oldest son Samuel would serve as a tutor on a Virginia slave plantation before settling down as a Unitarian minister in Waltham. Their younger son Daniel moved to Alabama, married a judge’s daughter, and owned a cotton plantation.

The Revolutionary War divided families, with Phebe’s brothers Daniel and Samuel serving with the British army and her brothers Thomas and Joseph serving with the American troops. In his later years, as Phebe’s health declined, Ezra provided opportunities for her grandson Ralph Waldo Emerson to preach from his pulpit and lecture at the Concord Lyceum, ushering in a new period in Concord’s intellectual and cultural history known as the transcendental era. Standing firm against tyrants in defense of liberties is the Concord shot still heard ‘round the world as it has been for nearly 250 years. Modern Concordians are the inheritors of Concord’s fights over generations to defend freedoms.

This article is based upon Rev. Dr. Jim Sherblom’s upcoming book The Stories of Concord.