TOP TEN Tall Tales Told on Tours (PART I)

A COLLABORATIVE WORK BY ALIDA V. ORZECHOWSKI, BETH VAN DUZER, AND RICHARD SMITH OF CONCORD TOUR COMPANY

1 | The British are coming! The British are coming!

Every American school-aged student knows these legendary words, but if you haven’t heard the story in a while, it goes a little something like this: On the night of April 18th, 1775, a politically radicalized silversmith with a fondness for taverns and tea parties hung two lanterns in a church tower in Boston and snuck out of the city. In a slow-motion version of an 18th c. emergency text alert, he then proceeded to thunder across the Massachusetts countryside on horseback, hollering his head off about an impending British invasion.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow certainly agreed it made a great story but it’s partly due to his enduring poetic license in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere that many of us have come away with the mistaken impression that Mr. Revere was on a solo mission, and that he made it all the way to Concord (he wasn’t and he didn’t).

More importantly, what Revere actually told people wasn’t that ‘The British are coming!’, but that the ‘regulars’ or ‘redcoats’ were out, which referred to the regular standing British Army. And while the urgency was the same, the message is actually quite different. English landowners, who made up the vast majority of colonists, considered themselves full British citizens so this unnecessary distinction would never have been used to describe the Royal Army. If today’s National Guard were deployed in Concord, no doubt we would shout lots of things but “The Americans are coming!” almost certainly wouldn’t be one of them.

2 | The Bloody Finger

Speaking of King George’s Army, have you heard the tall tale of Major Pitcairn and his little finger? Well, after the British marched into Concord as per Mr. Revere’s accurate warning, Pitcairn engaged in a bit of a scuffle with a tavern owner - near what is now South Burial Ground - who was hiding some cannon in his yard. This part we know is true, along with an account of the Major then calmly eating, drinking, and politely paying his bill at the tavern after having wrestled with its owner.

But here’s where it gets murky. As the story is often told, Pitcairn left that tavern and proceeded to another (because searching for hidden munitions in rebel villages is incredibly thirsty work) and by the time he arrived at Wright’s Tavern, he was allegedly bleeding from the little finger injured in the aforementioned cannon melee. Pitcairn ordered a drink - brandy seems to be the most common libation given in the retelling, or sometimes rum - but was too impatient to await a spoon with which to mix it. So, of course, he did what any of us would do, and swirled his bleeding finger around in his glass while declaring, “And so I hope to stir the damned Yankee blood ‘ere nightfall!” <insert evil laugh here>

We love this story. Everyone loves this story. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to find a version of Concord’s history or a retelling of the Battles of Lexington and Concord without it, but lacking an actual first source or reliable citation, it’s an historian’s worst nightmare. In all the eye-witness accounts and official reports about April 19th, 1775 (and there are many) that we’ve so far been able to peruse, this narrative doesn’t make a single appearance. The first written account of Pitcairn’s now indelible phrase doesn’t show up until 1835 in Lemuel Shattuck’s, A History of the Town of Concord, in which Shattuck also fails to provide any first source for the origin of this most enduring but tallest of tales.

3 | Target Practice on Old Hill or, Why the Bad Guys are Always Bad Shots

When the British Redcoats arrived in Concord on the morning of April 19, 1775, they immediately began to search the town for military weapons and supplies. Over the last 245 years a story has evolved that, while in Concord, those nasty British had the audacity to use the gravestones in the Old Hill Burying Ground for target practice. While this anecdote is certainly effective in riling up public perception of how evil and uncaring the Redcoats were, it’s a tale that is untrue.

In fact, the British Regulars were on their best behavior on the midnight march out to Concord; they were looking for military supplies and were under strict orders to harm no civilians or private property. Any decision by the soldiers to start taking potshots at gravestones would have been against orders AND been sternly dealt with by their officers! And besides, none of the gravestones in Old Hill seem to have musket ball damage, so either the Redcoats were REALLY bad shots, or it never happened.

A grave stone in Old Hill Burial ground and one possible source of the incorrect target practice rumors

©Alida Orzechowski

4 | Elisha Jones and the Bullet Hole House

Near the Old North Bridge there is a large yellow house that is said to contain a bullet hole from the first battle in the American Revolutionary War. As the Royal Army was retreating back to Boston on the morning of April 19th, the owner of the house, Elisha Jones, was watching the extraordinary events unfold from the doorway of his shed. Not liking the look of Jones or his shed one bit, a Redcoat decided to demonstrate his disapproval in the form of a shot fired off from his musket, and the ball, which thankfully missed Jones, instead pierced the wood near the door.

John Shepard Keyes, who years later would become the now legendary home’s new owner, wrote a book about it called, Story of an Old House. In it he shares the events as recalled by Jones’ daughter Mary, who would have been four at the time.

So did it really happen? According to the Park Service (and their awesome series Witness House Wednesdays), the hole has been measured on two different occasions and found to be within range of the size of a typical British musket ball - somewhere around .69 inches for the curious - though perhaps a bit on the small side. However, being ‘in range’ is a far cry from being proof.

Therefore, despite its descriptive moniker, the final word on the Bullet Hole House is probably best summed up by these words from Jim Hollister at Minute Man National Historical Park, “What I can tell you is that it IS a hole. In an old house.”

5 | Cutting it Close

In Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library there is housed a pair of scissors that date back to the American Revolution, which of course, have a tale attached to them. Before April 19th, an officer from the Regular Army allegedly ventured out to Concord. This officer spoke to a young Millicent Barrett about how the Redcoats were making cartridges (where a musket ball and measured gunpowder are stored in a paper tube). This young lady somehow persuaded the officer to teach her how to make cartridges, after which the lass then taught everyone she could, including colonial forces. Once again, while fun to tell, this tall tale has been romanticised and the majority of it is not verifiable.

First, the story did not appear until 1875, when a descendant of Millicent Barrett revealed the chronicle of the scissors when donating them to the town. Secondly, the tale was then fictionalized by Harriet Lothrop in her 1898 work Little Maid of Concord: A Romance of the American Revolution. Finally, Minute Man National Historical Park did some research and believes that while Millicent Barrett and other individuals most definitely made cartridges to support the war effort, the idea that an officer visiting Concord taught young Millicent a new trick is unfounded. If one looks through historical records, one can see that cartridge boxes had been ordered previous to the officer’s arrival.

So while it might be safe to say the scissors in question were used in cartridge making, that they were definitively the first pair in Concord to do so on account of a loquacious British soldier, should be smartly snipped from the story.

Join us in the next issue of Discover Concord for Part II and more enticing tidbits including, That Time Thoreau Went to Jail and His BFF Didn’t Visit, A Naughty Nothingburger of an Affair, and Louisa May Alcott Takes on Women’s Journal.

Concord Tour Company (CTC) is a womenowned and operated, independent micro business that has been providing fun and unique tours and historical reenactments in Concord, MA for over a decade. CTC is proud to offer highly engaging and entertaining tours while never compromising on historic accuracy. Our guides are all experts and scholars in their fields who delight in sharing Concord’s history to all ages and interest levels.