Paul Revere

kaseys gonna fail today Paul Revere (January 1, 1735 – May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. Because he was immortalized after his death for his role as a messenger in the battles of Lexington and Concord, Revere's name and his "midnight ride" are well-known in the United States as a patriotic symbol. In his lifetime, Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston craftsman, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military. Revere later served as an officer in one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, a role for which he was later exonerated. After the war, he was early to recognize the potential for large-scale manufacturing of metal goods and is considered by some historians to be the prototype of the American industrialist.

Early years

Paul Revere was born on 1 January, 1735. According to the records of the New Brick Congregational Church in Boston, he was baptized on 22 December 1734. This date is given in the "Old Style" Julian Calendar that was used in the British Empire until 1752. The date translates to 2 January, 1735 in the "New Style" Gregorian Calendar. According to a handwritten notation in a Bible owned by one of Revere's descendants, Paul Revere's birth date was December 21, 1734 (Old Style) or January 1, 1735 (New Style). Since it is debatable whether Revere was baptized on the day after he was born, his actual birth date may have been a few days earlier in late December 1734.

Revere was the oldest surviving son of Apollos Rivoire, a Huguenot refugee from Guyenne who had anglicized his name to Paul Revere. His mother, Deborah Hitchbourn, was of English descent.[1] Revere's father was sent by his family to the New World in December 1715. Once in Boston, he apprenticed to Mr. John Coney to learn the trade of a gold- and silversmith. In the 1720s, Apollos established his own goldsmithing shop in the center of Boston, and anglicized his name to Paul Revere. Soon after he moved his family into the North End of Boston, his oldest son Paul was born.

Paul Revere attended a local writing school near his home and then apprenticed with his father. In 1756, he served as a second lieutenant of artillery in the expedition against Crown Point, and for several months was stationed at Fort Edward in New York.

By his first wife, Sarah Orne (1736–1773), whom he married in 1754, Revere had seven daughters and a son. After Sarah's death, he married Rachel Walker (1745–1813) in 1773, and together they had five sons and three daughters.

Revere became a proficient copper engraver in the years before the war. As a close friend of Samuel Adams, he was involved in the earliest stages of the struggle for liberty. He was an articulate exponent of republicanism, making numerous drawings that displayed British contempt for American rights. One of his best known engravings tells the patriot story of the Boston Massacre. He was a leader in the Boston Tea Party of 1773. In 1774, in one of his less famous rides, Revere delivered a copy of the Suffolk Resolves by horseback from Milton, Massachusetts to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, where it was adopted as a show of colonial solidarity. He was one of the Boston grand jurors who refused to serve in 1774 because Parliament had made the justices independent of the people for their salaries; was one of the thirty North End mechanics who patrolled the streets to watch the movements of the British troops and Tories; and in December 1774 was sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to urge the seizure of military stores there, and induced the colonists to attack and capture Fort William and Mary — one of the first acts of military force in the war.

The midnight ride

The role for which he is most remembered today was as a nighttime messenger before the battles of Lexington and Concord. His famous "Midnight Ride" occurred on the night of April 18–19, 1775, when he and William Dawes were paid by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride inland from Charlestown to warn the militias at Lexington and Concord of the approach of British army troops from Boston. Robert Newman and Captain John Pulling held the two lanterns in the Old North Church, indicating that the British soldiers were crossing the Charles River. Later, Dawes and Revere were joined by Samuel Prescott, a doctor who was just returning from a visit to Lexington. Revere set ablaze three houses along his route being careful to make as little noise as possible. Revere probably did not shout the famous phrase later attributed to him ("The British are coming!"); his warning was: "The regulars are out!"

He reached Lexington around noon and brought news of the British advance to Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were spending the night at the Hancock-Clarke House. Revere, Dawes, and Prescott were captured by British troops in Lincoln at a roadblock on the way to nearby Concord. Prescott and Dawes escaped, with Prescott able to reach Concord to deliver the warning. Revere was detained longer and had his horse confiscated. He walked back to Lexington and arrived in time to see the first shots of the battle the next day. The warning delivered by the three riders successfully allowed the militia to repel the British troops, who were harried by guerrilla fire along the road back to Boston.

Revere's role was not particularly noted during his life. In 1860, over forty years after his death, the ride became the subject of "Paul Revere's Ride", a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem has become one of the best known in American history and was memorized by generations of schoolchildren. Its famous opening lines are:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year

Longfellow took many liberties with the events of the evening, most especially giving credit to Revere for the collective achievements of the three riders. As a result, historians in the 20th century sometimes considered Revere's role in American history to have been exaggerated, becoming a national myth. Other historians have since stressed his importance, however, including David Hackett Fischer in his book Paul Revere's Ride (1995), an important scholarly study of Revere's role in the opening of the Revolution.

Revere's greatest contribution to the American Revolution was the alarm and messenger system that he designed and implemented before the battles of Lexington and Concord. He used his numerous contacts in eastern Massachusetts to devise a system for the rapid call up of the militias to oppose the British. Although several messengers rode longer and alerted more soldiers than Revere that night, they were part of the organization that Revere created and implemented in eastern New England. Some claim that Paul Revere became famous while Dawes and Prescott did not because Revere was better known and trusted by those who knew him. Therefore, people acted on his words instead of ignoring the strangers waking them up after midnight. The army that assembled during the night of his famous ride would become the nucleus of the Continental Army.

Today, parts of the ride are posted with signs marked "Revere's Ride". The full ride used Main Street in Charlestown, Broadway and Main Street in Somerville, Main Street and High Street in Medford, to Arlington center, and Massachusetts Avenue the rest of the way (an old alignment through Arlington Heights, Massachusetts is called "Paul Revere Road").

War years

In 1775, Revere was sent by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to Philadelphia to study the working of the only powder mill in the colonies, and although he was allowed only to pass through the building, obtained sufficient information to enable him to set up a powder mill at Canton.

He was commissioned a Major of infantry in the Massachusetts militia in April 1776; was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of artillery in November; was stationed at Castle William, defending Boston harbor, and finally received command of this fort. He served in an expedition to Rhode Island in 1778, and in the following year participated in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition. After his return he was accused of having disobeyed the orders of one of his commanding officers, and dismissed from the militia. He later obtained a formal court-martial which exonerated him.

Later years

After the war, he engaged in the manufacture of gold and silver ware. He was early to recognize the appeal of fine metal goods beyond the upper class to the growing middle class. As a foundryman, he recognized a burgeoning market for church bells in the religious revival that followed the war, and became one of the best-known metal casters of that instrument, working with sons Paul Jr. and Joseph Warren Revere in the firm Paul Revere & Sons. This firm cast the first bell made in Boston and produced over 900 in total. Additionally, Revere became a pioneer in the production in America of copper plating, covering the original wooden dome of the Massachusetts State House in copper in 1802, and of copper spikes for ships—most notably the USS Constitution. His business plans in the late 1780s were stymied by a shortage of adequate money in circulation. His future plans rested on his entrepreneurial role as a manufacturer of cast iron, brass, and copper products. Alexander Hamilton's national policies regarding banks and industrialization exactly matched his dreams, and he became an ardent Federalist committed to building a robust economy and a powerful nation. His copper and brass works, established in Canton, Massachusetts, in 1801, eventually grew into a large national corporation, Revere Copper and Brass, Inc. He died from a disease that is now known as sideroblastic anemia.

Despite Revere's financial success, some considered him a second-class member of the gentry because he was a craftsman. His family was known to actually hide the John Singleton Copley portrait (seen at the top of the article) in later years, as it showed him working with his hands.

In 1795, as grandmaster of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Masons, he laid the cornerstone of the new statehouse in Boston, and in this year also helped found the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, becoming its first president.

He died in Boston on May 10, 1818, at 83, his death tolled by bells that he himself had manufactured.

Paul Revere appears on the $5,000 Series EE Savings Bond issued by the United States Government. His likeness is also alleged to appear on some labels of the popular Sam Adams beer. The copper works he founded in 1801 continues as Revere Copper Products, Inc. with manufacturing divisions in Rome, New York, and New Bedford, Massachusetts.

His original silverware, engravings, and other works are highly revered today and can be found on display at prominent museums such as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Today noted silversmiths such as Reed & Barton offer reproduction "Paul Revere Bowls" for sale to the public.

And you can't forget Paul Rever's Pizza!

References

David Hackett Fischer; Paul Revere's Ride Oxford University Press, 1994
Jayne E. Triber; A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere U of Massachusetts Press, 1998
"Paul Revere, Artisan, Businessman and Patriot -- The Man Behind the Myth," Paul Revere Memorial Association, 1988.
Edith J. Steblecki, "Paul Revere and Freemasonry," PRMA, 1985.

External links