Needham History: Needham’s Road to Revolution

There we were – right in the thick of things.

“Paul Revere” by NC Wyeth. Wyeth used his grandfather Zirngiebel’s house at 178 South Street as the model for the house that Revere rides by. The house, built in 1776, is still standing.

Needham’s Winding Road to Revolution

April 19, 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord – the opening actions of the Revolutionary War. Here is some background on Needham’s role on that important day – and we were right in the thick of it.

We all learn about the Battles of Lexington and Concord when we are in school, and the alarm sent by Paul Revere and his riders on the night of April 19, 1775, and of course Longfellow’s stirring poem. Seeing the two lanterns that signaled a British departure “by sea” – that is, across the Charles River to Cambridge, he was there on the opposite shore,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.

The country folk – that was us. And although Longfellow gives Paul Revere all the credit, there was in fact a network of riders who went out that night, to the villages and farms in Middlesex, but also to the villages and farms in Suffolk (as we then were) and others.

This wasn’t Paul’s first ride. As early as 1774, he worked for the Boston Committee of Correspondence as an express rider to carry messages and documents, occasionally as far as New York or Philadelphia. It wasn’t even Paul’s idea. The MA colony had established a system of alarm riders by statute in 1645, to raise the alarm in the event of an Indian attack. This system was maintained until the early 1700s, when it was allowed to lapse. But it was a good means of rapid and stealthy communication, so the Sons of Liberty revived it again.

A definition, because this term will come up again, and it’s important. Committee of Correspondence sounds like the people who take minutes at municipal meetings or send thank you notes on behalf of a nonprofit organization. Behind that boring name was in fact active and dangerous activity. These people were agitators, propagandists, and spies. The Committees of Correspondence were organized in each town to work with the Sons of Liberty and coordinate the colonists’ response to Britain’s increasingly frequent Intolerable Acts – the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, the Quartering Act, and so forth. These Acts were imposed on the colonies to limit their commerce and governance, in the hope that these sanctions would dampen their increasingly rebellious behavior. Boston had the first Committee in 1764, followed by New York.

When things started to really heat up in 1772, Boston reorganized its Committee, and actively began recruiting the towns in MA to form committees of their own to facilitate patriot communication throughout the Commonwealth. Most of the towns – 206 out of about 220 of them – responded to Boston’s appeal.

Needham was not one of them.

So, on the night of April 18th, Paul Revere borrowed a horse from Deacon John Larkin, a Charlestown merchant who was a patriot sympathizer. Revere had been told by Dr Joseph Warren that the Regulars were marching to Lexington to capture John Hancock and Sam Adams, and then would go on to Concord to impound the powder and arms. There were others out that night – Revere did make it to Lexington, as did William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. The warning was delivered to John Hancock, but as they tried to go on to Concord, the three men were intercepted by the British. Dawes and Prescott escaped, but Revere was held and questioned, and his horse was confiscated. Deacon John Larkin never did get his horse back.

Needham was well aware of what was going on in Boston and the towns around it – patriot firebrand Eleazer Kingsbury made sure of that. The town people for the most part were conservative, and the minister who led them, the Rev. Samuel West, like many Harvard-educated ministers, was a Tory at heart. So on December 4, 1773 (two weeks before the Boston Tea Party), Needham Town Meeting took up the Boston Committee’s request to elect its own Committee of Correspondence to “join with the Committee of Correspondence of the Town of Boston relating to the importation of Tea.”

The December 1773 warrant article “pass’d in the negative” – that is, it was voted down. With the exception of partisans like Eleazer Kingsbury, Needham wanted no part in the doings of their troublesome Boston neighbors.

By mid-1774, however, this attitude had begun to change. As the Intolerable Acts became more restrictive, Needhamites became increasingly restive. As Rev. West noted, “Nothing but ye most impolitic conduct in Britain could have produced that reverse in ye general spirit which now discovered itself… Every week and almost every day produced something new either to manifest or increase ye irritation of ye people… The measures pursued by ye government in great Britain were precisely such as to keep up ye ferment without having any tendency to accomplish their purpose.” By 1775 – a short two years – Needham was all-in. Town Meeting voted to not only create a Committee of Correspondence, with Capt. Robert Smith as its representative; but it had also elected Eleazer Kingsbury as its representative to the new and illegal Provincial Congress.

The Alarm came to Needham in the morning of April 19 from several sources. A rider (“a man on horseback without any hat on”) rode through West Needham and gave the alarm at Bullard’s Tavern, which was on the main route toward Natick [now Route 135; the tavern was near where the main gate to Wellesley College is now located]. Ephraim Bullard or his son went up to Bullard’s Hill to fire a gun to warn the militia to assemble. A British deserter, headed for Sherborn, rode into Needham over Kendrick’s Bridge on what is now Kendrick Street, and passed on the information to William Eaton in East Needham that the British were on the move. And Nero Benson, a young boy and son of a freed slave, sounded his trumpet and gave the alarm as he rode into the far western part of Needham and into Natick.

Near the end of his long life, the Rev. Samuel West wrote a memoir about his life, his schooling, and his career in the ministry. Rev. West was minister during the years that led up to the Revolutionary War. As I mentioned, he was a Tory and preferred that the colonies did not rise up in rebellion. But he also cared for the town and its people, and followed their lead as he thought best for them in this matter. Between his memoir and the town records, we have a first-hand view of Needham’s path to revolution.

Rev. West was worried, and he was right to be. Every Massachusetts town had militia companies for defense, and they were required to train weekly to be in readiness. In reality, however, their training consisted of scant copies of old British training manuals supplemented by whatever practical knowledge they could gain from men who had served in the French and Indian War about 20 years before. Their weapons were miscellaneous, and because of the cost and scarcity of powder, their practice did not often include the necessary skills of loading and shooting their temperamental muskets.

West knew that his parishioners were not ready to fight the British, the strongest and best-trained army in the world. He also feared that a failed battle would lead to harsh reprisals, and the British would escalate to stronger measures to repress rebellion.

Nevertheless, on April 19th, 185 Needham men, nearly every able-bodied male over the age of sixteen, assembled to march. The Minute Company, whose job was to be first to respond, was already armed and ready. The East and West Companies needed to assemble to receive their powder and shot, and in some cases, to make their musket balls. As I mentioned, there was not a lot of ammunition, so it was distributed at need. The powder was supposed to be kept at the powder-house on Great Plain Avenue – the remote location being important, since it was volatile. However, in 1774 the British banned the export of ammunitions and guns to the colonies; they also began to confiscate local supplies. Supplies were getting tight. For this reason, East Needham’s powder supplies had been moved in 1775 to Rev. West’s house for safekeeping so the British could not impound it. West Needham’s ammunition had been moved, we think, to Bullard’s Tavern.

Rev. West’s memoir records that day: “The news reached us about nine o’clock AM. The east [militia] company in Needham met at my house, as part of the military stores were deposited with me, they there supplied themselves, and by ten O’clock all marched for the place of action with as much spirit and resolution as the most zealous friends of the cause could have wished for. We could easily trace the march of troops from the smoke that rose over them, and could hear from my house the report of the cannon and the Platoons fired by the British.”

The East Needham men received Rev. West’s blessing and marched off by around 10 o’clock. They marched down Central Avenue, to Hunnewell Street, and met up with some members of the West Company at Lower Falls on what is now Washington Street.

What they left behind in Needham that day were the minister, the women and children, and the “Exempts” – the men too young or too old and infirm to march with the militia, and who were therefore “exempted” from service. The Exempts were a sort of home guard, but given the shortage of weapons and shot, they were mostly armed with pikes, clubs, scythes, and other homemade weapons. Add to this their ages and lack of training, and they were really just one more thing for Rev. West to worry about….

An artist’s rendering of the Old Center circa 1775. The road in the foreground is Central Avenue, and Nehoiden Street runs in front of the old Meeting House (the long building). The Parsonage is on the right margin with a path leading to its door. This is where the Needham militia mustered on April 19, 1775.

Detail from “A Plan of the Town and Harbour of Boston, and the Country Adjacent with the Road from Boston to Concord Shewing the Place of the Late Engagement between the King’s Troops & the Provincials.” London, 1775. (American Antiquarian Society)

The militia’s route took them along Route 16 across Newton to Watertown Square. There they had a meal and received instructions to head for Menotomy (now Arlington). By this point, the roads were probably crowded with militia heading toward the fight, nervous excited and scared, and with civilians trying to get out of the way.

They marched through Belmont, down what is now Common Street to Pleasant Street – aiming to harass the British retreat along the Cambridge Road – what is now Mass Ave through Arlington Center. Here they started to meet up with the retreating British troops. More from good old Longfellow –

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

If only it were that simple. Rev. West again: “The Needham company was soon on the ground, but unhappily being ignorant of what are called flank-guards they inserted themselves between them and the main body of the British troops. In consequence of which they suffered more severely than their Neighbors who kept to a greater distance.”

The Needham men met the retreating British at Menotomy (now Arlington), arriving around 4:30 in the afternoon. With the British approaching, there was not much time for them to prepare defensive positions, so they broke into smaller groups and shot from behind whatever structures they could.

It is probably fair to say that the British companies, under fledgling commander Lord Percy and Col. Smith, were tired and angry. They had been on the march since early morning, with little success to show for their efforts and losses. Their officers had assumed that a show of force would scare off the badly-armed farmers and put an end to their rebellious ways. But the minor skirmish that they foresaw had turned into a serious battle, leaving them in retreat. Worse still, the way back to Boston was riddled with these pockets of militia harassing them along the road, so the fighting just wouldn’t end.

Militias from thirteen towns had been diverted toward Arlington, skirmishing with the redcoats along the way. As the British approached, the militias scrambled to find defensive positions from which they could fire on the passing columns. The first shots were fired, I’m delighted to say, by the “Old Men of Menotomy” – the Exempts! They shot up a supply wagon at the head of the column, killing a horse and killing or injuring a rider. They captured the wagons, put its escorts to flight, and even captured one of the British officers.

The colonists were firing from the houses, the barns, behind the trees and stone walls. To stop these ambushes, the British began firing into the houses, then entering them with fixed bayonets, killing anyone found within. As one British soldier later remarked: “We were obliged to force almost every house on the road, for the Rebels had taken possession of them and galled us exceedingly. But they suffered for their temerity, for all that we found in the houses were put to death.”

Most of the Needham men, along with the militias from Salem, Danvers, Beverly, Lynn, and Dedham, took up positions behind the buildings and walls of Jason Russell’s farm, along what is now Mass Ave. One of the Danvers men warned the others that the position was too exposed, but there was not time to relocate so they stayed where they were. That was a mistake. As they approached Russell’s farm, Lord Percy diverted some of his men from the main road to go around behind the buildings and outflank the colonists who were shooting from behind the walls and barns. Trapped between the troops on the road and the soldiers who had maneuvered behind them, the militias took heavy casualties. Menotomy was the harshest and bloodiest battle of the day.

Many tried to shelter in Russell’s farmhouse, but once the British entered the house they had no real chance. The British had bayonets for close-quarter fighting, but the colonists did not and it took too long to load their muskets for them to offer any real resistance. Jason Russell himself was killed on his own doorstep. Overall twelve patriots and two British soldiers died at Russell’s farm, and many more were wounded. Witnesses who returned to the house later to collect their dead reported a scene of carnage, with dead and wounded throughout the house, and floors ankle-deep in blood. It took many years for the bloodstains in the house to fade away, but the bullet holes are still there as witness.

Back in Needham, all the Rev. West and the men’s families could do was wait and hope for news. They feared for their sons and husbands, but also for the grim consequences of taking up arms against the King’s army: “Never did I know a more anxious day than this… I considered it no more than the beginning of sorrows and a prelude to infinitely more distressing scenes which we expected would follow. We even anticipated the enemy, enraged as they were, at our doors and in our houses acting over all the horrors which usually attend the progress of a victorious exasperated army especially in civil wars like this…”

At the Jason Russell house, after the carnage, the bodies of 11 of the twelve men killed there were carried to the old Cemetery and buried together. They were buried in some haste, because there was considerable fear that the British would come back seeking revenge for their losses. There were four from Needham, one from Dedham, three from Lynn, one from Salem, and three from Menotomy. The body of the fifth Needham man, Elisha Mills, was carried back to Needham and buried in our cemetery. Of the five, three were minutemen and the other two were in the East Needham company. It is not clear what happened with the West Needham militia company. They did not form up the same way the Easterners did, instead apparently making their own way along the route. As a result, they arrived at Jason Russell’s farm a little later – there to give chase but probably not in time for the main fighting.

So who were these five men?

Lt. John Bacon, Minuteman, was 54 years old. He was married and had 11 surviving children. Three of his sons – John Jr, Moses, and Timothy – also fought at Arlington; all three went on to further service during the Revolutionary War. Bacon was behind a stone wall farther up the road with a man identified as “Old Hawes” – probably Joseph Hawes, Sr. Hawes and his son, Joseph Jr. were both in the West Needham militia company, and Hawes and Bacon had served together in the French and Indian War. A British flank guard got around behind them. Hawes shouted “Run or you’re dead – here’s the guard!” Hawes got successfully over the wall, but Bacon was shot and killed.

Private Amos Mills, Minuteman, was 43. He was married and had six children, four sons and two daughters. He was killed near the Jason Rusell house, but there is no additional information about the circumstances.

The same is true about Private Nathaniel Chamberlain, Minuteman. He was the oldest, at 57, and also a veteran of the French and Indian War. He left a wife and three children.

Sgt. Elisha Mills, East Needham Company, was 40. He was a farmer and a blacksmith, and cousin of Amos Mills. He was married, with six children. He was fighting from a barn a short distance from the Russell house. He was shot down when he stepped out of the barn to fire at the British soldiers coming down the road. Because he was somewhat apart from the others, his body was not found until later in the day, so he was not buried in Arlington with the others. He was identified the next day by his friend and neighbor, Aaron Smith Jr; their two farms were right where High Rock Street converges with South Street. Smith brought Elisha’s body back to Needham for burial. As an aside, Smith married the widow Deborah five months later.

Private Jonathan Parker, East Needham Company, died on his 28th birthday. He was the youngest of the five. He was married with three children, one son and two daughters. His farm was on what is now Charles River Street, at the site of the baseball field. Supposedly, he was plowing when he heard the Call to Arms and left his plow in the field when he left for battle. He and another Needham man, Aaron Fisher, were shooting from behind Jason Russell’s barn when British soldiers came up behind them. Parker and Fisher tried to escape into the woods, but Parker did not make it.

Two other Needham men were wounded but survived. Private John Tolman, a Minuteman age 22, was shot in the back and gravely wounded when his musket failed to fire. It took him many months to recover, but eventually he did and returned to service, joining the Continental Army. Lt. Eleazer Kingsbury was shot in the leg, but his thick leather pants slowed the musket ball and so it did not cause him serious injury.

Lexington and Concord get all the credit, but Menotomy was by far the bloodiest and most desperate fighting of the day. Of the 65 British soldiers killed that day, 40 died at Arlington. And of the 49 colonists killed, 25 died at Arlington.

By nightfall, a few men started to straggle in from the battle road. The roads were once again crowded, as the various militias reassembled and started to make their ways home. They too were tired, and burdened by the memory of the blood they had shed. Needham’s men did not return home that night, but bedded down where they could in friendly farms along the road.

Rev. West: “In the evening we had intelligence that several of the Needham inhabitants were among the slain, and in the morning it was confirmed that five had fallen in the action and several others had been wounded. It is remarkable that the five who fell all of them had families, and several of them very numerous families so that there were about forty widows and fatherless children made in consequence of their death. I visited these families immediately, and with a sympathetic sense of their affliction I gave to some the first intelligence they had of the dreadful event, the death of a Husband and a Parent.”

Elisha Mills, as I mentioned, was brought back to Needham and buried in the Needham Cemetery. The exact location of his grave is no longer known, but in 1851, the Ladies Aid Society of the First Parish raised funds for a monument in the cemetery. It is on the top of the hill, which is said to be in the approximate location of Elisha Mills’ grave and it reads:

In memory of John Bacon, Amos Mills, Elisha Mills, Jonathan Parker, and Nathaniel Chamberlain, who fell at Lexington, April 19, 1775. For Liberty they died.

Even after April 19th, there was optimism that the war would not continue. Although the British had been shown that a mere show of force was not enough to send the colonists back to their farms, the colonists now thought that the British had seen the error of their ways. Rev. West again: “It was a happy circumstance that ye people in general & even our principal leaders … flattered themselves that the contest would soon be over, that if we could but dispose of the British force already here, that government would never think of pursuing the affair any further, but come to some compromise with the Colonies to mutual advantage.”

We of course know how the long story ended. There was no compromise and neither side backed off. Bunker Hill was almost exactly two months after Lexington, and the war was on. Needham was there as the war progressed, fighting at Roxbury, Dorchester Heights, Ticonderoga, West Point, Providence, Canada, and many other places. And Needham was there until it ended, just as they were when it all started.

Gloria Polizzotti Greis is the Executive Director of the Needham History Center & Museum. For more information, please see their website at www.needhamhistory.org.