They Went to Concord

On the 250th anniversary of the battle at Concord's North Bridge and its aftermath along the British soldiers' return route to Boston, we honor those Acton men who went, not knowing what the future would bring. 

Three of Acton's participants in the events of April 19, 1775 never came home; Captain Isaac Davis, Abner Hosmer, and James Hayward.  Sadly, we do not have many records and artifacts that could help us paint a full picture of their lives.  We know that 22-year-old Abner Hosmer was unmarried, brother to Jonathan Hosmer who built our Society's Hosmer House.  Abner was a mason living in his father's home on today's Prospect Street.  Isaac Davis was a farmer and gunsmith with a young family, living on today's Hayward Road.  They were both in Acton's minute company and were killed by a British volley at Concord's North Bridge.  One can only imagine the anxiety and later grief that day in the neighboring households.

James Hayward was a schoolteacher who was exempt from militia service because he had lost a toe.  He went anyway, and having stopped during the afternoon for a drink at a well in Lexington, was shot by a British soldier.  He died eight hours later.

Acton's minute company under Captain Isaac Davis and its militia companies under under Simon Hunt and Captain Joseph Robbins were all present at the bridge. Captain Davis' company membership is quite well documented.  Unfortunately, we do not have membership lists for Acton's militia companies who served that day.  At the Acton Historical Society, we are still working to discover and share as much information about the town's Revolutionary War history as we can, including the service of its townspeople.  Two sources that may shed some light on participants in the Concord battle are a newspaper article from sixty years later and a listing donated to the Historical Society by a descendant of Captain Joseph Robbins.

In August, 1835, a Massachusetts newspaper reported on the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Acton's establishment as a town.  The article mentioned honored guests who had been present at the Concord battle; Solomon Smith, Thomas "Throp" [Thorp], Aaron Jones, Joseph Chaffin and John Oliver.  Three of the men had been minutemen, but Aaron Jones' and John Oliver's participation in Concord was not mentioned in later compiled lists.  This source only came to light when old newspapers started being digitized and shared online.

The other potentially helpful source came from the papers of Joseph Robbins.  It is a listing of those who served under him "in the year of my command" to May 15, 1775, with some additions of those who went for six weeks and those who served in 1776.  Though it is hard to read, and it is not clear why he created it, this original document does give us names of those who served under him in the earliest part of the American Revolution. 

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Sources:

• Rev. James Fletcher's Acton in History
  
• Harold Phelan's History of the Town of Acton
  
• History of the Acton Minutemen and Militia Companies, Charles R. Husbands, 2003.
  
• "Centennial Celebration at Acton," Norfolk Advertiser (Dedham, MA), Aug. 15, 1835, p. 1