We became interested in this topic after journalist and entrepreneur Rasheed Walters contacted us to inquire if we knew of any civilians killed that day. The Nerds are aware of five individuals killed by British forces either during their advance on Concord or their retreat back to Boston. Four were adult males, and one was a child. The victims hailed from Woburn, Lexington, Menotomy (present-day Arlington, Massachusetts), and Charlestown.
As a preliminary matter, the Nerds have traditionally defined civilians (or non-combatants) of the Battles of Lexington and Concord as men, women, and children who did not serve in a combat or support role nor carried arms and accouterments in opposition to the British incursion into Middlesex County.
The day's first civilian casualty was Asahel Porter of Woburn.
Well before dawn on April 19, 1775, Porter and Josiah Richardson left Woburn on horseback, allegedly to travel to the Boston market. As the pair entered the Menotomy District of Cambridge, they collided with Colonel Francis Smith’s military expedition bound for Concord. Suspecting the pair were alarm riders, an officer and loyalist guide arrested the pair. According to Lieutenant Jesse Adair of the Marines, “here are 2 fellows galloping express to Alarm the Country, on which I immediately rode up to them, Seized one of them & our guide the other, [and] dismounted them.”
Porter and Richardson were quickly ushered towards the back of the column and placed under guard. However, as the British forces approached the Lexington common, Porter’s captors determined there was no longer a need to detain the pair and the two were released.
At some point after the skirmish commenced, Porter was retreating from his captors and was shot and killed. According to an 1824 deposition of Lexington militia man John Munroe, Porter “attempted to make his escape, and was shot within a few rods of the common.” Another eyewitness, Amos Locke, declared in his 1824 deposition he and his cousin Ebenezer found “Asahel Porter of Woburn shot through the body.”
Lexington's John Raymond was a neighbor of William and Anna Munroe and was employed by the family as a general laborer. Many 19th-century historians have argued Raymond was a “simple man,” and “a cripple”. However, recent research has suggested that he only suffered from a short-term, temporary disability that prevented him from fielding on April 19th.
Following the Battle of Lexington, Raymond watched over the family tavern while Anna Munroe and her children fled the property. That afternoon, British soldiers under the command of Lord Hugh Earle Percy shot and killed Raymond.
William Munroe’s 1825 deposition sheds some light on the circumstances of Raymond’s fate. According to the account, “On the return of the British troops from Concord, they stopped at my tavern house in Lexington and dressed their wounded. I had left my house in the care of a lame man, by the name of Raymond, who supplied them with whatever the house afforded, and afterward, when he was leaving the house, he was shot by the regulars, and found dead within a few rods of the house.”
Munroe’s 1827 obituary also refers to Raymond, noting the militia sergeant “participated with his company in the events of the day, leaving the care of his public house in the superintendance of a neighbor, whom the British killed on their retreat.”
The Menottomy Fight of April 19, 1775, was a brutal and vicious close-quarters fight between British regulars and Massachusetts provincials along the Bay Road. As the fight neared Cooper’s Tavern, Jabez Wyman and his brother-in-law Jason Winship were seated inside, each consuming several pints of alcohol. The ages of both men are unknown, but a period account does suggest the two men were elderly.
As the innkeeper, Benjamin Cooper, and his wife, Rachel, prepared to flee to safety, the pair pleaded for the two men to leave with them. They refused and continued drinking. Moments later, His Majesty’s army attacked Cooper’s Tavern.
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A month after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Rachel Cooper would provide a grim and terrifying account of Wyman and Winship’s fate. “The King’s regular troops under the command of General Gage, upon their return from blood and slaughter, which they had made at Lexington and Concord, fired more than one hundred bullets into the house where we dwell, through doors, and windows,…The two aged gentlemen [Winship and Wyman] were immediately most barbarously and inhumanly murdered by them, being stabbed through in many places, their heads mangled, skulls broke, and their brains out on the floor and walls of the house.”
The Rev John Marrett of Woburn’s Second Parish would later discuss the two men in a letter to his uncle, Rev Isaiah Dunster. In his correspondence, he noted the pair “died as a fool dieth.”
As the afternoon wore on, it became clear that His Majesty’s troops were quickly approaching Charlestown. In response, many residents of that community chose to flee. However, a fourteen-year-old child named Edward Barber remained behind. Little is known about the exact circumstances of his death, but a period account suggests his curiosity got the better of him. Barber was fired upon as while inside a house watching the British retreat.
That evening, Jacob Rogers of Charlestown received news that his brother-in-law, “a youth of fourteen, was shot dead on the neck of land by the soldiers, as he was looking out of a window. I stayed a little while to console them.”
Sadly, the famed broadside entitled Bloody Butchery by the British Troops only identified Edward as “Capt. William Barber's son, aged 14”.
Sadly, the famed broadside entitled Bloody Butchery by the British Troops only identified Edward as “Capt. William Barber's son, aged 14”.
Is this the same Jacob Rogers who was run out of Stoneham?
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