"My Heart Became More Relieved of its Apprehensions" - Five Bada** Women from April 19, 1775 that the Lexington Minute Men Need to Honor

On November 16, 2023, the Lexington Minute Men amended its by-laws to admit women into the organization. The vote wasn’t even close. The membership expressed a sincere interest in sharing the stories of Lexington women who rose and met the challenges of April 19, 1775. As a result, the group resolved via a super-majority vote to open up the organization’s membership to women 18 years and older.

Every member of the Lexington Minute Men researches and portrays a male counterpart who fought at the Battle of Lexington. With the organization opening up its ranks to women, the membership now has the unique opportunity to honor every Lexington woman and girl who courageously faced the threats of the day, put their fears and misgivings aside, and helped ensure infants, children, the elderly, the bedridden, the infirm and the sick were safely evacuated from the storm of war.

The Nerds recognize that every Lexington woman caught in the storm of war on April 19, 1775, was a heroine in her own right. But that said, the Nerds secretly hope the following five bada** women of Lexington are the first to be honored for their actions of that day.

Abigail Harrington. After waking her husband and son so that they could gather their arms and equipment and join Captain John Parker’s Company on the Lexington Common, Abigail gathered her remaining children, all under the age of five, and personally led them to safety “down a lane back of the house across a meadow to the old place on Smock farm.”

Sarah Reed Whittemore. Sarah lived with her husband and her in-law parents along the Bay Road. On April 19, 1775, the young Lexington woman was still recovering from the birth of her third child 18 days earlier. With the British column approaching her home, she and her immediate family successfully gathered her children, carried Sarah and her newborn infant out of the house on a mattress, and retreated to the relative safety of a nearby woodlot just before the battle reached their home.

The Widow Lydia Mulliken. Lydia’s husband, a respected clockmaker, had died on the eve of the American Revolution. Her daughter, Lydia, was in a romantic relationship with Dr. Samuel Prescott of Concord. When word reached the Widow Mulliken and her daughters that Lieutenant Colonel Smith was leading a military expedition towards Lexington, they hurriedly buried the family’s silver and other valuables by a stone wall near their clock shop, then fled to distant safety. Later in the day, the Mulliken home would be plundered for valuables and burned to the ground.

Rebekah Fiske. In the early morning of April 19th, word reached the Fiske family that His Majesty’s forces were advancing on Concord. As many of her neighbors fled for safety, Rebekah was in a difficult situation. Her 83-year-old father-in-law, Lieutenant Ebenezer Fiske, was seriously ill and bedridden. At the same time, her husband was also suffering from some unknown impairment and was excused from militia service. As a result, she made the difficult choice of staying in her home.

According to a 19th-century narrative she shared with the Harvard Register, Fiske recalled, “I heard the guns … at about day-break, but being unapprehensive of danger, did not, like most of our neighbors move off for fear of the enemy; especially as my father was confined to his bed of a severe sickness so that in fleeing from the house we must leave him behind, which I could not consent to. Our domestics had already absconded, we knew not whither. I, therefore, and my husband, who on account of a certain indisposition, was incapacitated for military service, remained in the house with our father, while the enemy passed; which they did without offering us any injury. I remember well, their exact order, red coats, glittering arms, and appalling numbers.”

As previous research has suggested, many women and children who fled their homes earlier in the day returned mid-morning. According to Fiske, once word reached their location that the British were marching from Concord back to their location, a panic set in, and many civilians started to flee again. As the regulars approached, Fiske describes how she, her family, enslaved persons, and many of her neighbors made a mad dash across fields to escape the coming firefight.

 

"Sometime after, on their arrival at Concord, a report of musketry was once more heard, and in broken and incessant volleys. It was a sound of death to us. All now was trepidation, fever, and rushing to arms; women and children bewildered and scouring across the fields. With much ado we succeeded in yoking our oxen and getting father on his bed into an ox-cart, and thus moving him off as carefully as we could to a neighbor’s house, at some distance from the highway, on which we expected the enemy to return. Before leaving our house, I secured some of the most valuable of my effects, putting my large looking glass between two featherbeds, and fastening all the windows and doors. The house we carried farther to, had been already vacated, and here I was left alone with him. The dreadful sound of approaching guns was still ringing in my ears. Bewildered and affrighted, I betook myself into the house-cellar there to await my fate. Occasionally, I ventured to peep out to discover the approach of the enemy. After remaining some time in this dreadful state of fear and suspense, I at last discovered the enemy coming down a long hill on the highway partly upon a run and in some confusion, being closely beset by ‘our men’ in flank and rear. The terrific array of war soon came fully into view, and as soon passed off again from before my eyes, like a horrid vision, leaving only a cloud of smoke behind and the groans of the dying, who were strewed in its wake.”

Once the retreating army had passed her homestead, Rebekah returned to survey the damage. Upon arrival, she discovered a horrific scene. Not only had her home and surrounding property been vandalized and pillaged (both capital crimes in 18th Century Massachusetts), but she also discovered multiple casualties on the doorstep and inside her home. One of the dying was Acton minute man and school teacher James Haywood, mortally wounded earlier while exchanging musket fire with a British soldier at the Fiske’s water well.

As Rebekah graphically recalled in her 1827 statement, “After the rattle of musketry had grown somewhat weaker from distance, and my heart became more relieved of its apprehensions, I resolved to return home. But what an altered scene began to present itself, as I approached the house—garden walls thrown down—my flowers trampled upon—earth and herbage covered with the marks of hurried footsteps. The house had been broken open, and on the door-step—awful spectacle—there lay a British soldier dead, on his face, though yet warm, in his blood, which was still trickling from a bullet-hole through his vitals. His bosom and his pockets were stuffed with my effects, which he had been pillaging, having broken into the house through a window. On entering my front room, I was horror-struck. Three mangled soldiers lay groaning on the floor and weltering in their blood which had gathered in large puddles about them. “Beat out my brains, I beg of you,” cried one of them, a young Briton, who was dreadfully pierced with bullets, through almost every part of his body, “and relieve me from this agony.” You will die soon enough, said I, with a revengeful pique. A grim Irishman, shot through the jaws, lay beside him, who mingled his groans of desperation with curses on the villain who had so horridly wounded him. The third was a young American employing his dying breath in prayer. A bullet had passed through his body, taking off in its course the lower part of his powder-horn. The name of this youthful patriot was J. Haywood of Acton. His father came and carried his body home; it no lies in Acton graveyard. These were the circumstances of his death: being ardent and close in the pursuit, he stopped a moment at our well to slake his thirst. Turning from the well, his eye unexpectedly caught that of the Briton, whom I saw lying dead on the door-step, just coming from the house with his plunder. They were about a rod from each other. The Briton know it was death for him to turn, and the American scorned to shrink. A moment of awful suspense ensued—when both simultaneously levelled their muskets at each other’s heart, fired, and fell on their faces together. My husband drew the two Britons off on a sled, and buried them in one of our pastures, where they now lie, beneath a pine tree which has grown up out of their grave. The Irishman was the only one of the three that survived.”

Photo Credit John Collins Photography

Anna Munroe. Personally, the Nerds rank Anna Munroe as the most bad** of Lexington bada** women. Not only did Mrs. Munroe watch over Munroe Tavern while her husband was off fighting British forces, but Anna personally carried her three children to safety while exposed to British relief troops who were torching her neighbor’s homes and unleashing an artillery barrage on Massachusetts forces.

According to her daughter, she “could remember seeing the men in red coats coming toward the house and how frightened her mother was when they ran from the house. That was all she could remember, but her mother told her of her very unhappy afternoon. She held Anna by the hand, brother William by her side and baby Sally in her arms . . . She could hear the cannon firing over her head on the hill. She could smell the smoke of the three buildings which the British burned between here and the center of Lexington. And she did not know what was happening to her husband, who was fighting, or what was happening within her house. . . Anna’s mother used to talk to her of what happened on April 19th and she remembered that her mother used to take her on her lap and say: ‘This is my little girl that I was so afraid the Red coats would get.’”

Any woman 18 years or older who is interested in joining the Lexington Minute Men may contact the organization here.