Monday, April 19, 2004
William Dawes is believed to have been a tradesman who worked with leather.
BOSTON (AP) -- On the eve of the American Revolution, two men left Boston under cover of darkness to warn rebel leaders that British troops were advancing. One of them became a legend, the other a footnote.
The legend, of course, was Paul Revere. The forgotten man was William Dawes, a patriot who lacked Revere's charisma and connections.
Dawes wasn't even mentioned in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem that celebrated Revere's ride of April 18, 1775.
"There's nothing like a good biographer to give you a place in history," said William Fowler, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society and professor emeritus of history at Northeastern University.
"'Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of William Dawes' doesn't rhyme," Fowler said, referring to the first two lines of Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," written in 1860.
And Revere -- a silversmith, soldier and entrepreneur with a large network of patriotic friends -- had the r & eacute;sum & eacute; to back up his reputation.
"Paul Revere was a shotgun blast in American history," Fowler said. "William Dawes is a single bullet."
Little documentation
Dawes' life is not as well-documented.
"The problem with Dawes is it's unclear exactly what his major trade was," said Patrick Leehey, research director for The Paul Revere House in Boston.
Many historians conclude Dawes was a tradesman who worked with leather, Leehey said. There also is a record of Dawes' marriage to 17-year-old Mehitable May when he was 23.
Both Revere and Dawes were known to oppose the British, attending meetings with patriotic groups at Faneuil Hall and the Old South Meeting House.
Revere was more of a rabble-rouser and that made it easier for Dawes, who frequently made business trips in the area, to discreetly pass by British sentries guarding the city gates.
On April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren, a vocal figure in the resistance movement against the British, sent Revere and Dawes to Lexington by different routes. Their mission was to warn revolutionary leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British "Regulars," were coming to arrest them for treason and seize an arms cache.
Two routes
Revere was ferried across the Charles River and spent more time than Dawes knocking on doors and warning people along the way.
"Revere was afraid that he would not be able to get out of town," Leehey said.
Dawes took the longer land route via Boston Neck, through what is now the city's Roxbury neighborhood, historians said.
In the end, Revere made it to Lexington first. British troops stopped both him and Dawes, but both eventually got away. A third rider, Samuel Prescott, carried the warning from Lexington on to neighboring Concord.
The following day, skirmishes erupted between British troops and the American patriots in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where the so-called "shot heard 'round the world" was immortalized by another 19th-century writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
A volunteer militia group, the Massachusetts National Lancers, has re-enacted the midnight ride for roughly 90 years.
Paul Tobin, who is portraying Dawes this year, said people don't properly appreciate his character's role in the warning ride. On Wednesday, Tobin will don a brown wig, black tricorn hat, a long cape, riding britches and boots to help keep Dawes' memory alive.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.