SPECIAL EDITION – Paul Revere

Just as an FYI – – I got my information from a wide variety of sources and I forgot to credit them. My sincere apologies.

Paul Revere is actually a Junior!  Bet cha’ didn’t know that, did ya?  😊

Well.  Sort of. 

His father was a French Huguenot immigrant named Apollos Rivoire who was born in 1702, and was sent to Boston at the young age of just 13.  Most likely to escape the religious persecution of the Huguenots at the time.  Can you imagine traveling on a ship for months across the Atlantic as a young boy to a new country where everyone spoke English??  One of our grandsons is twelve, and I just can’t see that happening.  Then again, that seems to be the age when boys start believing they’re invincible.  😊

He arrived to Boston and started his apprenticeship with one of approximately thirty goldsmith masters who worked in Boston at that time. Revere’s master was the craftsman named John Coney who was in his sixties at that time and was described as a silent man, religious and modest. The shop was located at what was called Dock Square at that time, now approximately the area of Faneuil Hall.

The learning process generally took 7 to 10 years during which the student was provided with room and board, but of course the most valuable commodity was the secrets of the goldsmith’s trade. During this time the apprentice was pretty much a slave of the master, working extremely long hours. He could not even marry without the master’s permission. At the end of the apprenticeship the young craftsman also owed a sizeable debt to his master that he had to repay after starting his own business. But the big upside was that growing wealth in Boston created great demand for gold and silver objects.

Mr. Coney died when Apollos still had three years left in his apprenticeship “slavery”. The law made him part of the estate and he could be sold to a new owner. But Apollos somehow managed to pay back the required forty pounds necessary for his release. An interesting fact was that it was custom for young apprentice boys to marry into their master’s family inheriting the business. Such was for example the path of Thomas Hancock the father of John Hancock who later built one of the greatest fortunes in American history. But young Apollos preferred to travel back to England instead to visit his uncle, but shortly thereafter he returned to Boston. Sometime after his return Apollos Rivoire completely anglicized his name and became Paul Revere.

On June 19, 1729, Paul Revere, Sr. married Deborah Hitchbourne. Deborah’s father owned a wharf near where Apollos, had been working for Coney. 

The couple’s first child was a daughter, Deborah, followed by Paul Jr. who was most likely born in late December of 1734. Sometimes his birthday is mistakenly stated as January 1, 1735, which was actually the day when he was baptized. (This explains why I discovered conflicting dates of birth during my research.)  The couple went on to have another seven children in the years that followed, and the eldest son Paul, soon followed in his father’s footsteps working as a gold and silversmith. Paul Sr. died in 1754, leaving his oldest son with the responsibility of keeping the family afloat at the young age of 19 or 20, even though by law, he couldn’t own the shop because he wasn’t 21 (the age of majority at the time).

In 1756, when war broke out between the British and the French, Paul, now 22, joined Massachusetts troops and went off to fight in the French and Indian War. When the troops returned to Boston for the winter that year, Paul came home. When the troops once again marched off in the spring, he remained in Boston continuing his career as a master silversmith and the following year he married his first wife, Sarah Orne. 

Paul and Sarah had eight children (seven of them girls), but only six lived to adulthood. As the years went by, the Revere business continued to grow and Paul became deeply involved with the local Masonic Lodge of St. Andrews, beginning with his initiation in 1760.

Through the Freemasons he would be in the company of other patriots like John Hancock, Joseph Warren, and James Otis. 

With his involvement with the Freemasons, he also became involved in the activities of the Sons of Liberty. He also used his skills in creating copper engravings to support the Revolutionary movement. His most famous engraving was of the Boston Massacre, entitled The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston.

In April of 1773, Paul’s wife, Sarah, after a difficult birth of her eighth child in December 1772, died.  (Do they attribute her death to childbearing?  Even though it was 4 months later?) The baby, Isanna, was never well and died in September 1773.

On October 11, 1773 Paul Revere and Rachel Walker were married by Samuel Mather. (He sure wasted no time in finding a mother for his brood of kids!  Wonder when they first met/dated?)

Revere continued his activities with the Sons of Liberty and on December 16, 1773, he participated in the Boston Tea Party.

He was well-known around Boston and served as a spy during the early part of the Revolution. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, Paul Revere founded the first patriot intelligence network on record, a Boston-based group known as the “mechanics.” He along with other colonial leaders organized a sophisticated alarm system that was used to alarm the colonists of the British march to Concord that resulted in the Battles of Lexington and Concord. 

With the dawn of the Revolution he made his famous ride on the evening of April 18, 1775. That evening, good friend and fellow Mason, Dr. Joseph Warren sent Revere, along with several other riders to alert locals that the British Regulars were on the move, and to warn Sam Adams and John Hancock that the British might be setting out to arrest them. After leaving Adams and Hancock in Lexington, Revere, along with William Dawes who had also been dispatched to spread the alarm, met up with Samuel Prescott (returning home from courting his girl), who joined them en route to Concord. The trio was stopped by a British patrol and while Prescott and Dawes were able to escape, Revere was captured but released the next morning, never completing the trip to Concord that night. Prescott was able to take the alarm to Concord, where munitions were being stored in the arsenal and giving the men plenty of time to move the weapons from town to another storage area. 

Paul Revere never shouted the legendary phrase later attributed to him (“The British are coming!”) as he passed from town to town. The operation was meant to be conducted as discreetly as possible since scores of British troops were hiding out in the Massachusetts countryside. Furthermore, colonial Americans at that time still considered themselves British; if anything, Revere may have told other rebels that the “Regulars”—a term used to designate British soldiers—were on the move.

As stated in other portions of our Boston blog posts, we tend to forget that the colonists were just that.  Colonists.  People sent from England to colonize the New World (and by now their descendants as well).  Many of those engaged in the battles were trained Militia who were tasked with defending the British colony. These people were fighting against their own country, much like the Civil War. 

Not only is it unlikely Revere owned a horse at the time, but he would not have been able to transport it out of Boston across the Charles River. It is believed that the Charlestown merchant John Larkin loaned him a horse, which was later confiscated by the British. According to a Larkin family genealogy published in 1930, the name of the lost mare was Brown Beauty.

Four years after his midnight ride (still during the Revolutionary War), Paul Revere served as commander of land artillery in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779. In June of that year, British forces began establishing a fort in what is now Castine, Maine. Over the next few weeks, hundreds of American soldiers converged on the outpost by land and sea. Although the outnumbered British were initially prepared to surrender, the Americans failed to attack in time, and by August enough British reinforcements had arrived to force an American retreat. Charged with cowardice and insubordination, Revere was court-martialed and dismissed from the militia. (He was acquitted in 1782, but his reputation remained tarnished.)

Revere fathered a total of 16 children—eight with his first wife, Sarah Orne, and eight with Rachel Walker. He raised them in the house at 19 North Square that is downtown Boston’s oldest building, first constructed in 1680 after the Great Fire of 1676 destroyed the original home on the site. Eleven of Revere’s children survived to adulthood, and at the time of his death at the ancient (for that time) age of 83, five were still living.

Maybe that’s why they had so many children back then – to increase the odds of descendants.  Hmmm . . . . .