William Dawes

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William Dawes, Jr.

For other uses, see William Dawes (disambiguation).

William Dawes, Jr. (April 5, 1745 – February 25, 1799) was one of the three men who alerted colonial minutemen of the approach of British army troops prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord at the outset of the American Revolution.

Dawes was born in Boston on April 5, 1745, to William and Lydia Dawes (née Boone). He became a tanner and was active in Boston's militia. On May 3, 1768 Dawes married Mehitable May, the daughter of Samuel and Catherine May (née Mears). The Boston Gazette noted that for his wedding he wore a suit entirely made in North America; at the time, Whigs were trying to organize a boycott of British products to pressure Parliament into repealing the Townshend Acts.

It is likely that in September 1774, Dawes was instrumental in helping Boston's militia artillery company secure its four small cannon from British army control. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress certainly sent word to him in February 1775 that it was time to move two of those weapons out of Boston.

Dawes was assigned by Doctor Joseph Warren to ride from Boston, Massachusetts, to Lexington on the night of April 18, 1775, when it became clear that a British column was going to march into the countryside. Dawes's mission was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that they were in danger of arrest. Dawes took the land route out of Boston, leaving just before the military sealed off the town.

Also acting under Dr. Warren, Paul Revere arranged for another rider waiting across the Charles River in Charlestown to be told of the army's route with lanterns hung in Old North Church. To be certain the message would get through, Revere rowed across the river and started riding westwards himself. Later Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere would focus entirely on Revere, making him a composite of many alarm riders that night.

Dawes and Revere arrived at the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington about the same time, shortly after midnight. In fact, Revere arrived slightly earlier, despite having stopped to speak to militia officers in towns along the way, because his ride was shorter and his horse faster. After warning Adams and Hancock to leave, Revere and Dawes chose to proceed to Concord in case that was the British column's goal. Revere no doubt knew that the Provincial Congress had stored munitions there, including the cannon Dawes had helped to secure. Along the way, the two men met Samuel Prescott, a local young physician, who joined them.

A squad of mounted British officers awaited on the road between Lexington and Concord. They had already arrested some riders heading west with news of the troops, and they called for Dawes, Revere, and Prescott to halt. The three men rode in different directions, hoping one would escape. Dawes, according to the story he told his children, rode into the yard of a house shouting that he had lured two officers there. Fearing an ambush, the officers stopped chasing him. Dawes's horse bucked him off, however, and he had to walk back to Lexington. He later said that in the morning he returned to the same yard and found the watch that had fallen from his pocket. Otherwise, Dawes's activity during the Battle of Lexington and Concord remains unknown.

Dawes and his companions' warning allowed the town militias to muster a sufficient force for the first open battle of the Revolutionary War and the first colonial victory. The British troops did not find most of the weapons they had marched to destroy and sustained serious losses during their retreat to Boston under guerrilla fire.

During the war, Dawes worked as a quartermaster in central Massachusetts. British POWs from the Battle of Saratoga complained to Parliament that he gave them short supplies; his family countered that Dawes believed that they were stealing from farmers while being marched to Boston – as most armies on the march were prone to do.

Dawes died in Marlborough, Massachusetts on February 25, 1799. His great-grandson, Charles Gates Dawes, would serve as Vice President of the United States.