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By Richard DeSorgher
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
School is on vacation next week; many families will take off to warmer points, those with eyes towards college are off touring the institutions of higher learning, student athletes will be getting into shape for upcoming spring sports and many others will use the vacation week to work on their lawns.
Many forget why we in Massachusetts (along with those in Maine) have a special holiday next week. No, it is not “Marathon Monday.”
The holiday and vacation week are in tribute to another event, now 241 years old. It was during next week back in 1775 that Medfield, all of New England and eventually all those up and down the Eastern Seaboard were talking about the events that took place in the small Massachusetts farming communities of Lexington and Concord.
The midnight rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes, “the shot heard around the world,” the defeated retreat of the greatest army in the world by a group of rag-tag New England farmers along the “Battle Road.” Patriots’ Day is celebrated here in Massachusetts and in Maine (which was part of Massachusetts at the time) this Monday to commemorate those who stood up to the might of the British army and their king, George III, and who refused to permit the King or Parliament to take away their rights.
Medfield and other Massachusetts communities had seen this coming for several years. After the Boston Tea Party and the resulting closure of Boston Harbor under the so-called Intolerable Acts, the local towns began to take defensive measures in the event of a war with Great Britain.
On December 26, 1774, Medfield Town Meeting voted to form a local militia, known as minute-men. They would be paid one shilling and sixpence per day by town taxes to drill and train.
With the Port of Boston closed, the Medfield citizens also sent money and supplies to aid the embattled Bostonians. The contribution from Medfield was 132 pounds of pork, 402 pounds of cheese and 22 cartloads of wood.
On the morning of April 19, 1775, hours after Paul Revere and William Dawes had made their way to Lexington, the Lexington Alarm was sounded here by a rider who galloped into Medfield to spread the word of the British march and of the fighting at Lexington and Concord.
The bell was rung over and over again from the belfry of the First Parish Church on North Street. The minute-men, and in fact all the residents of the town, responded to the alarm.
Captain Sabin Mann, in charge of the Medfield minute-men, assembled 26 minute-men and under the beating noise of drummer Job Wight immediately marched northward towards Lexington.
Captain Ephraim Chenery’s company of 54 Medfield officers and men followed in quick pursuit. By the time the Medfield boys and men reached Lexington, the action had shifted to a siege of Boston. Having missed the actual fighting, the eighty-four Medfield minute-men then returned to town.
Massachusetts then formed a Provincial Congress to address the action and Daniel Perry was chosen as the Medfield delegate. Their first meeting was at the meeting-house in Watertown on May 31, 1775.
When the Bunker Hill Alarm reached the town in June, the Medfield minute-men again responded. When the church bells sounded the alarm, Ephraim Chenery was plowing out a field of corn for hoeing near his house on Philip Street.
Hearing the alarm, Chenery left the plow in the field and started for Boston with his company of minute-men. His wife, Dinah, and two little boys, Lambert, age 7 and Benjamin, age 3 finished hoeing the corn.
By the time the Medfield men arrived at Bunker Hill, the fighting was over. The Medfield minute-men, however, stayed and re-enforced the other minute-men from around New England in the on-going siege of Boston.
During the upcoming Revolutionary War, 154 men and boys from Medfield would see action in the war. The states of Massachusetts and Connecticut sent one soldier for every seven of the population, which was a larger proportion than that of any other state.
The Town of Medfield sent one soldier for every five of the population. Patriot’s Day has a long and proud history in here in Medfield.
