Boston Neck - William Dawes

Dawes was a tanner, shoe maker, and a patriot; however he kept a low-profile and didn’t draw attention as a rabble-rouser. This gave him access to move more freely than many others.

William Dawes fought at Bunker Hill and worked to supply the new army. Dawes appears in “The Road to Concord” as the Committee of Safety’s liaison to whoever in Boston knew where the militia train’s stolen cannon were hidden. His descendants in the late 1800s said that he had participated in stealing those cannons as well. In 1776 he was commissioned second major of the Boston militia regiment and worked as quartermaster in central Mass.

His tomb marker is at King’s Chapel but modern research points to him being buried in his first wife’s family plot in Forest Hills Cemetery in JP, this is also where Dr Joseph Warren was moved to in 1856.

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In October of 1774 Dawes planned and led a daring break-in at the gun house on Boston Common. While the guards were at roll call, Dawes and several members of his artillery company stole two small brass cannons, sneaking them out the back window, and hid them in a large box under the desk in a nearby school house. During the break-in he injured his wrist and was treated by fellow patriot Dr Joseph Warren who was not informed of how he’d been injured.

When a British sergeant later discovered the cannons were missing, he exclaimed: “They are gone. These fellows will steal the teeth out of your head while you are keeping guard.” The guards searched the yard, gun-house and school house but never found the hidden cannons.

The cannons remained hidden in the school house for two weeks until Dawes had them removed one night in a wheelbarrow and hid them under a pile of coal in a blacksmith shop.

On January 5, 1775, the Committee of Safety voted to move the stolen cannons to Waltham. The cannons remained in active service throughout the revolutionary war.

Dr Warren was the one who found out about the British plan to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams as well as munitions at Concord from an informant, and sent Dawes as well as Revere on different routes to warn Lexington and Concord.

Dawes was given the land route over Boston Neck as it passed through the British checkpoint at Boston neck and was a riskier mission than by sea. Dawes was a loyal patriot but wasn’t a rabble-rouser and his work as a tanner meant frequent travel, so he was a familiar face to the British manning the checkpoint and had managed to befriend a few of them on previous trips. Dawes set off around 9pm about an hour before Warren dispatched Revere and somehow made it through the checkpoint right before the British halted all travel through it.

He went west then north through Roxbury, Brookline, Brighton, Cambridge, and Menotomy. On his ride west, Dawes alerted more riders, who in turn rallied companies from neighboring towns: Dedham, Needham, Framingham, Newton, and Watertown. Where Revere awoke town leaders and military commanders, Dawes was quieter in his ride as he hurried towards Lexington where he met Revere and Lexington’s Hancock-Clark House at 12:30am. They set out for Concord together with Dr Samuel Prescott.

Revere, riding in front, ran into a British roadblock. Dawes and Prescott were captured before they could be warned. As the British tried to lead them into a meadow, Prescott signaled that they should make their escape, and all three rode off. Back on the road towards Lexington, Dawes realized that his horse was too tired to outrun the Redcoats. As he pulled up in the yard of a house, he reared his horse and shouted, “I’ve got two of them – surround them!” His trick succeeded in scaring off his pursuers, although he fell from his horse and lost his watch. Dawes kept a low profile and walked back to Lexington – later returning and finding his watch.

Dr Samuel Prescott being a local from Concord, rode through fields and creek beds that he well knew, quickly outdistancing his would-be captors. It was Prescott who warned the town of Concord of the impending British march.

“The Midnight Ride of William Dawes” by Helen F. Moore in 1896 as a poetic complaint and parody to Longfellow’s Midnight Ride. Some excerpts are below.

I am a wandering, bitter shade,
Never of me was a hero made;
Poets have never sung my praise,
Nobody crowned my brow with bays;
And if you ask me the fatal cause,
I answer only, "My name was Dawes"

'Tis all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear --
My name was Dawes and his Revere.

When the lights from the old North Church flashed out,
Paul Revere was waiting about,
But I was already on my way.
The shadows of night fell cold and gray
As I rode, with never a break or a pause;
But what was the use, when my name was Dawes!

(For a video specifically on Dawes - https://www.youtube.com/embed/aJofCN2N_PE?start=0&end=322 )

-Source Links-

https://www.history.com/news/the-midnight-ride-of-william-dawes

https://historyofmassachusetts.org/william-dawes/

http://www.paul-revere-heritage.com/midnight-ride-william-dawes.html

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/patriotsday-william-dawes