Henry Jacobs was buried in the family graveyard, within sight of the house where he was born.
photo by E. Hubisz
th
Speech at the PEABODY HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S OBSERVANCE OF THE 225 Anniversary of the
Battle of Lexington
by S.M. Smoller
"We have come together on an occasion of more than ordinary interest and solemnity. We have
come to pay the tribute of our respect and gratitude to the memory of seven young men of (our town,
Danvers), the chosen sons of Liberty, who nobly offered their lives as a sacrifice for their country's
freedom."
Those were the words of introduction offered by Representative Daniel Putnam King when he
th
addressed the overflowing crowd assembled at the Old South Church on the 60 anniversary of the Battle
of Lexington in 1835. Now, on the 225th anniversary of the battle, his words seem more than appropriate.
King was very well known as an orator, both here in the village of Danvers, at the Massachusetts
Statehouse and in the U.S. Congress. He was the keynote speaker on April 19, 1835 when the citizens of
this town planted the Lexington Monument in honor of our Revolutionary War dead.
King reported that at 9 o'clock on the morning of April 19, 1775, "the ringing of the bell and the roll
of the drum summoned the men of Danvers from their quiet occupations in the field and the workshop.
They threw aside the rude implements of their business, seized their arms and hastened to their
rendezvous".
Most were armed with fowling pieces and a scant amount of gunpowder and munitions. King
described the scene this way: Their "fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters were surrounding them with
tearful eyes .. their wives and children were clinging to them with aching hearts and dreadful forebodings."
Rev. Nathan Holt, the village's popular parson and an ardent patriot, "offered a brief, but fervent
prayer for their protection, for the success of their holy cause, and gave them his blessing."
"The minute men from this neighborhood started out on their hasty march over the fences and
fields. I see them now," stated King. No painted standard waves over them; no martial music is necessary
to animate their spirits or to make them forgetful of the horrors of war. There they go, in their simple attire;
there is a dis-similarity in their movements, but there is no want of firmness in their step or courage in
their hearts.
"They cast one fond, lingering look upon their friends and their homes; they hear the peal of
alarm; they remember their country's wrongs and turn with confirmed resolutions to the path of their duty.
But who is that athletic, soldier-like figure, who leads them? - ... Whom they have unanimously chosen
their commander?"
Gideon Foster, whose parlor we sit in today, was the last living veteran of the Revolution from the
town when the cornerstone of the Lexington Monument was placed in 1835. On that occasion, just two
blocks from here down Washington Street, Gideon Foster addressed the gathering, he said:
"Friends and Fellow Citizens:
th
"On that memorable 19 day of April, 1775 … it was my fortune, to meet in this place with
numbers of my fellow citizens, to defend the rights and liberties of my Country. The alarm of war was then
sounded. The enemy was amongst us. The first blood of Americans was then shed. On the plains of
Lexington the roar of arms was then sounding, the strife of war was then raging.
"On that morning, more than one hundred of my townsmen hastened to the field of battle unused to the artifices of war - unskilled in the arts of slaying their fellow men - their hearts were flowing
with a zeal in the Country's cause and ready to offer their lives on the altar of their liberties. - Seven of
those who thus started in the prime of life and vigor of manhood, ere that day's sun descended in the
west, were numbered with the dead. Many others have marks of the well-directed fire of the enemy.
"…I was then 26 years of age. About ten days before, I had been chosen to command a company
of minute-men who were at all times to be in readiness at a moment's warning. They were so ready. They
all assembled…and went, and in about four hours from the time of the meeting, they traveled on foot (full
half the way upon the run) sixteen miles, and saluted the enemy. This they did most effectually, - as the
records of the day most clearly proved.
"I discharged my musket at the enemy a number of times (I think eleven) with two balls each
time, and with well-directed aim. My comrade (Mr. Cleaves of Beverly) who was then standing by my side,
had his finger and ramrod cut away by a shot from the enemy.
"Whether my shots took effect, I cannot say; but this I can say, if they did not, it was not for the
want of the determined purpose, in him who sent them. "
It was not for a petty tax on tea or stamps on paper, it was not for money, but for principles, for
their existence as a free people, that our fathers were alarmed, wrote King. "They were jealous of their
liberties and watchful of every encroachment.
"Two companies of minute men, commanded by Israel Hutchinson and Gideon Foster, and three
companies of militia, commanded by Samuel Flint, Samuel Eppes and Jeremiah Page, amounted
probably to more than 150 men. They left this town at different hours and on different roads and reached
West Cambridge, then called Menotomy, at about the same time.
Living two-and-a-half miles from what is now Peabody Square, the Jacobs family sent two sons,
Henry, 22 and John, 18, to respond to the Lexington alarm that spread from town to town.
Henry had joined a company of local men several years before the Revolution. He attended drills
and was provided with a musket and 25 ball cartridges.
A member of Gideon Foster's company, Jacobs was among those who formed a barricade to
prevent the British from returning to Boston. The local men parted sometime before reaching the
crossroads of Menotomy Center.
Jacobs found himself in the orchard of Jason Russell. He was 55-years old and could barely
walk. He sent his family to safty and made a breastwork from a pile of shingles at his front door, wrote
David Hackett Fisher in Paul Revere's Ride. "Friends urged Russell to flee which he answered, 'An
Englishman's home is his castle." A British grenadier killed him in his own doorway where his wife and
family found his body pierced with bayonet wounds. Ten other Americans were found dead.
British troops bayonet colonial soldiers reenacted at the Jason
House.
http://www.arlingtonhistorical.org/battle.php
Some of Foster's men entered Russell's orchard as part of a plan to ambush the retreating British. But,
instead, they were surprised by the British. "The company was eventually forced to retreat. Jacobs fought
with comrades until the retreat began. When he mounted the stone wall in order to leap over, he was shot
through the thigh. His brother John helped him to a small thicket, which was under heavy fire.
Henry lay down under some small trees. John and others resumed the retreat and left Henry with
the other severely wounded and dead on the ground. Among them were other men from Danvers who
were buried in the area now outside the Old South Burial Ground: Ebenezer Goldthwait, George
Southwick, Samuel Cook, and Benjamin Daland. Seven Danvers men were slain, and four from Lynn
were killed beside them. Some of these Americans were killed after surrendering, including Henry
Jacobs.
An undated newspaper manuscript reported, "The British on their arrival at the spot, saw the
wounded man Jacobs, and killed him with a bayonet thrust. The piteous appeal of the wounded man for
quarter was answered by the plunge of the British bayonet. Six others of the company were killed near
the same spot. Probably half of those were only severely wounded, and might have recovered if not
dispatched by the British."
Jason Russell House U.S. National Register of Historic Places,
Arlington, Massachusetts
(from wikipedia) The fighting grew more intense as Percy's forces crossed from Lexington into
Menotomy. Fresh militia poured gunfire into the British ranks from a distance, and individual
homeowners began to fight from their own property. Some homes were also used as sniper
positions. It now turned into a soldier's nightmare: house-to-house fighting. Jason Russell
pleaded for his friends to fight alongside him to defend his house by saying, "An Englishman's
home is his castle."[83] He stayed and was killed in his doorway. His friends, depending on which
account is to be believed, either hid in the cellar, or died in the house from bullets and bayonets
after shooting at the soldiers who followed them in. The Jason Russell House still stands and
contains bullet holes from this fight. A militia unit that attempted an ambush from Russell's
orchard was caught by flankers, and eleven men were killed, some allegedly after they had
surrendered.[83]
Percy lost control of his men, and British soldiers began to commit atrocities to repay for
the purported scalping at the North Bridge and for their own casualties at the hands of a
distant, often unseen enemy. Based on the word of Pitcairn and other wounded officers
from Smith's command, Percy had learned that the Minutemen were using stone walls,
trees and buildings in these more thickly settled towns closer to Boston to hide behind
and shoot at the column. He ordered the flank companies to clear the colonial
militiamen out of such places.[84]
Many of the junior officers in the flank parties had difficulty stopping their exhausted,
enraged men from killing everyone they found inside these buildings.
In fact, Dennison Wallis, a tanner from our town, was spared in Jason Russell's orchard. Fisher has an
interesting account of Wallis' role in the battle. "A Danvers man named Dennison Wallis was captured and
relieved of his watch and money. He watched as the British soldiers began to kill their prisoners and ran
for his life. The Regulars raised their muskets and fired a volley at him. Wallis was hit twelve times, and
left for dead. Be he survived to speak of what he had seen."
Other local sources recount Wallis as being shot as he scrambled over the stone wall and
pretending to be dead. A British soldier either took him for dead or near-dead and spared him. He lived to
an old age, an illiterate but successful tanner and Federalist who bequeathed money to create a new
school. He too is buried in the Old South.
Ironically, Henry Jacobs is not buried at the Old South with his comrades. He is buried in the
relative obscurity of his family burial ground off Lowell Street near the Proctor Brook Bicycle Path.
One of the men buried originally in the Old South and now located outside the bounds of the
cemetery was George Southwick. He was 25-years-old when he heard the Lexington alarm, but, he was
reluctant to leave his pregnant wife.
John Wells wrote in "The Peabody Story" that Southwick searched all over for a substitute, but
unable to secure one in time, he returned to his home and kissed his wife goodbye. He joined his
company in the square and proceeded to the Bell Tavern at the corner of Washington and Main streets.
"From this point he marched with the minuteman towards Lexington, and at Arlington they met
the British, who surrounded them and after a sharp attack, Dennison Wallis, George Southwick, and
Joseph Bell escaped to a house close by and hid until all was quiet. When they believed that the danger
had passed, they started to leave the house; but just as they were going down the stairs with George
Southwick in the lead, the outside door was thrown open and the British soldiers burst in. The first soldier
swung his sword at George Southwick, cleaving his head in two. Wallis and Bell ran for their lives. Wallis
was shot just as he jumped a stone wall and dropped as if dead, thus saving his life, and he afterwards
recovered and affected his escape. He received 13 bullets. Bell was carried into Boston and imprisoned
two months on an English frigate."
"Our townsmen collected the bodies of their comrades, and lodged that night in Medford: their
minds were too much disturbed by the recollection of the danger and slaughter of the day to allow sleep,
that guest so welcome to the weary, to visit them. Besides, they knew not what new attack the enemy
might make. But the morrow brought the report that they were all retreated into Boston, and our men
commenced their march for home. "If those who went to battle had encountered fatigue and dangers, the
situation of the friends they left at home was scarcely enviable.
"The report that there had been a severe action and that many of our townsmen were slain was
current, and each mother and sister and wife doubted not that the object of her cherished affection was
severed from her forever; each father and brother feared that the pride of his family had suffered a bloody
death.
"It was rumored that Captain Samuel Flint was killed; but, he returned, like one from the dead, to
gladden the hearts of his family. He was however destined to die a soldier's death at the Battle of
Stillwater in 1777.
"..The uncertainty of our townsmen about the fate of their friends was soon to be removed. A
carriage arrives led by the sexton of the parish. It bears the dead bodies of our martyred townsmen. The
people crowded about them, agonized, convulsed, with overwhelming emotion. Their grief, too deep for
utterance then, is too sacred for description now.
"…How pathetic must have been the prayers, how solemn the services which committed their
dust to dust, their earth to earth. The gallery was then occupied by armed men. Two minute companies
from Salem performed the escort duties. With … muffled drums and measured steps led the long
procession. On the way they were met by a band of soldiers from Newburyport, Salisbury and Amesbury,
who were marching to join the Army which was besieging Boston. They formed in single ranks on each
side of the road and the mournful procession passed between them.
After services at the South Church, the bodies of most of the slain were buried in the Old South
and volleys fired over their graves.
http://memorialhall.mass.edu/collection/itempage.jsp?itemid=16201&img=0&level=advanced&transcriptio
n=1
http://www.teachushistory.org/node/248]
The battle of Lexington, in the number engaged and in killed, wounded and prisoners, will not
compare with those which have stained the page of ancients and modern history. But its consequences
have been glorious; they have not been confined to that age, or to our country…"
Address Commemorative of Seven Young Men of Danvers Who Were Slain in the
Battle of Lexington, Delivered in the Old South meeting House in Danvers on the
Sixtieth Anniversary of the Battle. With Notes. by Daniel P. King, 1835. Peabody
Historical Society.
photo by E. Hubisz
Old South Burial Ground, stones for soldiers from Danvers who died at the Battle of Lexington.
photo by E. Hubisz
The Lexington Monument on Washington Street was placed on April 19, 1835 as a tribute to the men
from Danvers who died at the Battle of Lexington.
History of the Town of Danvers by J.W. Hansen, Battle of Lexington