The First to Die - Cover Page: February 2000 American History Feature

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The First to Die

Minuteman Isaac Davis, shot by the British at Concord Bridge in April 1775, was one of the first to die in the cause of American Independence.

"There can never be but one man who headed the first column of attack on the King’s troops in the Revolutionary War. And Isaac Davis was that man." So spoke Reverend James Trask Woodbury of Acton, Massachusetts, in 1851. The occasion was a debate in the Massachusetts House of Representatives "upon the question of granting two thousand dollars to aid the Town of Acton in building a monument over the remains of Captain Isaac Davis, Abner Hosmer, and James Hayward, Acton Minute Men killed at Concord Fight, April 19, 1775."

Strictly speaking, Davis was not the first to die in the struggle for American independence. He was not even the first to die that bright April morning when the king’s troops, marching to Lexington and Concord to seize the rebel leaders and destroy the arms and ammunition stockpiled there, fired what poet Ralph Waldo Emerson immortalized as the "shot heard ’round the world."

The colonists had been keeping an eye on the British troops quartered in Boston. They had noticed unusual activity that suggested the king’s men planned to strike out into the villages to capture those who would lead their neighbors into open revolt and to seize the guns, field pieces, powder, and flour they had hidden around the countryside.

Samuel Adams and John Hancock, staying with Reverend Jonas Clarke at Lexington, had to be warned. That difficult chore fell to Paul Revere and William Dawes, joined later by young Doctor Samuel Prescott, who was returning home from a visit with his lady friend in Lexington.

After the alarm carried by the three reached Lexington, then Concord, messengers fanned through the countryside warning the scattered farmers that the British were on the march. An unknown rider, perhaps Prescott himself, arrived at the home of Captain Joseph Robbins, leader of one of Acton’s two troops of militia–soldiers supposedly under allegiance to the king, although that had ceased to be the case.

The messenger did not dismount, but banged on the corner of the house, shouting "Captain Robbins! Captain Robbins! Up! Up! The regulars have come to Concord! Rendezvous at old North Bridge quick as possible! Alarm Acton!"

Aroused from his bed, Robbins fired three shots with his musket to warn the town. Then he sent his 13-year-old son John to alert Isaac Davis and others. When he received the news, Davis sent word that he would leave for Concord as soon as thirty men had mustered in his yard.

The call echoed around Acton and the minutemen rushed to Davis’s yard, where they made bullets and prepared for a battle that some, making jokes about finally "getting a hit at old [General Thomas] Gage," relished. Davis rebuked his men, reminding them that the day had brought "a most eventful crisis for the colonies. Blood would be spilt, that was certain; the crimson fountain would be opened; none could tell when it would close, nor with whose blood it would overflow. Let every man gird himself for battle and be not afraid, for God is on our side."

As certain as Davis was about the righteousness of their cause, he was equally pessimistic about his own chances for survival. Several days before that fateful dawn, he and his wife had returned home from an excursion to discover that a large owl, a symbol of death, had flown into the house and perched on Davis’s favorite gun, which hung over the mantel. No one was allowed to disturb the brooding presence, which stayed for days and was interpreted by the captain as an omen that, if the struggle became a full-pitched battle, he would not survive.

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