The monument in the town of Acton, for which the Reverend Woodbury pleaded so eloquently, was erected in 1851. The bodies of Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer–as well as that of James Hayward, who was killed at Fiske Hill in Lexington later that April day–were moved from the old burying ground to the base of the monument on the town Common.

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Isaac’s widow Hannah married twice more, both husbands also preceding her in death. In 1818, when she was 71 years old and impoverished, she sought a pension from the federal government. Her first attempt failed, and it was not until more than twenty years later that Hannah, then in her nineties, finally was granted a pension. Some senators, notably John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, objected, fearing a torrent of similar claims.

But Hannah’s cause found an eloquent champion in no less a statesman than Senator Daniel Webster, who declared that her husband Isaac had fallen "in his early manhood, one of the very first martyrs in the cause of liberty, and, if I mistake not, the first American officer who sealed his devotion to the cause with his own blood. . . . An early grave in the cause of liberty has secured to him the long and grateful remembrance of his country."

A freelance writer based in Littleton, Massachusetts, Jeanne Munn Bracken is a contributor to the 1996 issue of Women’s History magazine.

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