Who Were The Women of the Battle Road?

Who were the women in the households along the Battle Road in Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington on April 19th, 1775, i.e., number, age, status (free or enslaved), race, residence, household occupation, marital status, number of children, etc.?

Alyssa Kariofyllis, M.A., 2016 Scholar in the Park Minute Man National Historic Park

The towns of Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington had few drastic population changes throughout the end of the eighteenth century. They were ethnically homogenous, with a dominant presence of white families.¹ It is estimated that Concord was comprised of 244 houses and 266 families with 27 people of color living in the town in 1765. Lexington had 126 houses and 142 families with 44 persons of color. And Lincoln had 84 houses with 99 families along with 25 men and women of color.²

While all of the households in the three towns would have been affected by the events of April 19, the homes along the Battle Road would have had a vastly different experience. The men, women, children, and enslaved people living along the main road were the first to be notified of the impending British threat by Paul Revere, William Dawes, Samuel Prescott, and the other riders travelling through the towns. These are the families who would have then spread the news through their information networks both along and away from the Battle Road. Studying these families and the women of each household is important to understanding the ways that news and aid travelled on April 19. While entire towns mobilized to protect their families and their rights, the Battle Road homes were the most vulnerable, as this was the route the British troops used both to enter Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord and to retreat back to Boston.

This study has identified 22 households that were intact on the day of the battle. These households totaled at least 80 individuals. The actual number of people present in the homes on the day could have been drastically different given that a number of people traveled either to flee the conflict or to lend their aid and support. For example, we know that Nathan Meriam’s brother Josiah and his wife Lydia and their eight children joined Nathan, his wife Abigail, and their six children at his Concord home.³

There were slightly more men than women in Battle Road households in 1775. The families located for this study include 41 men and 34 women. These figures include children.⁴ There were also significantly more young people present than adults. There were 24 males and females under the age of 18. There were only six men and women aged between 18 and 24. Ten men and women were between 25 and 39 and another ten persons were over the age of 40. The oldest people accounted for were 54 years old.⁵

These age breakdowns are especially interesting because of the marital statuses of Battle Road residents. Of people over the age of 18, 24 were married while 17 were single. More men than women were single.⁶ Olive Stow is the only widowed woman known to be living along the Battle Road at this point. This data suggests that the Battle Road residents were primarily middle-aged married couples whose children had not yet reached adulthood.

Households that did not fit this mold include Olive Stow and her two teenaged children, Sarah and Nathaniel as well as the Whittemore household in Lexington. Olive and her children Sarah, 14, and Nathaniel, 13, may have been alone at their home on April 19. Olive’s husband, Joseph, had died suddenly in 1772, leaving her a widow with two children to care for. While sources do not describe how the Stows spent April 19, they may have left their home to stay with their neighbor, Olive’s brother Farwell Jones.⁷ Jacob and Elizabeth Whittemore, both 53 years old, were joined by their daughter Sarah and her husband Moses Reed. Sarah and Moses brought with them their children, Moses, who was 18 months old, and Sarah, who had been born just 18 days earlier. The Whittemore family is the only example of a household on the Battle Road with three generations of family living under the same roof that this study has located.

Many of the women along the Battle Road do not seem to have had any kind of occupation outside the home. Most were occupied in work connected with running the household or farm. For most women, their husbands were primarily occupied with farm work, so their work was also connected with the household farm. For example, Anna Brooks, wife of Job, would have needed to perform a variety of tasks to assist her husband in running their large and productive farm along the Battle Road.⁸ Job’s 1791 will stipulated that Anna receive Indian corn, rye, malt, cider, pork, beef, and flax. Joyce Lee Malcolm suggests that these crops were likely produced on the family farm, which Anna would have been deeply involved in. Catharine Louisa Smith was likely also very busy processing goods grown on her 120 acre farm. She and her husband, Captain William Smith, also owned a slave, who likely performed much of the labor necessary to maintain the many acres of tillage, mowing, pasture, and orchard as well as the livestock consisting of two horses, two oxen, nine cows, 4 swine, and twenty sheep.⁹ Catherine remained on the farm despite the fact that her husband lived apart from his family from 1783 until his death in 1787.¹⁰ Since she and her family remained on the property, Catherine would have needed extensive knowledge of how a farm that size works and likely had to perform a lot of the work herself. Other local women also managed property themselves. Single woman Tabitha Nelson owned twelve acres of the large plot her father, Thomas Nelson Sr., owned before his death in 1770. Though her brothers Thomas Jr. and Josiah both lived nearby, her independent ownership of the property suggests she was capable of running many of the daily operations herself.¹¹

Lydia Nelson, wife of Thomas Nelson, might have helped her husband both with their farm and with his brewing. He was granted a license to retail liquor in 1772 and may have had a hop house on his property. Joyce Lee Malcolm suggests he might have supplied beer for local taverns, like the Bull Tavern or Ephraim Hartwell’s tavern.¹² While many households made cider, the process of brewing and distributing beer would have had separate requirements than making cider.

Other women seem to have performed work separate from their household. Grace Mason, wife of Joseph, occasionally taught school. Joseph was also a schoolmaster and a currier. Tax lists show the Masons had significantly less property than others in the area. ¹³

Few records survive about Battle Road women, let alone about the ways in which they spent their time. Extensive research of tax lists, probate records, and secondary literature produced the accompanying appendix, which lists the Battle Road households as they existed on April 19, 1775.

Sources

End Notes

¹ Marc Harris, “The People of Concord: A Demographic History, 1750-1850) in Concord: The Social History of a New England Town, 1750-1850, ed. David Hackett Fischer (Waltham, Brandeis University, 1984), 78.  

² Josiah Benton, Early Census Making in Massachusetts, 1643-1765 (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1905), 78. The number of persons of color in the three towns has become a topic of recent debate. While historians have traditionally relied on the 1771 Massachusetts valuation, which suggests there were thirteen enslaved persons in Concord before the war, Elise Lemire argues that the number was much higher. She says there were in fact thirty-two slaves in Concord before and during the Revolution. An examination of the families along the Battle Road suggests that only a few of the slaves counted in that estimate were living along the Battle Road on April 19. We know that Frank was present in the Emerson household on the day. The Hartwells also owned a slave on the day of the battle. Elise Lemire, Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 10. 

³ Barbara Yocum, The Meriam House: Historic Structure Report (Minute Man National Historical Park, 2004), 27.  

⁴ Some children present on the day were not identified using their names so their genders were not included in this count.  

⁵ Nathan Meriam, Tabitha Nelson, and Thomas Nelson were 54 on April 19, 1775.  

⁶ Twelve men were single while only five women were unmarried. This figure does not include widows.  

⁷ Barbara Yocum, Olive Stow House: Historic Structure Report (Minute Man National Historical Park, 2003), 17.  

⁸ Joyce Lee Malcolm, The Scene of the Battle, 1775: Historic Grounds Report, Minute Man National Historical Park (Cultural Resources Management Study, no. 15, 1985), 81. Malcolm explains the 1771 tax assessment shows that the Brooks’ farm included two acres of pasture, eight acres of tillage, three acres of upland meadow, and fourteen acres of low-lying meadow. He was also taxed for the production of about 200 bushels of crops a year. They also produced cider and had more livestock than average – six oxen, eight cows, two horses, and three swine.  

⁹ Malcolm, 55.  

¹⁰ Malcolm, 54.

¹¹ Malcolm, 28.  

¹² Malcolm, 30-31.

¹³ Malcolm, 61.