Last updated: May 23, 2025
Person
Dr Joseph Warren
Adams National Historical Park
Quick Facts
Significance:
Dr Joseph Warren was a well respected an American Physician, Revolutionary leader and military officer in the early days of the American Revolution
Place of Birth:
Roxbury, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
June 11, 1741
Place of Death:
Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Massachusetts
Date of Death:
June 17, 1775
Place of Burial:
Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts
Cemetery Name:
Forest Hills Cemetery
Joseph Warren, a prominent physician in Boston, played a significant role as a Revolutionary leader and military officer in the early days of the American Revolution. General Warren heroically fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, where British forces ultimately shot and killed him.
Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on June 11, 1741, Joseph Warren attended Harvard College and taught briefly at the Latin School before studying to become a physician.
In 1764, during a ravaging smallpox epidemic, Joseph Warren, at only 22 years old, stayed in Boston to care for the sick and dying. Warren operated a smallpox inoculation clinic on Castle Island in Boston Harbor—he even inoculated John Adams.
While a physician growing his medical practice, Warren also began supporting the patriot cause in 1767. Following the passage of the Townsend Acts, Warren wrote a series of articles for the Boston Gazette under the pseudonym “A True Patriot.” Angered by Warren’s articles, the Royal Governor attempted to charge him and the publishers of the Boston Gazette with libel.
As a friend of Samuel Adams, brother-in-law to James Otis, and a fellow Mason of Paul Revere, Warren had strong and deep connections to the radical cause.
Additionally, Warren witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Boston Massacre in 1770 by caring for the wounded. He delivered powerful addresses about the Massacre on anniversaries in the years following.
The British passed the Port Act in 1774 following the Boston Tea Party. It closed Boston Harbor to all ships, preventing goods being brought into the town. In response, Warren served as a member of the Committee of Donations in order to support Boston’s struggling citizens. As a member of the Committee, he handled the incoming donations and their distribution to those most in need.
In that same year, Warren drafted the Suffolk Resolves, which rejected an Intolerable Act preventing Massachusetts’ right to self-govern. The resolves led to the creation of the Provincial Congress. With Samuel Adams away in Philadelphia attending to the business of the Continental Congress, in 1774, Warren took over his leadership role in Boston. He oversaw the colony’s military matters: the raising of the militia, procurement of arms and powder, and the orchestration of a spy ring.
The spy ring brought Warren the intelligence leading to the first shots of the American Revolution. In 1775, when Adams and John Hancock returned to Massachusetts, they heard that the Crown had placed a price on their heads. Warren learned of British plans to arrest the Sons of Liberty leaders in their sanctuary in Lexington on April 18, 1775. Without Warren, there would not have been the fated Midnight Ride of Paul Revere; he dispatched William Dawes and then Paul Revere that night.
The skirmishes at Lexington and Concord caused Warren to dedicate his efforts solely to the militia. Warren left his patients in the care of his assistant, William Eustis. Warren himself fought the British on their retreat from Lexington and Concord to Boston. He joined the fighting in Menotomy (present day Arlington) and narrowly escaped being killed. Afterwards, for six weeks, he readied the militia. The Provincial Congress elected him as second general in command of the Massachusetts forces on June 14, 1775.
Around midnight on June 16, hundreds of colonial soldiers used pickaxes and shovels to construct an earthen fort, or redoubt, atop Breed's Hill, a hill southeast of Bunker Hill. On the morning of June 17, 1775, Warren learned at a meeting with the Committee of Safety that British forces had landed in Charlestown. He rode over from Cambridge at around noon to the fortifications on Breed’s Hill. When British forces began attacking colonial defenses, rather than taking command, Warren entered the line as a regular volunteer. On the third and final British assault near the redoubt, while attempting to rally the militia, the British killed Warren instantly with a musket ball between the eyes.
The British forces, upon taking the field, placed Warren’s body in a common mass grave. Paul Revere later identified his remains, able to do so by the set of false teeth he had fashioned for Warren.
John Trumbull immortalized Warren’s heroic death in the painting, “The Death of General Warren.” King Solomon’s Lodge honored their Grand Master Warren with the first Bunker Hill monument, now residing at the base of the present obelisk. Every state in New England has a town named in his honor.