The Minutemen and Their World

William Emerson, grandfather of Transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, was brought to Concord as a minister after the death of Bliss in 1764. Many of those who had objected to Bliss also disapproved of the choice of Emerson, for similar reasons; the author refers to the vote that determined his hiring as “a re-enactment of the divisions under Bliss” (20). Emerson’s ministerial style spared little attention for “theological niceties: if a man professed religious belief and was of good character, Emerson thought, he should be admitted into church” (21). Nevertheless, he was ordained on New Years’ Day of 1766, and shortly afterward married Phebe Bliss, Daniel Bliss’ daughter.

His controversial appointment and the role of ministers as church leaders led to his presiding over some of the more divisive moments in the life of the town, including Joseph Lee’s repeated attempts to join the church. Through the 1760s and early 1770s, Emerson often served as the mouthpiece for town sentiments in support of resistance to British taxation. By the same token, resistance to anti-British sentiment and resistance to Emerson’s authority as the head of the Church often went together. Many Concordians who did not sign the 1774 Solemn League and Covenant were “Old Lights,” and their reluctance to resist authority was informed by their experiences during the First Great Awakening, which, they believed, had led to a large-scale undermining of authority.

During the war, in summer 1776, Emerson accompanied troops on an expedition to Fort Ticonderoga in New York as a chaplain. However, several weeks into the journey, he died at the home of another ministry from an illness he had caught in the Army camp.

Joseph Lee’s story is woven through the narrative, and begins in Chapter One. He applied for membership in the church in 1766, at age 50, hoping to acquire the prestige that came with membership. A rich, hot-tempered landowner, he had never been honored with a public office, and the author attributes his behavior in this period to the offense he felt over that fact. When Lee’s application was rejected over allegations that he treated other townspeople unfairly in his business dealings, he began a smear campaign against the new minister, William Emerson. Over a six-year period, Lee’s campaign created deep divisions within the town’s elite; the small group of Lee’s supporters, known as the “aggrieved brethren,” were opposed to those who supported Emerson. Though Lee drew on those who lived on the outskirts of town who felt excluded from the church, his attitude was seen as self-aggrandizing by many and therefore in opposition to ideal values of community. Despite his best efforts, most of Concord’s residents grew increasingly hostile toward Lee.

However, despite his antagonistic relationship with many in the community, he was still considered far more of a community leader than an outcast. He represented the town in at least one of its many attempts to be named the Middlesex County seat, and was included on the committee formed to answer the Boston Committee of Correspondence letter regarding the payment of judges in 1772. As the political situation in the colonies grew more tense, however, Lee was suspected of monarchist sympathies. He was among those who did not endorse the 1774 boycott of British goods, and he was accused of warning British officers of a march on Cambridge to force the resignation of the Mandamus Council. He was also one of only three non-signers of the Continental Association from Concord.

Four days after the fight at the North Bridge, Lee was placed under house arrest, a decision presumably influenced by his suspicious record of providing information to British troops. After intensive petitioning, Concord’s committee of correspondence set him free in June 1776. In the aftermath of the war, he finally achieved his goal: he was granted church membership in 1786.

Lee’s story is yet another example of the centrality of religion in local politics; by refusing to adhere to communal religious consensus, he helped to create persistent divisions in a community where harmony was highly valued. It also demonstrates the relevance of the elite beyond these divisions; though Lee perhaps never attained the prominence he desired, he was still a reliable choice when Concord’s interests had to be formally represented to the outside world.

Barrett was a military man, a long-time representative to the provincial House of Representatives, a Concord selectman, and one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of Concord. Barrett was firmly opposed to Lee in Lee’s bid to join the church, along with several other prominent members of society. In 1768, he became Concord’s representative to the Council, the upper chamber of the legislature that advised the royal governor. He was relatively early in his support of resistance to British taxation, and as a representative of Concord he both led the growing opposition within the town and threw its weight behind resistance measures. However, his position was perhaps not as simple as it seemed—after opposing British troops landing in Boston, he accepted a contract to feed British troops with oatmeal from his farm.

Barrett was included in virtually every committee created during the years leading to the Revolution, including an answer the letter from the Boston Committee of Correspondence in 1772, the oath the Minutemen took. He was promoted from captain to colonel shortly before the Revolution, and managed Concord’s military supplies in the period leading up to the Revolution, and was commander of the Third Middlesex Regiment.

As a father of sons (and a son himself), Barrett was caught in the pinch of dwindling land resources and the push west. In his case, however, circumstances generally worked out in his favor. The Barrett family was perhaps the wealthiest in Concord, and James’ father’s death when he was 22 meant that he could start a family with an inheritance in hand at a relatively early age. When his own sons came of age, he was able to secure frontier land, as his uncle and father had already done before he was an adult. Much of this land was later sold to others who would settle on it, and this income supplemented his lucrative farming business. Thanks to “two generations of careful planning, well-timed opportunism, and a bit of plain luck,” Barrett had achieved “the enviable status of a true patriarch—he could settle his children around him” (81). The Barretts’ fortune continued after the Revolution, and they remained a wealthy and prominent family.

The first-born son of selectman and Minuteman company commander David Brown, Purchase Brown is brought up as an example of a young man of Concord whose uncertain future meant that he was free (or, from another perspective, forced) to seek his fortunes outside of Concord. Prospects for young men like Purchase were bleak: even if he were to seek his fortunes on the frontier, a life of subsistence farming likely lay ahead. After working on his father’s farm as a youth, Purchase accumulated approximately a years’ worth of army service during the Revolution, and by 1800 had a 100-acre farm of his own in Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Similarly, his siblings found themselves spread throughout New England as adults; without a concerted effort from their older relatives (and not a small amount of luck), the children of Concord’s large families drove the settlement of the frontier in the effort to make a life for themselves.

Ezekiel Brown’s biography provides a fascinating example of how a person could, in the course of a lifetime, experience dramatic financial and social ups and downs. Though Brown’s grandfather had been wealthy, his father had been forced to travel from town to town seeking work. At 22, Ezekiel returned to Concord, where he was born, hoping to make a life for himself. Though he was quickly “warned out,” he managed to work hard enough to buy himself a small plot of land in the center of town. However, Brown’s business, like that of many others, relied on credit, making it vulnerable to shifts in the economy as well as the whims of his creditors. When the nonimportation agreement collapsed in 1772, people rushed to buy British goods, and his business took a blow. His Boston suppliers sued him for repayment of debts in 1772, and he soon found himself in jail. He spent the next four years studying medicine in jail, and was only released when one of his creditors, a British sympathizer, fled to England. When Brown was released, he signed up as an army surgeon for the rest of the war, looking forward to the land he would receive as a reward for his service. In 1782, the same creditor sued him again for his debts plus interest, and Brown was again ruined. He then settled in Maine, where he seemed to prosper once more, and lived until 1822 on a meager military pension.