Framingham Legends & Lore (8 page)

On Thursday, February 23, 1775, three men set out from Boston bound for Worcester: Captain William Brown of the Fifty-second Regiment of Foot, Ensign Henry de Berniere of the Tenth Regiment of Foot and Brown's “batman,” John. (A batman was an enlisted soldier assigned as a servant to an officer.) They were charged with noting the topography of the road and best routes, fordable streams, defensible positions, places where a unit could camp for the night—anything that might prove of possible military value. They were also to make maps and sketch prominent features as well as road junctions so that the soldiers could find the route and know what to expect along the way. What followed was not destined to go down among the annals of the great acts of espionage in military history.

The three, “disguised like countrymen, in brown cloaths [
sic
] and reddish hankerchiefs round our necks,” were to pretend to be surveyors so as not to arouse suspicion. The prospect of two British officers, along with a servant, traveling the Massachusetts countryside in early 1775, sketching major roads, claiming to be surveyors somehow
not
arousing suspicion seems comical in retrospect, regardless of how like “countrymen” they dressed.

The first day passed without incident. The travelers noted that Cambridge was “pretty with a brick college” and that neighboring Watertown was a big settlement by American terms, but would rank only a village in England. (That Cambridge was home to Harvard College was somehow news to the Englishmen, and their comparisons of Watertown to an English village spoke volumes about how much the three were proverbial fish out of water in the Middlesex countryside.) They came upon a tavern just over the line in Waltham, where they decided to stop for dinner and stay the night.

The tavern was owned by Colonel Jonathan Brewer, a native of Framingham who had served in the French and Indian War before moving to Waltham in 1770. Brewer was an ardent Patriot, and while the officers were looking over their day's work, Brewer's black female servant brought in dinner. Making conversation, they offered the bland observation that this was “a fine country.” They were stunned when the servant replied, “So it is, and we have got brave fellows to defend it; and if you go up any higher you will find it so.” Flummoxed, they paid their bill and immediately set out again to find somewhere else to spend the night. They subsequently learned from their batman, who had spoken to the woman, that she had recognized Brown as a British officer from the Boston garrison and immediately surmised what these “surveyors” were up to, especially after she had seen that they had sketched a map of the road through Charlestown and Cambridge.

Their cover blown, the spies briefly considered returning to Boston. What kept them going was not their sense of the importance of their undertaking, nor military discipline, nor indeed their sense of duty to king and country—rather the realization that they would become the laughingstocks of the Boston garrison should they return in disgrace having so utterly failed in their mission. So they resolved to press on, although from now on they would try to hide their surveying from passersby and maintain a new cover story that they were sailors on shore leave out touring the New England countryside as a means of stretching their legs. This new alibi seems hardly more credible than the old one, as one would expect to find idle sailors in the grogshops along the Boston waterfront rather than traipsing about rural Massachusetts in February.

After traversing Waltham, they stopped for a drink at the Golden Ball tavern in Weston. (This structure still stands, preserved as a historic site.) Here they were pleased that the proprietor, Elisha Jones, proved less inquisitive than the innkeepers of Waltham, and they arranged to stay the night. The owner lit a fire in their chamber, and when the travelers asked for coffee, he replied that they could have whichever they wanted, coffee or
tea
. The offer of tea was a loaded question in those days of the boycott, so the soldiers immediately knew their tavern keeper was a Loyalist friend, and they took great comfort in talking to him. (One wonders whether they might have been alarmed that virtually everyone whom they encountered immediately recognized them as British soldiers on a scouting mission, but if this worried them, they did not voice such concerns.)

The next day was “rainy and frosty”—no doubt miserable weather in which to walk, and they made it only to Colonel Joseph Buckminster's tavern in Framingham. The tavern was located on the northeast side of what is now Buckminster Square and was operated by Buckminster's son Thomas (grandson of the first Joseph Buckminster, who was discussed at length in
Chapter Two
). By an odd coincidence, Thomas's older sister was the wife of Colonel Jonathan Brewer, the Waltham tavern keeper. The travelers were not impressed by the accommodations: “On our entering the house we did not much like the appearance of things; we asked for dinner and they gave us some sausages,” but they found that their hosts, especially the colonel's wife, were mollified by their “prais[ing] every thing exceedingly,” so they stayed the night.

The next morning they hit the road for Worcester and, after making a wrong turn at Westborough, reached the Isaac Jones tavern there by 5:00 p.m. When they woke up the next morning, the landlord offered them tea for breakfast, once again indicating the ineffectiveness of their efforts to travel incognito, although they were at least staying with a friend of their cause. As it was Sunday, they dared not travel should they raise the suspicions or ire of the devoutly churchgoing New Englanders. That night the proprietor said they had visitors, but the spies refused to see them. The next morning they learned from Jones that they had been Loyalists from Petersham who reported that all the Loyalists there had been disarmed, and that the Loyalists in Worcester could expect the same fate shortly. Finally recognizing the danger of their whereabouts and mission being so well broadcast, they were not much comforted by Jones's assertion that “only a few friends of the government” knew they were in town.

On Monday, February 27, 1775, the party headed back to Framingham, arriving at Buckminster's tavern at about 6:00 p.m. There they saw a most interesting sight—the Framingham militia drilling on the town green not far from the tavern. The spies admitted that they “did not feel very easy at seeing such a number so very near us; however, they did not know who we were, and took little or no notice of us.” (It is interesting to note that Framingham seems to have been the only place where the spies were not immediately recognized as such, although it is certainly possible that they were recognized but not confronted.)

While it has sometimes been stated that the spies were much intimidated by the militia's show of force, once they became assured of their own personal safety they did not seem overly impressed: “After they had done their exercise, one of their commanders spoke a very eloquent speech, recommending patience, coolness and bravery (
which indeed they very much wanted
).” When they further note the commander's quoting “Caesar and Pompey, brigadiers Putnam and Ward, and all such great men,” one can almost hear the sarcasm accompanying the idea that militia commanders Putnam and Ward belong in a pantheon with the classical generals. After the drill, the members of the militia came into the tavern “and drank until nine o'clock, and then returned to their respective homes full of pot-valor.”

The next night the spies returned to the Golden Ball in Weston, where their host implored them “not to go any more into the country.” Brown and de Berniere decided to ignore this warning, as indeed they had every other indication that their mission had been hopelessly compromised almost from the moment the pair had left Boston. The next day, March 1, they decided to scout out a more northerly route to Worcester through Marlborough, although they whiled away the morning at the tavern waiting for a storm to lighten up before resigning themselves to the inclement weather and setting off at noon in the ankle-deep snow. They had made it almost the whole sixteen miles to Marlborough without incident when a rider approached and began questioning them. They reluctantly revealed that they were from Boston and intended to visit “a friend” in Marlborough. Their inquisitor then rode ahead of them toward the town. As they entered Marlborough, people came out of their houses into the snowy late afternoon to watch the two make their way to the home of Henry Barnes, a merchant, magistrate and Tory. A baker accosted them and once again questioned the men's intentions before letting them pass.

Once they arrived at Barnes's house, they began to explain to him that they were British officers in disguise, only to be told that not only did he know who they were, but the whole town did as well, and had been expecting their arrival since a rider had seen them leave Worcester two days earlier. They soon discovered that the baker who had questioned them was a well-known Patriot and was harboring in his house an army deserter, a drummer boy named Swain who had fled Captain Brown's own company a month earlier. It soon became apparent that their plan to have dinner and rest for a few hours before heading back was imprudent, and they were snuck out of the house and shown a back road to take. Soon after their departure, a mob gathered at the Barnes house and, disbelieving of his explanation that his visitors were relatives of his wife from Pennsylvania, set off in pursuit of the two.

They escaped due to a wind-driven snow that discouraged their pursuers and covered their tracks. The exhausted men stopped only once between Marlborough and Weston, climbing a hill overlooking the Sudbury River near the causeway (present-day Route 27 between Sudbury and Wayland) to eat their soggy bread washed down with melted snow. Once they were on the causeway, some riders approached them but did not stop, and they immediately decided a column of soldiers crossing via this route would be too vulnerable to attack. If Gage's men were to march to Worcester, they should go through Framingham instead. After spending one more night at the Golden Ball, the spies finally took the advice of nearly every Loyalist they had encountered and went back to the Boston barracks.

Upon reading their report, General Gage worried that the forty miles to Worcester was too far for the lightning raid he envisioned and gave the colonials too much time to martial their forces. So on March 20, de Berniere and Brown set out again, surveying the route to another possible target, this one closer to Boston. They evidently had learned little about concealing their identities, for almost as soon as they arrived in Concord at the home of Daniel Bliss, Esquire, Bliss received a note that he should immediately vacate the town on penalty of death for harboring Tory spies. The two headed back to Boston, joined by the newly homeless Bliss. (According to historian David Hackett Fischer, Bliss was the only Concord Loyalist to have his property confiscated throughout the entire war.) Their trip had not been for naught, however; it was Bliss who showed the two the road through Lexington and recommended it as the best passage to Concord.

F
RAMINGHAM
M
EN AT THE
B
ATTLE OF
L
EXINGTON AND
C
ONCORD

When the British columns left Boston on the night of April 18, 1775, they did not march west through Framingham to Worcester, but indeed took Bliss's route to the northwest, hoping to capture Patriot leaders at Lexington and seize an arms cache at Concord. Nonetheless, the Minutemen Captain Brown and Ensign de Berniere had seen mustering at Framingham played a role in the events of the next day.

Ensign Henry de Berniere's company of light infantry was in the vanguard, leading the columns along the roads he had mapped a month earlier. His men were among those who advanced on Lexington Green with orders to disarm the colonial militiamen who had assembled there to challenge them, when the “shot heard 'round the world” was fired, marking the start of the conflict that became known as the American Revolution. His company suffered only one man wounded at Lexington and continued to lead the column to Concord, arriving there between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m.

The alarm reached Framingham at about 8:00 a.m. on April 19, several hours after the skirmish at Lexington. Church bells began ringing and the alarm guns were fired. The town's three companies—under the command of Captains Simon Edgell, Micajah Gleason and Jesse Eames, respectively—assembled at Framingham Centre. The companies departed by about 9:00 a.m., although it seems likely that militiamen from the farther corners of the town continued to straggle after the main body of men on the road to East Sudbury (now Wayland) for some time afterward.

The three Framingham companies marched northeast through Sudbury to Lincoln, taking the high ground at Brooks Hill that overlooked the road the British regulars were already taking back from Concord. Their plan to ambush the retreating column was foiled either by their having been spotted by the British soldiers or perhaps some undisciplined premature firing on their part. Nonetheless, the Framingham men, alongside several companies from Sudbury, inflicted heavy casualties on the English vanguard that was forced to charge up the hill so that the main British column could pass without being fired upon. Ensign de Berniere's men, clearing a path for the main force, took the brunt of the fighting, and he later wrote “all the hills on each side of us were covered with rebels…so that they kept the road always lined and a very hot fire on us without intermission.” As the Tenth Foot returned to Lexington, ammunition was low and discipline began to break down. It was only the arrival of a relief column from Boston that prevented a complete rout of the British forces. One wonders whether Ensign de Berniere realized that the very same Framingham Minutemen he had so scornfully dismissed as amateurs six weeks earlier were among those inflicting such heavy casualties upon his regulars.

After this engagement, the Framingham companies joined the harassing action that pursued the retreating expedition all the way back to Charlestown. The lopsided nature of the fight can be illustrated by the fact that not a single Framingham man lost his life that day and only one—Daniel Hemenway—was wounded. Other men from the town had tales to tell of that day. Ebenezer Hemenway shot a British soldier named Thomas Sowers near Merriam's Corner in Concord and took his gun home as a souvenir, while Noah Eaton was reloading his gun behind a rise when a British soldier came before him and started to reload his own gun. Thinking quickly, Eaton raised his own gun to his shoulder and demanded that the regular surrender, which he did, only to realize he had been tricked. The soldier told Eaton that he would have been able to reload his gun much quicker than the Framingham man, as the British were equipped with cartridges, rather than having to manually load a musket the way the colonials did.