Two hundred and fifty years ago today, the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought. As battles go, they didn’t amount to much. The Americans suffered 49 killed and 39 wounded, the British 73 killed and 174 wounded. But their historical consequences could hardly have been greater. 

For they constituted the first military action of the American Revolution and thus the creation of the most consequential nation of modern times, the United States. As Ralph Waldo Emerson so famously said, it was, in retrospect, “the shot heard round the world.”

The story of the battles has been so well told in both prose and poetry — like Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” — as to hardly need retelling here. But sometimes a single incident or individual can add much color to the story as a whole.

Consider Captain Samuel Whittemore, a prosperous farmer from Menotomy (now Arlington), Massachusetts. He had been born on July 27, 1696, and at 78 was the oldest soldier to fight on either side in the Revolutionary War. 

His family had begged him to flee with them to safety, but he refused. He was going to get a shot at the British as they returned from Lexington. His daughter warned him that, “Father, they will take you.”

“They’ll find it hard work to do it,” he replied. He was right about that.