Legends of Liberty February 2022 - The Forgotten Founding Father

[Mrs. Smith]

Good morning, and welcome to Legends of Liberty! Each month in 2022, Project Appleseed will bring you the story of one of the movers and shakers behind the American Revolution; the men, and women, without whom the war for our Independence might have gone very, very differently.

This first month we are pleased to bring you...


Wait for it....


The Forgotten Founding Father

Military historian Ethan Rafuse wrote, "No man, with the possible exception of Samuel Adams, did so much to bring about the rise of a movement powerful enough to lead the people of Massachusetts to revolution."

Had he lived, said Loyalist Peter Oliver in 1782, George Washington would have been ‘an obscurity.'

British Gen. Thomas Gage said his death was ‘worth the death of 500 men.'

Some today say that he would have been the first president of the United States had he not been killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Counties in 14 states bear his name, as do four towns in New England, and a street in Detroit. Five ships were named after him, and four statues bearing his likeness are on display.

Who IS this man, you ask? 

Dr. Joseph Warren.



Unlike John Hancock, Joseph Warren didn't have a wealthy uncle who took him under his wing when his father died. But Joseph Warren was ambitious, both for wealth and for glory.

He had taken to heart the words of his father: "I would rather a son of mine were dead than a coward." Joseph Warren was just 14 and about to enter Harvard in 1755 when his father was killed falling off a ladder while picking apples. His mother, Mary Stevens Warren, mortgaged the farm to send him to Harvard, though she probably could have used more of his help to run it.

Joseph Warren became the youngest doctor in Boston and one of the best, with a stellar list of clients including Sam Adams, John Hancock, and John Adams and his family.

Warren also had Loyalist patients: the children of Thomas Hutchinson, British Gen. Thomas Gage and his wife Margaret.  Some believe Margaret may have tipped him off about the British plans to raid Concord and arrest Hancock and Adams.

It was Joseph Warren who enlisted Paul Revere and William Dawes to spread the alarm on the evening of April 18, 1775.



Joseph Warren was gregarious, charming and a powerful speaker who enlisted in the patriot cause. He became Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of St. Andrew when Paul Revere was the secretary. He was also a member of the Sons of Liberty. To commemorate the second anniversary of the Boston Massacre, he delivered a speech at the Old South Meeting House while wearing a toga. In the fall of 1774, Joseph Warren wrote the Suffolk Resolves, which supported a boycott of British goods and urged armed resistance to the British.

By the first months of 1775 he was the most influential patriot leader in Massachusetts. Hancock and the Adamses were in Philadelphia attending the Second Continental Congress, and Warren, just 33, was the president of the Provincial Congress - Massachusetts' shadow government.

Joseph Warren was also a member of the Committee of Safety. He had made sure powder and arms were stored in towns throughout Massachusetts. He also tried to organize Massachusetts' fighting forces into an ‘army of observation,' and he propagandized so they'd be willing to fight.



On the day of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he sneaked out of Boston and led militia in harassing the Regulars returning to the city. He then returned to Boston, where he organized soldiers for the siege of Boston and negotiated with Gage.

On June 13, colonial leaders learned the British planned to send troops to take the unoccupied hills surrounding the besieged city. That night, 1,200 colonial troops stealthily occupied Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill and built an earthworks. Warren had been commissioned a major general in the Massachusetts militia. However, he insisted on fighting as a private in the thick of the battle. He asked Gen. Israel Putnam where the heaviest fighting would be.

During the battle he fought behind the earthworks until the patriots exhausted their ammunition. He stayed there to give the militia time to escape while the British made their final assault. A British officer then recognized him and shot him in the head. He died instantly, six days after his 34th birthday.



The British stripped his body and stabbed it beyond recognition, then threw him into a shallow grave with another patriot killed in the battle. Paul Revere later identified his body.

The day after the battle, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband:  "I have just heard that our dear Friend Dr. Warren is no more but fell gloriously fighting for his Country-saying better to die honourably in the field than ignominiously hang upon the Gallows. Great is our Loss. He has distinguished himself in every engagement, by his courage and fortitude, by animating the Soldiers & leading them on by his own example."

A great loss, indeed.  Who's to say how much shorter, and less bloody, the Revolution might have been had he not been killed so early?

Source: The New England Historical Society

[AH1Tom]

Very well done post

[Mrs. Smith]

Thank you, Tom. I'm glad you liked it