I wrote the short story “Act Worthy of Yourselves” that asks the question “What if Dr. Joseph Warren had survived Bunker Hill?” as part of the Historical Writers Forum anthology “Alternate Endings” because frankly, Dr. Joseph Warren is the love of my American Revolution life.
This young and largely forgotten patriot is an important character in the first book of my historical fantasy series, Angels and Patriots Book One: Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill. I’ve also have published non-fiction works about Warren including a short piece titled America’s First Martyr in the Military Writers Society of America’s 2021 anthology Untold Stories, numerous blog posts, and three audio clips for a website called Hear About Hear that provides audio clips for historic places. The three audio clips can be heard at Old South Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and King’s Chapel in Boston where Warren delivered two Boston Massacre Orations (1772 & 1775), was killed at age 34 at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, and the chapel where his funeral was held, respectively.
Dr. Joseph Warren
Warren was a Boston physician, Son of Liberty, politician, orator, masonic Grand Master, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and a major general. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty, a group of political dissidents formed in Boston to protest King George III and Parliament’s taxation and control of colonial authority. Their protests against the Mother country’s sudden subjugation after more than a century of autonomy, proliferated in the America colonies in the 1760s. Some of their famous members were Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams. John Adams, a Massachusetts lawyer and politician was not a Son of Liberty, but he was a sympathizer.
It was Joseph Warren who sent Paul Revere, along with William Dawes, on that ride to warn the countryside that the British regulars were out of Boston and on the march looking for rebel munitions on the night of April 18, 1775. He was holding the rebellion together in Massachusetts during the spring of 1775 while Samuel Adams and John Hancock were hiding in Lexington for fear of being hanged by the British for treason.
Through the committees of the Provincial Congress, he tirelessly wrote letters to leaders of other colonies, rallying for the cause, asking for help, and pressing them for their responsibilities in the rebellion against Britain. He gathered militia, supplies, and directed the provincial army who conducted the siege of Boston on the British in that town after the first shots of the war were fired in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775.
His death at the Battle of Bunker Hill was widely lamented by his friends and patients such as Abigail Adams, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, patriots who fought alongside Warren on that fateful day and as far reaching as Philadelphia and the southern colonies. His death, early in the war, served to leave him in obscurity. He deserves to be known for everything he did in the infancy of the American Revolution to promote freedom and liberty. So the questions is “what if Joseph Warren had survived Bunker Hill?” Where would he have stood among the American Founding Fathers, many of whom were his fellows long before the rest of the world had heard their names.
One last very important comment.
My share of royalties will go to the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation an organization dedicated to educating the public about his life & contributions to the American Revolution.
I hope you enjoy my short story “Act Worthy of Yourselves” in our anthology as much as I enjoyed writing it! Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. Click the cover to get your copy!
Authors:
Virginia Crow
Cathie Dunn
Sharon Bennett Connolly
Karen Heenan
Samantha Wilcoxson
Michael Ross
Salina B Baker
Elizabeth Corbett
I was asked what inspired me to write the short story “Act Worthy of Yourselves” as part of the Historical Writers Forum anthology “alternate endings” a collection of short stories by a group of eight talented historical writers who each have their own story that asks the question, what if an historical event was altered and changed the course of history?
My story asks, “What if Dr. Joseph Warren had survived the Battle of Bunker Hill?” one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution fought on the Charlestown peninsula northeast of Boston on June 17,1775. The title “Act Worthy of Yourselves” is a line from Warren’s Boston Massacre Oration which he delivered at Old South Meeting House in Boston on March 6, 1775 to a crowd so large that he was forced to climb through the window behind the pulpit to avoid being crushed.
This post is part of our blog hop tour for “alternate endings.”
In 2015, I was searching for the topic of my next book. I had written two standalone novels set in Victorian America and I wanted to pursue something historically different. I asked myself how much I knew about the American Civil War as that was the first love of my historical life. But it was set in the same time period and I realized I needed to move to a different era. I did know quite a bit about the American Revolution and Colonial America and decided I was willing to put my effort into learning more.
Where to start? Ah, yes. Why not start with the obvious—the Sons of Liberty, a group of political dissidents formed in Boston to protest King George III and Parliament’s taxation and control of colonial authority. Their protests against the Mother country’s sudden subjugation after more than a century of autonomy, proliferated in the America colonies in the 1760s. Who did I know that belonged to the Sons of Liberty? Why Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams their ringleader, of course. John Adams, a Massachusetts lawyer and politician was not a Son of Liberty, but he was a sympathizer. Boston was already militarily occupied in response to acts of what the King considered disobedience.
My research immediately led me to a list of Massachusetts Sons of Liberty and among them was a handsome, young doctor named Joseph Warren. It was love at first sight. I could not get enough of who he was, what he did, his growth as a man, politician, orator, leader, and masonic Grand Master. He apprenticed under Loyalist Dr. James Lloyd and medically treated people from all walks of life. The rising Patriot admiration for him and his efforts for the Patriot cause could not be ignored nor the threat he posed to the British, who in the end, were pleased to see he and his sedition put to death on a battlefield.
Dr. Joseph Warren circa 1764 by John Singleton Copley
I had read the poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when I was in sixth grade and it always stuck with me. Imagine my delight when I found out that Joseph Warren was the guy who sent Paul Revere, along with William Dawes, on that ride to warn the countryside that the British regulars were out of Boston and on the march looking for rebel munitions on the night of April 18, 1775. That it was Joseph Warren who was holding the rebellion together in Massachusetts during the spring of 1775 while Samuel Adams and John Hancock were hiding in Lexington for fear of being hanged by the British for treason. During the time many of his colleagues including Adams and Hancock attended the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in late spring 1775, he became president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
Warren tended to be dauntless, storming into a situation without thought for personal risk. John Adams once said, “Warren was a young man whom nature had adorned with grace and manly beauty, and a courage that would have been rash absurdity, had it not been tempered by self-control.”
Then, there was the tragedy of Warren’s personal life. His wife died at age 26, leaving him a widower with four children under age eight. When he was killed at age 34 at the Battle of Bunker Hill his children were orphaned.
So Joseph Warren rose as a shining star in my novel “Angels and Patriots Book One: Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill.” Because the series is historical fantasy, my main character is an archangel with the human name Colm Bohannon. How much farther can you elevate someone than have a man and an archangel become friends and learn love and loyalty from one another? Not much. How much do you weep when you know how it historically ended?
As I wrote, I began to share facts about Joseph Warren and I found that he is adored and even worshipped among history and American Revolutionary War enthusiasts and authors. For years, the question that came up was and always has been, “What if Joseph Warren had survived Bunker Hill?” This ubiquitous and charismatic leader took the reins of the rebellion politically and militarily and accepted a provincial generalship on the day the American Continental Army was formed, June 14, 1775—three days before his death.
There were many questions on my mind and on the mind of others.
*If he had survived, how would General George Washington have received him? Or perhaps Washington would have relinquished his appointment as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and recommended Warren in his stead?
*Would Warren have been one of the greatest tactical or strategic generals of the war?
*Would his concern for civilians taken him in a political direction?
*What about his medical practice and experience? Would he have benefited the Continental Army with his expertise?
*Would he have stayed behind to see to matters in Massachusetts? Or gone on to preside over the Continental Congress, the civilian governing body during the war?
*Would he have discovered great medical break throughs?
*How would his life and his children’s lives unfolded during and beyond the war?
*How far would he have reached for the stars while a new nation was rising?
As an author and person who came to adore Dr. Joseph Warren but not blind to his faults, I couldn’t let these burning questions pass me by when the opportunity arose to write an alternate ending to his life. If only for this moment, in this anthology, he is given another chance. Perhaps others who have asked the same question will agree with how I see it. Perhaps not. Nevertheless, I know people who know who Joseph Warren was will want to read it and share in their opinions. For those who don’t know who he was, the story I wrote is based in fact and I didn’t change the outcome of the Revolutionary War.
Dr. Joseph Warren’s name is not a household word like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. His premature death saw to that. Beyond my own novel, if I can raise awareness of his accomplishments through a historical alternate ending, I will be satisfied that I tried.
One other person who I should mention that is part of the story is Joseph’s youngest brother, Dr. John Warren. His name and extraordinary medical accomplishments are lesser known than those of his brother’s. John’s part in this story is based in fact. I assure you will be surprised and impressed.
Dr. John Warren circa 1806 by Rembrandt Peale
I hope you enjoy our anthology as much as we have enjoyed writing it! Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. Click the cover to get your copy!
Authors:
Virginia Crow
Cathie Dunn
Sharon Bennett Connolly
Karen Heenan
Samantha Wilcoxson
Michael Ross
Salina B Baker
Elizabeth Corbett
My share of royalties will go to the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation an organization dedicated to educating the public about his life & contributions to the American Revolution.
Please join me on the website, HEAR about HERE, where you can hear stories about people, places and events that happened near you using the GPS on your phone. Their mission is to tell you all about it three minutes at time. So HEAR more about these treasures with them and their Tale Collections from their contributors.
I am one of their contributors, so listen to my tales of true stories!
In December 1775, twenty-five-year old Boston bookseller Henry Knox, led an expedition from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to retrieve 50 tons of artillery and bring it back to General George Washington. Hear the story of Knox’s noble train of artillery and this amazing journey.
The patriots commemorated the anniversaries of the Boston Massacre, a bloody conflict that took place near the State House on March 5, 1770, between the citizens of Boston and British soldiers in which five civilians died. Hear the story of the circumstances surrounding Dr. Joseph Warren’s 1775 oration on the event.
The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on the Charlestown peninsula north of Boston on June 17, 1775. The peninsula was the original objective of both the colonial and British troops. Hear the story of Dr. Joseph Warren’s part in that pyrrhic battle.
After the Siege of Boston ended in March 1776 and the British withdrew, Dr. Joseph Warren’s remains were recovered from the Charlestown peninsula where he was hastily buried after the Battle of Bunker Hill. Hear the story of his honorable obsequies.
General George Washington proclaimed January 1, 1776 was the first day of “a new army, which in every point of view is entirely continental.” Hear the story of the celebration of that event.
The Billop House on Staten Island was the site of a peace conference between British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams during the Revolutionary War in September 1776. Hear the story of what transpired.
The Battle of White Plains in New York was fought between General George Washington’s Continental Army and General William Howe’s British and Hessian armies on October 28, 1776. Hear the story of this important battle.
What did the American Revolution’s first martyr and the American Revolution’s most infamous traitor have in common that was so important?
Dr. Joseph Warren was an influential and ubiquitous Boston physician, son of a Roxbury farmer, husband, father, Son of Liberty, masonic grand master, and in the absence of John Hancock, pro tempore president (Joseph would be voted president on May 2, 1775) of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and member of its sub-committees when he and Benedict Arnold met in Cambridge, Massachusetts in late April 1775.
Dr. Joseph Warren
Joseph, who sent Paul Revere and William Dawes on their famous midnight ride to warn the countryside that General Thomas Gage’s British regulars were on the move to seize patriot arms in Concord and possibly to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams hiding in Lexington, was holding the American rebellion in Massachusetts and the provincial army together.
Benedict Arnold was from an influential Connecticut family. His great-grandfather was an early governor of Rhode Island. The family prospered until some poor business deals caused financial problems. Arnold’s father turned to the local taverns for solace. Prior to the Revolution, Benedict was an apothecary and a successful seagoing merchant captain. Some of his business dealings drifted into smuggling . . . in contempt of the customs laws of the Crown.
General Benedict Arnold
Both Joseph and Benedict were born in 1741. They were handsome, charismatic, energetic, ambitious, and both had an indifference to personal safety. Future actions by Benedict with respect to Joseph’s children suggest that the two seemed to have struck up an almost instant friendship, but no details of their personal interactions survive.
In April 1775, Captain Benedict Arnold marched his well-appointed militia unit from New Haven, Connecticut to Cambridge. Benedict approached Joseph and the Committee of Safety with a scheme to take the poorly defended British stronghold of Fort Ticonderoga at the southern end of Lake Champlain where there were “80 pieces of heavy cannon, 20 brass and 4 18-pounders and 10-12 mortars.” This is exactly what the Committee of Safety needed to hear. The provincial army had two experienced artillery officers, but it still did not have a sufficient number of cannons.
Joseph championed the project and shepherded it through the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Benedict was appointed a Massachusetts militia colonel, issued 100 pounds, 200 lbs of gunpowder (a decision that would prove portentous 6 weeks later at Bunker Hill), 200 lbs of lead musket balls, and bayonets.
Joseph proceeded in relative secrecy so British General Thomas Gage might be kept in the dark. Unknown to Joseph and Benedict, the Connecticut governor, John Trumbull, was simultaneously pursuing the same scheme with Ethan Allen.
Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys were equally eager to capture such a prize and the two groups met up with each other at Bennington. Arnold was surprised and angered because Ethan Allen did not care if Arnold had permission from the Committee of Safety and Arnold couldn’t talk Allen out of relinquishing command. Nevertheless, on May 10, 1775, they surprised the British garrison at Ticonderoga and took the fort.
The Taking of Fort Ticonderoga May 10, 1775
Joseph was one of the first leaders to hear of the expedition’s success. He sent news of Benedict’s success to Governor Trumbull. Joseph glossed over the murky inter-colonial jurisdictional issues and sought to calm ruffle feathers when Benedict’s querulous personality began to reveal itself. Joseph wrote:
Gentlemen, We have the happiness of presenting our congratulations to you on the reduction of that important Fortress Ticonderoga… [We] should be extremely glad if all the battering cannon, especially brass cannon, which can be spared from that place…may be forwarded this way with all possible expedition, as we have here to contend with an army furnished with as fine a train of artillery as ever seen in America; and we are of extreme want of a sufficient number of cannon to fortify those important passes without which we can neither annoy General Gage, if it should become necessary, nor defend ourselves against him….
History has given well-deserved laurels to Henry Knox for leading the epic hauling of Ticonderoga’s artillery across the New England winter landscape of 1775-76 and delivering it to General George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts where it was used on Dorchester Heights to break the Siege of Boston. Ignored are Joseph Warren’s, Benedict Arnold’s, Ethan Allen’s, and Governor Trumbull’s conceptualization and early actions that initiated Knox’s campaign and stunning success.
With the new rank of major general, Joseph Warren was killed five weeks later at the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill) on June 17, 1775. His was a widower who left four destitute orphaned children behind. Benedict Arnold went on to become a major general in the Continental Army, led an expedition to Quebec City, commanded at Valcour Island, and fought at the Battle of Bemis Heights (the 2nd Battle of Saratoga) where on a borrowed horse named Warren, he stormed the enemy’s Breymann Redoubt and took a shot to the thigh which killed his mount.
By 1780, Benedict had become disgruntled with the Continental Army over back pay among other things. He donated $500 of his own money toward the care of Joseph’s children. It was a move that shamed the delegates of Congress, such as Samuel Adams, who had once been Joseph’s close compatriots and had refused measures to pay for the support of Joseph’s children.
In September of that same year, Benedict Arnold passed off the plans for West Point to British Major John Andre in exchange for an excess of 10,000 pounds and a general’s commission in the British army. The Americans discovered the plot. Benedict successfully escaped and turned. Andre was hanged as a spy.
Benedict Arnold became the vilest traitor of the American Revolution. Perhaps it was a mercy that Joseph Warren never knew.
Resources:
Forman, Samuel A. Dr. Joseph Warren, The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. 2012: Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Bunker Hill A City, A Siege, A Revolution. 2013: Penguin Books, New York, NY.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Valiant Ambition Penguin Books New York, 2016. Print.
Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my award-winning historical fantasy novel Angels & Patriots Book One, Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill Available on Amazon in paperback or KU or eBook.
“Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”
~~ Dr. Joseph Warren (from his 1775 Boston Massacre Oration)
President Ronald Reagan quoted these words in his 1981 presidential inaugural address. Like the patriots of colonial America, Reagan was inspired by Dr. Joseph Warren’s determination, fortitude, and passion. Without Joseph’s influence and actions, this nation may not have been born.
Joseph Warren was a Boston physician who cared for rich and poor, American and English, free and slave. He was deeply involved with his fellow patriots, Sons of Liberty, and masonic lodge brothers: John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Paul Revere—to name a few.
Dr. Joseph Warren
In April 1775, Joseph was elected president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the Committee of Safety, to replace the absent John Hancock. With little money or resources, he was faced with the challenges of a rapidly evolving revolutionary political and military climate. He was a tireless devoted leader who responded to each new challenge with intelligence and courage.
He held the American rebellion together during the critical months (April – June 1775) that spanned the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Those collective months were his swan song.
If he had lived, he may have outshined all the Founding Fathers. Loyalist Peter Oliver surmised in 1782 that if Warren had lived, George Washington would have been “an obscurity.” But, the imminent grief of Joseph’s death eased, and his dazzling light dimmed.
Joseph Warren was born on June 11, 1741. The eldest of four boys–Samuel, Ebenezer, and John–Joseph grew up outside of Boston on the Warren family farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Warren farm produced a distinctive kind of apple called Warren or Roxbury Russet. The senior Joseph Warren turning his eye upon his eldest son Joseph said, “I would rather a son of mine were dead, than a coward.” It would prove to be a prophetic statement.
By age fourteen, Joseph was attending Harvard. In October 1755, while working in the orchard, his father died after a fall from a ladder. Suddenly, Joseph was the head of the household, and it was a responsibility he took to heart.
Due to the generosity of the community, he was able to continue his studies at Harvard, where he became interested in medicine. Joseph learned the prevailing humeral approach to disease. Ancient Greek and Roman medicine ascribed diseases to imbalances in the humors; the four distinctive attributes of living organisms: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. As a physician, Joseph would have prescribed and prepared herbal medications to return the bodily humors to balance, and thus, cure the patient’s affliction.
Upon graduation, as repayment for the community’s sponsorship at Harvard, Joseph taught public grammar school at the Roxbury Latin school. After that year long stint, he was free to pursue his profession as a doctor.
During a time when a layman could practice medicine, Joseph was a passionate proponent of disciplined medical education. When a colleague, Dr. Thomas Young, prescribed a treatment for tuberculosis that resulted in the patient’s death, Joseph’s quill flew. With sardonic humor and under the pen name, Philo Physic, he carried on a ruthless debate with Dr. Young in the newspapers.
In early 1764, a smallpox epidemic swept Boston and the surrounding areas. Joseph went to work for the physicians’ initiative for community wide inoculation at Castle William, a fort and smallpox hospital just south of Boston. The doctors administered inoculations, and worked on case reporting and quarantine measures. It is here where Joseph met John Adams who had come to be inoculated.
The following year, Joseph wrote articles calling for the establishment of an organization of Massachusetts physicians (the Massachusetts Medical Society would be established in 1782 by Joseph’s youngest brother John).
As a woman, I find descriptions of Joseph’s beauty and mannerisms alluring. His elegance was also apparent to men.
Richard Frothingham, in his 1865 text on the Life and Times of Joseph Warren, amply describes Warren, whose sandy blonde hair and gentle complexion was considered, especially by the ladies, as being quite handsome.
“He had a graceful figure, was scrupulously neat in his person, of thorough culture, and had an elegant address; and these traits rendered him a welcome visitor in polite circles, while a frank and genial manner made him a general favorite. He had a great love for his fellow man; and being a stranger to the passion of avarice, and even neglectful to a fault in pecuniary matters, he had an ear ever open to the claims of want, and a hand ever extended to afford relief.” [1]
John Adams wrote in a letter dated July 29, 1775, shortly after Joseph’s death: “Warren was a young man whom nature had adorned with grace and manly beauty, and a courage that would have been rash absurdity, had it not been tempered by self-control.” [2]
Joseph’s religious roots were Puritan, and his writings reveal his passionate use of religious allegories coupled with erotic metaphors. His 1772 and 1775 Boston Massacre Orations are filled with such references. How did his religious beliefs influence his associations with women?
Joseph married seventeen-year-old orphaned heiress, Elizabeth Hooton, in September 1764. She was probably pregnant when the couple married. Their first child, Elizabeth “Betsey”, was born sometime in March 1765. The marriage appeared to have been, at least in the beginning, little more than a union of convenience. The couple went on to have three more children: Joseph, Richard, and Mary.
No authentic records of Elizabeth’s thoughts, beliefs, or life with Joseph exists. Her portrait lacks adornments–jewelry, hairdressing, a book, a favorite pet–to suggest her personal tastes. Elizabeth died on April 26, 1773. (Paul Revere’s wife, Sarah, died a few weeks later.)
Elizabeth Hooton Warren
The only accounts of Joseph’s thoughts on his wife were written following her death. On her passing, Joseph wrote:
Aetherial Spirits see the S[y]stem’s right, But mortal Minds demand a clearer Sight, In Spight of Reason’s philosophic Art, A tear must fall to indicate the Heart.[4]
After Elizabeth’s death, Mercy Scollay cared for his children and became a member of the Warren household. Mercy was said to be Joseph’s intellectual equal. She was certainly articulate in her writings. Lore suggests she was Joseph’s fiancee at the time of his death. There is no documented evidence of that engagement.
After Joseph’s death, his youngest brother, Dr. John Warren, eventually got custody of the children. Their welfare remained in dire straits until 1778 when General Benedict Arnold (who had befriended Joseph at Cambridge) gave $500 for their education and petitioned Congress for the amount of a major general’s half pay for their welfare until the youngest reached majority.
Joseph’s biographer, Dr. Samuel Forman wrote that Joseph was “dismissive of women”. [3] Yet, history tells the tale of a handsome young doctor whose female patients feigned continuing illnesses as a ploy for Dr. Warren’s lingering attentions.
Joseph was too occupied with establishing his medical practice, a smallpox epidemic, attempts to organize a province medical society, and his new life as a husband and soon-to-be father to notice the growing colonial despair over the acts of the British parliament. Then, parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Joseph went from a young independent physician to a committed radical Whig and Son of Liberty insider.
Enter Joseph’s political mentor, the much older, Samuel Adams. Their budding interaction was to mature into one of the most significant of their lives and of the patriot movement.
Joseph’s first successful strategic battle was an initiative to resolve a Boston dispute between his masonic lodge, St. Andrew’s Lodge of the Ancients, and the exclusionary and privileged English St. John’s Grand Lodge of the Moderns. The members of St. John’s refused to allow the inclusion of St. Andrew’s “common folk” into their masonic celebrations and rituals. One can imagine Joseph leaning in close to his fellow St. Andrew’s lodge members, Paul Revere and John Hancock, and with a smile, saying, “Screw this. We will procure our own Grand Lodge charter.”
A committee headed by Joseph, by-passed England and applied to Scotland for St. Andrew’s chartering as a Grand Lodge. The application was granted, and the commission establishing a new Grand Lodge of the Ancients with Joseph as its Grand Master was dated May 30, 1769. Now, St. John’s and St. Andrew’s Masonic lodges were on even ground.
I adjourn our visit with Joseph Warren’s life until June 17, when we will follow him to Bunker Hill.
Battle of Bunker Hill
Resources:
Frothingham, Richard. Life and Times of Joseph Warren. 1865: Little Brown & Company, New York, NY.
Forman, Samuel A. Dr. Joseph Warren, The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. 2012: Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Bunker Hill A City, A Siege, A Revolution. 2013: Penguin Books, New York, NY.
Warren, M.D., Edward. The Life of John Warren, M.D. Surgeon-General During The War Of The Revolution; First Professor Of Anatomy And Surgery In Harvard College; President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Etc. 1874: Noyles, Holmes, and Company, Boston
Painting of Joseph Warren by John Singleton Copley, 1765. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Painting of Elizabeth Hooton Warren by John Singleton Copley, 1772. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my award-winning historical fantasy novel Angels & Patriots Book One. Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle eBook.
On May 24, three days after British General Thomas Gage sent four sloops to tiny Grape Island near the town of Weymouth to pick up some recently harvested hay from the loyalist Elijah Leavitt, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety ordered all livestock and hay removed from nearby Noddle’s and Hog Island. The two contiguous islands lay east of Charlestown and formed a peninsula that reached from the town of Chelsea toward Boston to the southeast with the town of Winnisimmet on the opposite shore directly north.
Those who sold their goods to the British faced the wrath of rebels, just as Elijah Leavitt had, and those who sold to the rebels faced the wrath of the British. One resident of Hog Island had been warned that if he sold anything to the British, the rebels would take all the cattle from the island and … handle him very roughly.
On the evening of May 26, American General Artemas Ward sent Colonel John Nixon of Sudbury and Colonel John Stark and his New Hampshire regiment to implement the committee’s directive. On the morning of May 27, approximately 500 rebels waded across the Chelsea-Hog Island channel, which at low tide became an easily fordable, knee-high creek with wide mudflat banks. A detachment of 30 men continued on to Noddle’s Island to corral livestock and burn hay. About 40 British marines occupied buildings on the island to warehouse stores and stockpile hay there for its horses in Boston.
Admiral Samuel Graves
As the rebels rounded up sheep and cattle, British Admiral Samuel Graves was celebrating his promotion to vice admiral of the white squadron. His nephew, Lieutenant Thomas Graves, commander of the schooner Diana, sailed into Boston Harbor and joined the festivities.
Amid the pomp of his promotion ceremony, Admiral Graves was aware of an urgent message from General Gage dated two days before, reporting that “the Rebels intend this Night to destroy, and carry off all the Stock & on Noddles Island for no reason but because the owners having sold them for the Kings use.” This piece of intelligence may have come from Dr. Benjamin Church, but Church wasn’t Gage’s only spy and at that time, Church was on the road to Philadelphia to deliver missives from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to the Continental Congress.
Around 2:00 p.m., the admiral was notified that smoke could be seen rising from Noddle’s Island. Stark and Nixon and their men had set fire to a barn full of hay and had killed some of the livestock drawing the attention of the marines stationed on the island. Admiral Graves responded by ordering his nephew to sail Diana up the narrow waterway that lay between the islands and the mainland while 170 marines were sent to pursue the rebels on foot on Noddle’s Island. Armed with four six-pounders and a dozen smaller swivel guns, Diana fired on the rebels on Noddle’s Island while the larger force of marines splashed ashore from longboats. The Noddle’s Island rebel forces slaughtered some of the livestock they had corralled and retreated across Crooked Creek.
Half the rebels continued on with the livestock while the other half jumped into a ditch and commenced a rear guard action to keep the schooner and the marines at bay. By 5:00 p.m. Diana was in the shallows between Hog Island and the mainland. Diana exchanged heavy fire with the rebels on Hog Island and the rebels on the Chelsea mainland. Under heavy rebel fire and with an outgoing tide threatening to ground his schooner, the commanding officer, Lieutenant Graves, sought the aid of a dozen longboats to tow him back down the creek in the dying breeze. In hopes of ambushing Diana before she reached the safety of the harbor, the rebels rushed down the north shore of Chelsea Creek toward Winnisimmet.
By 9:00 p.m., the sun was setting. Colonel Israel Putnam and Dr. Joseph Warren arrived at Newgate Landing with two field pieces and more men. Putnam directed his cannon fire at Diana that was now slowly drifting south along the shore.
Joseph Warren
Israel Putnam
The Royal Navy marines had transported several cannons to a hill on Noddle’s Island. Out of the darkness, cannonballs whistled down at the rebels as they waded into the creek and fired at the longboats towing Diana past the Winnisimmet shore. The rebel cannons returned fire with such effectiveness that the British longboat crews were forced to abandon Diana. The schooner soon drifted toward shore and grounded on the wooden rails extending from the ferry dock.
Lieutenant Graves and his men attempted to use their anchor to drag the schooner to deeper water, but as the tide ebbed, the schooner began to roll onto her side. They had no choice but to abandon her for the sloop Britannia anchored in deeper waters. Later that night, the rebels plundered Diana of her guns, rigging, and equipment, and then set her on fire. Around 3:00 a.m., the fire reached the vessel’s powder magazine and the schooner exploded.
That night, Israel Putnam and Joseph Warren returned to Cambridge to report to General Ward.
“I wish we could have something of this kind to do every day,” Putnam crowed.
General Ward was concerned that the engagement might provoke the British to launch a sortie from Boston.
The skirmish at Chelsea Creek was a humiliating defeat for Admiral Graves and his nephew. It was a clear rebel victory, but it had also consumed a large amount of rebel gunpowder. Joseph Warren had been in favor of an attack on Boston. He now had a more realistic view of his army’s preparedness.
Rather than agree with Putnam, Warren said, “I admire your spirit and respect General Ward’s prudence. Both will be necessary for us, and one must temper the other.”
Resources:
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Bunker Hill A City, A Siege, A Revolution New York: Penguin Books, 2013. Print.
Borneman, Walter R. American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014. Print.
Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my award-winning historical fantasy novel Angels & Patriots Book One, Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill Available on Amazon in paperback or KU or eBook.
“On the 17th of June, my father was again called from Salem by the sound of the firing of cannon, and by the flames of Charlestown. I well recollect the pathetic and glowing description he gave me…of his lonely march on that night.” ~~ Dr. Edward Warren writing about his father, Dr. John Warren’s journey after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Dr. John Warren
Twenty-two-year-old John Warren tried to pass the British sentries guarding the Charlestown peninsula to search for his missing oldest brother, Dr. Joseph Warren, who held a major general commission at the time of the battle. John’s pleas were answered with a bayonet to the chest. He bore the physical scar of grief for the rest of his life.
Dr. Joseph Warren: Major General and Grand Master of Masons for the Continent of America
From John’s own account of his overwhelming anxiety:
“Accordingly, in the morning about two o’clock, I prepared myself, and went off on horseback, and when I arrived at Medford, received the melancholy and distressing tidings that my brother was missing. Upon this dreadful intelligence I went immediately to Cambridge, and inquired of almost every person I saw whether they could give me any information of him [Joseph]. Some told me he was undoubtedly alive and well, others, that he was wounded; and others, that he fell on the field.
“This perplexed me almost to distraction. I went on inquiring, with a solicitude which was such a mixture of hope and fear, as none but one who has felt it can form any conception of. In this manner I passed several days, every days’ information diminishing the probability of his safety.”
At that time, it was impossible to reconcile what happened during the fierce and confused melee of the battle. Who was involved and the circumstances where not clear. That the British obtained possession of the ground was all that could be known.
Battle of Bunker Hill
But the extreme distress and susceptibility of John Warren’s state of mind was evident in the young doctor’s journal entries. His indignation was directed at the British ministries and not the king himself. He writes of Joseph’s death as if it were murder, and of Joseph’s four young orphaned children.
“Unfeeling wretches! reflect a moment, if you have still one feature of humanity which is obliterated from your minds, and view the helpless orphan bereft of its fond and only parent, stript of every comfort of life, driven into an inhospitable wild, and exposed to all the misery which is the result of your brutal violence.”
The siege of Boston came to an end nine months later, on March 17, 1776. In late March, John and his older brother, Eben, walked the theater where the scene of the bloody battle had been acted on Breed’s Hill. Perhaps, Paul Revere, Joseph’s close friend, was with the Warren brothers as they searched the hillocks under which the remains of dead heroes laid.** It is said that an Englishman claimed to have witnessed Joseph’s hasty burial in the shallow grave he shared with a farmer.
What is certain is that Paul fashioned a false tooth with a wire for Joseph before his death. This piece of forensic clue did not surface until some years later as evidence that it was used to identify the badly decomposed remains. Joseph Warren’s unborn nephew would decades later specify that the body was recognized “from the circumstance that the left upper eye-tooth, had been secured in its place by a golden wire.” There were also rumors of disrespect to his body after he was slain: mutilated by British bayonets, stripped of his beautiful wedding suit, and decapitated.
Joseph’s remains lay in state at the Massachusetts Provincial State House in Boston for three days. The outbreak of the Revolutionary War dispersed the Masons, many of whom belonged to the British army; but on the discovery of Joseph’s remains, they returned to give their late Grand Master of the “Ancient Lodge” (St. Andrew’s) the burial he was due. On April 8, 1776, a large and respectable number of the masonic brethren, with their late grand officers, assembled to attend his obsequies, and followed in procession from the State House to the Stone Chapel (King’s Chapel).
John Rowe
One prominent mason was unable to attend the service. The merchant, John Rowe, had questionable patriotic political leanings and was the Grand Master of the “Grand Lodge” (St John’s). He wrote in his journal “I went by invitation…to attend the funeral of the remains of Dr. Warren.” When Rowe came to walk in procession with the lodges under his jurisdiction with their proper jewels and clothing, he was to his great mortification “very much insulted by some furious and hot persons without the least provocation.” One of his fellow masons thought it most prudent that he retire. That evening, Rowe was plagued by “some uneasy reflections in my mind as I am not conscious to myself of doing anything prejudicial to the cause of America either by will or deed.”
The names of all those who attended Joseph’s funeral in King’s Chapel are unclear. Members of the St. Andrew’s Masonic Lodge and deputy Grand Master Joseph Webb, Paul Revere, Rev Dr. Samuel Cooper, and probably Dr. John Warren were in attendance. Whether Joseph’s mother, Mary, or his children, or his fiancee at the time of his death, Mercy Scollay, attended are not known. Boston was in an uproar at the time because the British had just evacuated, therefore, a good account of the attendees was not recorded.
Joseph’s eulogy was delivered by young lawyer, Perez Morton. Morton met Joseph as a minor official on the Massachusetts Provincial Committee of Safety during the early months of the Siege of Boston. Morton’s eulogy of Warren, delivered under Masonic auspices, was well received at the time. It was a notable example of oratorical eloquence and public advocacy in favor of Independence from Great Britain. The eulogy was reprinted well into the 19th century along with collections of the Boston Massacre orations.
Perez Morton
Morton’s conclusion of Joseph’s eulogy:
“We will assert the Blood of our murdered Hero against thy hostile Oppressions, O shameless Britain! and when “thy Cloud-cap’d Towers, thy gorgeous Palaces” shall by the Teeth of Pride and Folly be levell’d with the Dust—and when thy Glory shall have faded like the Western Sunbeam—the Name and the Virtues of WARREN shall remain immortal.”
Joseph’s casket was taken in funeral procession for interment at the Granary Cemetery. The Minot family offered their family’s plot since the Warren family did not have one in Boston. His remains would lie in the tomb, lost to posterity for fifty years until his nephew, John C. Warren, after much research, identified the body’s whereabouts. Joseph was reburied two more times.
*St. Paul’s Church in Boston in 1825
*Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, August 8, 1856
Statue of Joseph Warren erected on his family grave site by the 6th Masonic District October 2016
Warren family grave site in Forest Hills Cemetery
The Tory Peter Oliver’s January 1776 newspaper address to rebelling colonists cited Joseph Warren’s grisly end as just desserts for a scheming social climber and recklessly ambitious rebel against the king’s authority. In 1782, Oliver was quoted as saying, “Had Warren lived George Washington would have been ‘an obscurity.’ “
Notes:
*The blog post painting is by John Trumbull, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 17 June, 1775. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Joseph Warren is the man in white lying on the ground in the forefront of the painting. A man is protecting him as he dies, but Joseph was shot in the face during the waning moments of the battle, therefore, his death would have been instantaneous.
*The pictures of Joseph’s grave site on Mount Warren at Forest Hills Cemetery are from my camera.
*Some sources definitely place Paul Revere at the recovery of Joseph’s remains. Others do not, such as Joseph’s contemporary biographers.
Warren, M.D., Edward. The Life of John Warren, M.D. Surgeon-General During The War Of The Revolution; First Professor Of Anatomy And Surgery In Harvard College; President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Etc. 1874: Noyles, Holmes, and Company, Boston
Forman, Samuel A. Dr. Joseph Warren, The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. 2012: Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Bunker Hill A City, A Siege, A Revolution. 2013: Penguin Books, New York, NY.
Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my award-winning historical fantasy novel Angels & Patriots Book One. Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle eBook.
“Our country is in danger but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful – but we have many friends. Determine to be free and Heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.” ~~ Dr. Joseph Warren
This Boston Massacre Oration took place just six weeks before the British marched on Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775, where shots fired ignited the American Revolutionary War. The circumstance of this oration reflects the ten year tensions between Patriots and the British ministry over American taxation without representation. Our orator, Dr. Joseph Warren, was a Boston physician, influential politician, and Son of Liberty, who along with Samuel Adams, John Hancock, John Adams and others, led the rebellion against Parliament and their series of acts meant to control the flames of colonial dissent.
March 5, the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre fell on a Sunday. Therefore, the patriots observed the annual commemoration of the tragic clash that took place between British soldiers and town’s residents on Monday, March 6.
Unlike previous occasions of the event, British troops were abundant in Boston (most had been removed to Castle William after the massacre). Almost everyone, including British General Thomas Gage, expected trouble. The regulars were going to resent an oration whose purpose was, in the words of Samuel Adams, “to commemorate a massacre perpetuated by soldiers and to show the danger of standing armies.” Now, months of hostility on both sides propagated rumors that the British would arrest or assassinate the orator.
Joseph Warren had delivered the oration in 1772. He was asked to speak again. If there was trouble, Samuel Adams wanted someone of Joseph’s experience and resolve in the pulpit. This could well be the last time Gage would allow Patriots to freely assemble in Boston. If Gage was authorized to arrest patriot leaders, it may have been prudent for those leaders to leave town.
Joseph was not to be intimidated into silence. He focused his skills to provide an eloquent exposition of the Patriotic cause and an impressive theatrical performance.
A crowd of 5000 gathered at the Old South Meeting House; some were British officers. Samuel Adams invited them to sit in the pews directly in front of the pulpit so they “might have no pretense to behave ill.” This put the soldiers uncomfortably close to the many leading patriots in attendance. The officers were not only sitting in the pews, some, it is said, may have been seated on the steps leading up to the pulpit.
Around eleven o’clock in the morning, Joseph arrived in a carriage and proceeded to change into a toga in the shop across the street before entering Old South Meeting House. A toga was worn by a citizen of Rome and distinguished him from a soldier or a slave. At Harvard, Joseph had performed the play Cato with his classmates. This was Joseph realizing Cato in his own way in the present: the citizen unintimidated by Caesar’s tyrannical threats, declaiming to an honorable citizenry on behalf of liberty and a representative government.
The pulpit of Old South Meeting House today.
Since the meetinghouse was jammed with people, Joseph was taken around to the back of the building, where he climbed a ladder to access the pulpit through the rear window. It was a dramatic entrance that intensified the already surging emotions of the moment. For those who did not share his point of view, his “Demosthenian posture”, with a white handkerchief in his right hand, and his left hand in his breeches, was downright juvenile. Joseph began to speak in the high pitched nasal delivery of New England ministers. One loyalist commented on his “true puritanical whine.”
Joseph opened with a statement of natural rights. He went on to contend:
“And no man or body of man, can without being guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dispose of the person or acquisitions of any other man, or body of men, unless it can be proved that such a right has arisen from some compact between the parties in which it has been explicitly and freely granted.”
Joseph’s biographer, Dr. Samuel Forman, translated and summarized passages from his speech. These are a few culminations of Joseph’s beliefs and observations:
He warned that tyrants did not hesitate to distort religious beliefs.
Britain became interested in the colony [Massachusetts] and came to a mutually beneficial relationship, only after the settlers had done all the hard work to establish it.
He focused the discourse on the responsibility of the individual to do their part for the maintenance of liberty.
He projected the view, uniting Patriots with British Whigs that the fate of liberty in America was crucial to liberty in Great Britain. He spoke to the present while being mindful of providing the foundation for a solid future.
There are two varying versions of what happened during his oration. A British officer displayed a handful of musket balls in a threatening manner. Joseph, who was steps higher on the podium, answered by dropping his white handkerchief that literally covered the officer’s gesture. A second story related by Thomas Hutchinson, speaks of a botched assassination attempt, that, if Dr. Warren said anything against the King, etc., an officer was to throw an egg in his face as a signal to draw swords and massacre John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and hundreds more.
At this point, Joseph launched into a passage he had written at the last minute, in which he insisted “an independence of Great Britain is not our aim” but went on to caution that if measures to do so “are ineffectual and it appears that the only way to safety is through fields of blood, I know you will not turn your faces from your foes”.
When Joseph spoke of the events of March 5, 1770, instead of dwelling on the brutality of the soldiers, he focused on the agony and despair of the families who had lost loved ones that night. His father died in 1755, after falling from a ladder while working in the Warren family orchard. The tragic accident was witnessed by his youngest brother, John, who was only two years old at the time. Joseph may have been drawing upon his own traumatic memories when he spoke of a widow and her children witnessing the death of a husband and parent.
“Come widowed mourner, here satiate thy grief; behold the murdered husband gasping on the ground, and to complete the pompous show of wretchedness, bring in each hand thy infant children to bewail their father’s fate. Take heed, ye orphan babes, lest, whilst your streaming eyes are fixed upon the ghastly corpse, your feet glide on the stones bespattered with your father’s brain.”
The British responded to Joseph’s Boston Massacre Oration with ridicule. On March 15, 1775, British officers and Loyalists gathered on King Street and then proceeded to the nearby British Coffee House where they conducted a mock town meeting. The orator, loyalist physician Thomas Bolton, began to read a satirical lampoon of Joseph’s oration.
When Joseph began his speech on March 6, he had humbly insisted that his own words could not match those of previous orators such as James Lovell, Dr. Benjamin Church, and John Hancock. The contemptuous discourse that derided Joseph’s humility, accused him of poisoning street thug and fellow Son of Liberty William Molineux, and scoffed at his association with the atheist Dr. Thomas Young, among other things, may have been written by the traitorous Benjamin Church himself. It was character assassination.
Bolton read “I cannot boast the ignorance of Hancock, the insolence of Adams, the absurdity of Rowe, the arrogance of Lee, the vicious life and untimely death of Molineux, the turgid bombast of Warren, the treason of Quincy, the hypocrisy of Cooper, nor the principals of Young.”
The Rivington Tory press in New York printed Bolton’s speech. It was ignored by Patriots at that time and did not advance the cause of Loyalism.
Forman, Samuel A. Dr. Joseph Warren, The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. 2012: Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. Bunker Hill A City, A Siege, A Revolution. 2013: Penguin Books, New York, NY.
Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my multiple award-winning historical fantasy novel Angels & Patriots Book One. Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle eBook.
Rally the boys! Hasten the chiefs! Our Warren’s there and bold Revere. With hands to do, and words to cheer!
And Warren was there. You just had to look a little harder to find him.
My seven day return trip to Boston was a pilgrimage I’m sure few people take. At the time, I was writing the first book in my Historical Fantasy series about the American Revolution, “Angels and Patriots Book One, Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill” in which Warren is an important character. My husband and I were determined to find evidence that Dr. Joseph Warren was indeed still in and around Boston so we could walk in his foot steps and visit the places where he had influence.
Green Dragon Tavern. The Sons of Liberty regularly met here and the tavern played an important part in the freedom of Boston during the American Revolution. The St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons bought the tavern in 1764. The Masons used the first floor for their meeting rooms, some led by Grand Master Joseph Warren. This isn’t the original tavern or site which was located in the North End in the 1700s. Aside from the back bar, he was listed on the menu with his fellows, who each had a menu item. We ate and drank at the tavern four nights.
Green Dragon Tavern
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The museum is massive. It was no easy feat finding the gallery where John Singleton Copley’s paintings hang. The painting of Joseph Warren hangs on a wall between the paintings of John Hancock and Mercy Otis Warren. Copley’s paintings of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere were also in the gallery. The paintings are almost life-size and breathtaking!
We found John Trumbull’s painting of The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775 in a different gallery. It was small and somewhat faded and hung out of the reach of tourists.
The State House. Joseph was mentioned in a small exhibit on the second floor. What looks like a hacksaw to the right behind the sword’s tip is a doctor’s bone saw. In April 1776, after the Siege of Boston ended and Joseph’s body was recovered from Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill), his remains laid in state here for three days until his funeral at King’s Chapel.
Old State House
The Old South Meeting House. Joseph delivered two Boston Massacre Orations in the meeting house. One in 1772, and one in 1775. This was where the patriots met to build a revolution. To my dismay, the Plexiglas in which his likeness and achievements is etched, reflected light (even without a flash) and the camera shot was impossible to see. This is the pulpit (today) from which he gave his oration.
Old South Meeting House Pulpit
King’s Chapel. The Freemasons made the arrangements for their Most Worshipful Grand Master Joseph Warren’s funeral, which was held in King’s Chapel in the heart of Boston on April 8, 1776.
Boston City Hall Plaza. The house where Joseph lived with his family and his medical apprentices was once located here. It’s recently been in the news. Joseph’s biographer, Dr. Samuel Forman, and others are intent on erecting a monument on the grounds proclaiming that this was the spot where the Revolutionary War began because Joseph dispatched Revere and Dawes to Lexington from his house. This is a view of the plaza (where the event tents are) from the Bell in Hand tavern across the street. The WWII Holocaust Memorial is the green glass between the two locations.
Bunker Hill Monument. This is where Joseph was shot in the head in the waning hours of the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill) on June 17, 1775. Dr. Joseph Warren and Colonel William Prescott are the only names on the Massachusetts Gate. While my husband climbed the monument, I sat inside the adjoining building and watched the tourists largely dismiss the seven foot tall statue of Joseph’s likeness, which commanded the attention in the sparse room. It saddened me to witness how obscure he really is.
Bunker Hill Monument
Warren Tavern. Located at 2 Pleasant Street in Charlestown, MA, it’s a few blocks from the Bunker Hill monument. The tavern, named for him, dates to 1780 and is dedicated to all things Joseph Warren. Of course he was never there, but his close friend, Paul Revere visited and George Washington stopped there in 1789. We visited Bunker Hill and ate at Warren Tavern on my birthday.
The Clarke-Hancock House in Lexington. Joseph dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes to this house to warn his fellow Sons of Liberty John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were hiding there, that the British regulars were out to possibly arrest them. We were the only tourists there at the time we visited.
Clarke-Hancock House
Harvard. Of the three buildings that made up the Harvard campus when Joseph attended from 1755 to 1759, only one original building is still standing — his dormitory, Massachusetts Hall. Washington housed his army in the dormitory in 1775 – 1776.
The Roxbury Latin School. We didn’t visit the school where Joseph was a student and later a teacher after graduating from Harvard. There is a statue of him in the school’s courtyard that was once located in Warren Square in his childhood town of Roxbury. The General Joseph Warren Society contributes to the school’s annual fund. This picture is from the school’s website.
Grand Lodge of Masons of Massachusetts. We didn’t visit the masonic lodge, that houses a museum, because we arrived after it closed and it was our last day in Boston. We will visit next time and look for Grand Master Joseph Warren.
Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plains, MA. Perhaps, if Joseph remains hadn’t been moved from Granary Burying Ground in Boston, where some of his fellows are buried, like Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and a place thousands of tourists visit daily, history may not have forgotten him. But the magnificent beauty of Forest Hills Cemetery where he’s buried changed my mind. As soon as I saw the cemetery gates, I knew he belonged there. The cemetery is expansive and magnificent: full of beautiful gravestones, monuments, statues, and gracefully curving roads. Forest Hills Cemetery
The road where his burial site is located is called Mount Warren.
Joseph’s remains are buried in a joint family plot with his paternal grandmother, Deborah Warren; his mother and father, Mary and Joseph Warren; his oldest son, Joseph; his youngest brother, Dr. John Warren; and John’s son, Dr. John Collins Warren. A glacial boulder selected by the Warren family serves as a giant tombstone. The remains of each person, appears that at one time, they were buried in their own grave. Except for Joseph’s, it appears that the original tombstones surround the boulder.
A statue of Joseph stands atop the boulder. The statue was erected on October 22, 2016 by the 6th Masonic District that hosted a ceremony where their Grand Master dedicated a new memorial to “the namesake of our Distinguished Service Medal, M.W. Joseph Warren” in conjunction with members of the Warren family. The flags on his grave site are new, so someone is visiting.
Forest Hill Cemetery Gates
Statue of Joseph Warren erected on his family grave site by the 6th Masonic District October 2016
Warren family grave site in Forest Hills Cemetery
Men Joseph knew during his lifetime, General William Heath and William Dawes are also buried in Forest Hills.
Vine Lake Cemetery. We traveled to Medfield, MA to visit the grave of the woman who was nanny to Joseph’s four children and assumed to be his fiancé at the time of his death: Mercy Scollay. My husband gathered acorns from the ground around Joseph’s grave site and placed them on Mercy’s grave. The inscription on her gravestone read:
I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.
Mercy lived another 50 years after Joseph’s devastating death. She never married.
This was the last picture I took in Boston the evening before we left. Faneuil Hall is the brick building to the left. Samuel Adams’ statue is in the mall in front. Faneuil Hall was only two stories high during Joseph’s time.
Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my award-winning historical fantasy series Angels & Patriots Book One. Sons of Liberty, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle eBook.
General George Washington proclaimed January 1, 1776 was the first day of “a new army, which in every point of view is entirely continental.” Hear the story of the celebration of that event.
The Billop House on Staten Island was the site of a peace conference between British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams during the Revolutionary War in September 1776. Hear the story of what transpired.
The Battle of White Plains in New York was fought between General George Washington’s Continental Army and General William Howe’s British and Hessian armies on October 28, 1776. Hear the story of this important battle.
Salina B Baker 