April 22, 2025 • 18 mins
The Grim is opening the gate and entering Old Hill Burying Ground, where time doesn't just slow—it folds back on itself days after the 250th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. The weathered stones rising from the modest 1.16 acres in located Concord, Massachusetts don't merely commemorate the dead; they mark the resting places of those who shaped a nation's violent, necessary birth.
The cemetery feels deceptively small until you understand its weight. Nearly 500 gravestones remain, some adorned with winged skulls and soul effigies—Puritan reminders of mortality's constant presence. The oldest visible marker belongs to Joseph Merrim who died in 1677, but countless others lie beneath unmarked earth, their names surrendered to time and weather. What makes this ground hallowed isn't just its age but who rests here: fifteen veterans of the American Revolution who transformed this quiet corner of Massachusetts into the cradle of independence.
Most significant among them is Major John Buttrick, whose command to "Fire, fellow soldiers, for God's sake, fire!" sent the first colonial bullets into British ranks at North Bridge on April 19, 1775. That moment—immortalized as "the shot heard round the world"—changed everything. The soil of this burial ground cradles others who stood firm that pivotal morning: Colonel James Barrett, whose farm was the British target; Captain David Brown, who led Concord's minute company; and Reverend William Emerson, who stoked the fires of resistance from his pulpit. From these gates, you can almost see North Bridge, where blood once mingled with river water and revolution took its first breath.
Some visitors describe a strange hush when walking among these stones—a feeling that the past doesn't rest here but continues to breathe alongside us. Perhaps they're right. When you trace your fingers across these weather-worn epitaphs, you're touching more than slate and memory; you're connecting with the very foundation of American liberty. Subscribe today to join us next time when we open the gate on another hidden historical treasure where the past refuses to remain silent.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kristin (00:14):
Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode we'll beopening the gate and entering
Old Hill Burying Ground, locatedin Concord, Massachusetts.
So grab your favorite mug, cozyup and let's take a dig into
history.
I didn't grow up on the EastCoast.
For most of my life, americanhistory came second hand,
(00:37):
filtered through brittletextbooks and flickering reels
in dimly lit classrooms.
It felt distant, faded, likeechoes from another world.
But then I moved to New England.
History stopped whispering andstarted breathing.
It arises from the ground here,cold and unrelenting beneath my
feet, in worn gravestones andcrooked crypts.
(00:57):
It turns to the fog that clingsto colonial streets at dusk.
I've lived in places wherehistory made its mark colonial
streets at dusk.
I've lived in places wherehistory made its mark, london
among them.
But New England is different.
It doesn't just remember itspast, it wears it.
A second skin stitched fromstone walls, iron gates and the
blood-stoned names etched into achurchyard slate.
(01:18):
The locals might seemindifferent, but don't be fooled
.
They've simply grown used toliving alongside ghosts.
Your memory isn't locked awayin museums.
It walks beside you.
It reenacts itself, not on thisstage, but in fields where
muskets smoke once curled andcries once split in the morning
air and New England.
The past doesn't rest.
(01:39):
It greets those willing torelive it.
Just this past weekend, bostonmarked the 250th anniversary of
Paul Revere's Midnight Ride.
If you were lucky enough to bethere or caught glimpses of it
through glowing screens, theevent was something pulled from
the dreams of every Americanhistory enthusiast.
But it was more than that.
The celebration didn't stopwith lanterns and horses
(02:01):
galloping into the night.
It unfolded into a drone showthat lit the sky of the Charles
River and an art installation atthe Old North Church,
hauntingly titled Silence DoGood, that cast shadows across
sacred spaces in the name ofliberty.
It was beautiful and eerie andsomehow heavy, because beneath
all the commemoration, beneaththe spectacle, there was this
(02:24):
lingering sense that therevolution never really ended.
It only sank deeper into thebones of this place the echoes
of rebellion, of sacrifice andof the silence that caused
dearly and still that hauntthese cobblestone streets.
Yet beyond the cobblestonestreets of Boston, two towns
were first to taste the blood ofrevolution.
Boston, two towns were first totaste the blood of revolution.
(02:47):
The first shots of the war hadbarely faded into silence when
the soil of Concord took on anew weight, grief, memory and
the burden of a nation'sbeginning.
But long before April 1775etched Concord into history,
books and rebellion alike, therewas already a place here for
the dead, a place older thanrevolution, older than cause.
That place is Old Hill BuryingGround.
(03:09):
After Concord officiallyincorporated in the fall of 1635
, one of its earliest acts ofits settlers, alongside raising
a meeting house, was theestablishment of two small
burying grounds.
This one, now known as the OldHill Burying Ground or the Old
Hill Burying Place, was laid outacross the northwest edge of a
long gravel ridge.
(03:29):
That ridge once sheltered thecrude homes of Concord's first
residents, and at its easterntip, near the crest of the hill,
the town's original meetinghouse stood watch over both the
living and the dead.
The second cemetery, the SouthBurying place, was a more modest
half acre near the south sideof Millbrook, but it was here,
atop the gravel ridge, thatnearly all early burials
(03:52):
occurred.
According to tradition, thefirst graves may have been
placed just east of the currentbounds, though no trace remains.
In those earliest decades.
Markers were simple, if theyexisted at all Wooden slabs or
field stones long sincesurrendered to time, weather and
silence.
Only a few stones from that erasurvive.
The oldest visible markerbelongs to Joseph Merrim, who
(04:16):
died in 1677 at the age of 47,but his is simply the oldest
named grave.
How many lie beneath the earth?
Nameless, forgotten even byhistory?
That's anyone's guess.
Many of those buried herehelped build the town from
wilderness.
Others may have lived to see itburn with a spark of revolution
.
The cemetery spans just 1.16acres, a small patch of land for
(04:39):
so many souls.
Nearly 500 gravestones remain,with burials spanning from 1677
to 1854.
The stones range from crudemarkers to finely carved slate,
adorned with winged skulls andsoul effigies, grim testaments
to the region's early Puritaniconography.
And the stone covers you etchedmortality into memory.
(05:00):
In official records, thisburial ground goes by many names
.
The Massachusetts HistoricalCommission lists it as Conn.804,
the Old Hill Burying Ground,and the vital records of Concord
, massachusetts, to the end ofthe year 1850, it's simply
labeled GR1.
But none of these coldcatalogings capture the strange
(05:22):
hush of standing among thesecrooked stones, where wind the
entrance is easy to miss,nestled between the Holy Family
Parish and a brick-endedcolonial house on Monument
Street.
But once you pass through itsgates, time slips.
The present begins to recede,the air stills, the echo of
(05:45):
musket fire.
Just beyond the rise lies theNorth Bridge, where blood once
mingled with river water and therevolution took its first
breath.
And whether you come daylightor dusk, you may feel it too
that this hill is not entirelyat rest.
From here is only a breath awayto the blood-soaked soil of
April 19th 1775, where rebellionwalked and the first to fall
(06:08):
were laid to rest.
Gunpowder and ghosts mingled inthe misty dawn of a new nation,
stepping back into the darkbirthing hour of the American
Revolution, to the fatefulbattles of Lexington and Concord
.
This was no ordinaryconfrontation.
It was a chain reaction ofvengeance and shadow, a spectral
march across the fields ofMassachusetts that left behind
(06:30):
broken bodies, scorched timbersand a silence that only the dead
can keep.
Tensions had simmered formonths.
Colonial anger burned hot afterBritish Parliament imposed the
so-called Intolerable Acts, aseries of punishments for the
Boston Tea Party.
By late 1774, the providence ofMassachusetts Bay was a powder
(06:51):
keg, with the MassachusettsProvincial Congress forming an
open defiance of British rule,training militias and hiding
weapons.
Then came the night of April18th.
The British regulars, some 700of them under Lieutenant Colonel
Francis Smith, slipped fromBoston under darkness, tasked
with seizing arms at Concord.
(07:11):
But the colonials were readyfor a revolution.
Lanterns flickered from thesteeple of the Old North Church.
One if by land, two if by sea.
Riders like Paul Revere andSamuel Prescott flew into the
night, their hooves beating adesperate rhythm against the
stone.
The alarm spread like awildfire.
Bidon militias had aroused from30 towns At Lexington.
(07:34):
As the sun broke through themist, captain John Parker's
militia faced off against theBritish.
The men stood on LexingtonGreen, quiet but unyielding.
Stand your ground, don't fireunless fired upon, parker
ordered.
But if they mean to have a war,let it begin here.
No one knows who fired thefirst shot, but when the smoke
(07:56):
cleared, eight colonials weredead.
Their blood soaked the grass ofLexington Common.
The British moved on to Concord,but the land itself seemed to
rise against them.
At the North Bridge the tideturned.
Many men from Acton, concordand beyond gathered in force.
The British fired first, butthe colonial militia answered
with a deadly volley.
(08:17):
The bridge, now iconic, becamea threshold, the place where
rebellion stepped intorevolution.
Captain Isaac Davis was thefirst to fall his blood, marking
the place that Emerson wouldlater call the shot heard around
the world.
But the horror didn't stop there.
As the British retreated towardBoston.
The militia swarmed likephantoms, firing from behind
(08:40):
trees, stone walls and houses.
In present-day Arlington thefight turned savage.
British soldiers enraged andterrified, stormed homes,
banished innocents and burnedwhat they could.
At the Jason Russell House, 21colonials were slaughtered, some
hacked to death as they fled.
Bullets still scar the woodenwalls and some say you can feel
(09:03):
the dread soaked into the floors.
Even now the road from Concordto Charleston carries an eerie
echo the unrelenting march ofboots, the rattle of muskets and
the cries of those who wouldnot live to see nightfall.
By the time the British limpedinto Charleston under the cover
of their cannons, they had lost73 men, with over 170 wounded or
(09:26):
missing.
The colonists only lost 49.
But the real toll?
It was the moment peace died orhad taken its first true breath
.
In the aftermath, thousands ofcolonial militias besieged
Boston, blood had been spilledand there was no turning back.
So why begin with two battlesthat didn't unfold within the
(09:46):
gates of where we've openedtoday?
Because the echoes of Lexingtonand Concord were buried here,
quite literally the soil of OldHill Burying Ground cradles.
The men who lived through, diedthrough and helped ignite those
first sparks of war.
Fifteen veterans of theRevolutionary War rest behind
these crooked stones.
Their story is woven into thevery landscape.
(10:10):
Among them is a man whose namelooms large in the telling of
America's violent birth MajorJohn Buttrick.
If the name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps the phrase the shot
heard around the world will.
It was Buttrick who led thecolonial militia at the North
Bridge and, according to legend,gave the command to fire.
Whether or not he gave thatfateful order or it was misheard
(10:32):
remains a matter of debate.
But his place in this story iscertain.
He stood at the tipping pointwhere protests turned to war and
Musket's gave rise torevolution.
Born July 20, 1731, in Concord,massachusetts, buttrick was not
bred for war.
He was no general, nostrategist from European courts.
(10:53):
He was the son of the soil, alocal man who knew the bend of
the river better than the twistof a musket.
But on April 19th 1775, assmoke rose from Concordstown
Square and the Redcoats held thebridge, it was Buttrick who
stood at the head of the columnof the trembling farmers and
blacksmiths and gave the orderthat changed everything.
(11:16):
That morning, as British forcesfanned across Concord in search
of hidden arms, colonialmilitias retreated.
Colonel James Barrett,commanding the hastily assembled
force pulled back across theNorth Bridge, giving the town to
nearly 700 British regulars.
But as reinforcements poured infrom Acton, bedford and Lincoln
, the hill behind the bridgeswelled with bodies over 400
(11:39):
many-men-d'arm, mostly untested.
The British guarding the bridgenow found themselves
outnumbered, nearly five to one.
At around 10.30 am, barrettissued the order.
Weapons were to be loaded butnot fired unless fired upon, and
so the long line of militiabegan to march two abreast down
the narrow, flooded road.
(12:00):
At the head walked Captain IsaacDavis of Acton, lieutenant
Colonel John Robinson ofWestford and Major John Buttrick
of Concord.
The British, seeing theapproaching column, began
pulling up the bridge planks.
In desperation, buttrickshouted for them to stop.
And then a crack, a singlewarning shot, then another.
Then a musket ball struck ayoung fifer.
(12:21):
The next tore through Davis'sheart, dropping him mid-step
into the muddy earth.
Moments later, private AbnerHolmser of Acton fell dead.
Beside him.
The farmers halted.
There was a breath of disbeliefand then Buttrick's cry ran out
.
Not just the command, butdefiance, grief and fury.
Fire, fellow soldiers, forGod's sake.
(12:43):
Fire that moment.
That shot was the first returnof fire by colonialists in the
American Revolution.
It wasn't the beginning of war,but it was the moment that
became irreversible.
The volley shattered the lineof stunned British infantry.
They turned and ran, abandoningtheir wounded, racing back
toward the safety of thereinforcements in Concord.
(13:04):
Buttrick and others crossed thebridge, no longer retreating
but advancing, and tookdefensive positions behind a
stone wall.
The battlefield behind them waslittered with the first bodies
that would become a war spanningyears and continents.
Later the British, who searchedin vain for weapons and
ammunitions at Barrett's farm,returned to find their comrades
dead or dying when Salter'sskull cleaved, possibly by a
(13:28):
hatchet, some believed it was.
A scalping Rage simmered intheir ranks and the retreat to
Boston would be a long, bloody,haunting road.
Buttrick's shot, heard aroundthe world's debate, comes from
the historians believing heactually was sick at the time
with tuberculosis, unable to cryout.
His order may have been to holdfire to the colonial militia,
(13:51):
but his men only heard fire.
No one will truly know, but hiscommand fire reverberated
through time.
It was his words that unleashedthe shot Ralph Waldo Emerson
would immortalize in his Concordhymn by the rude bridge that
arched the flood, their flag toApril's breeze unfurled here.
Once the embattled farmer stoodand fired the shot heard around
(14:13):
the world.
That shot, that moment belongedto John Buttrick.
He died May 16, 1791, and liesburied in old hill-bearing
ground in Concord.
His statue, the Minuteman, nowstands near where Isaac Davis
fell back straight, musket inhand, forever watching the
bridge.
And in nearby Finchburg, astreet still bears his name.
(14:38):
But here, among the trees, stoneand water, patrick's too.
Legacy remains in the silencebefore the volley and in the
echoes that still hum across theConcord River when the wind is
just right.
Before the muskets cracked inthe April dawn, before blood
soaked the roadside betweenLexington and Concord.
The men who would shape thatday walked the same New England
(15:01):
paths farmers, blacksmiths,ministers and sons.
And how many of them liebeneath the soil in old hill
burying ground.
This small patch of land holdsmore than weatherboard stones
and crumbling epithets.
It holds the memory of thosewho stood when the first line
was drawn between colony andcrown.
Fifty Revolutionary Warveterans are interred here,
(15:22):
their names sometimes fadingfrom stone, but never in the
history they helped forge.
Among them Colonel JamesBarrett, commander of the
Middlesex Militia, but never inthe history they helped forge
Among them, colonel JamesBarrett, commander of the
Middlesex Militia, whose farmwas the target of the British
expedition.
His son, nathaniel Barrett alsorests here.
Two generations bound to thesoil they defended.
Captain David Brown led one ofConcord's two-minute companies,
(15:46):
turning not just into battle butinto legend.
Reuben Brown, the saddler whosetools and tact helped equip the
militia, watched from his shopas the war thundered past his
doorstep.
And Samuel Brooks, whose housebore witness to the British
retreat, is buried here too, hisfamily's land now woven into
the landscape of memory.
(16:06):
Roger Brown, once a corporal inthe Framingham Minutemen, would
rise to the rank of colonel.
Samuel Brown, jacob Brown andAbner Hosmer, whose son died
that morning on the bridge, areburied nearby their shared
surname, a reminder of howfamilies, not just soldiers,
were shaped by that day.
(16:27):
From the pulpit, reverendWilliam Emerson stirred spirits
and stoked the fires ofresistance.
As Concord's minister, heoffered sermons of liberty
before joining the cause,himself serving as chaplain to
the Continental Army at FortTiconderoga, where he died in
1776.
Names like Nehemiah Hunt,samuel Hosmer, josiah Miriam and
(16:49):
Aaron Wright round out themuster, each tied to the militia
companies that met the Redcoatswith fire and steel.
Others Ephraim Wood, ephraimWheeler, joas Myot and John
Miriam leave behind lessdetailed records but no less
weight in the history theywalked.
Some were old by the time ofrebellion history.
(17:10):
They walked.
Some were old by the time ofrebellion, others still young.
Most were buried here withsimple stones, a few perhaps
without any markers at all, buttogether they rest beneath this
hillside, the same ridge whereConcord's first meeting house
once stood, the same ridge wherethe town's first settlers laid
out their future, never knowinghow fiercely it would be
defended.
The grave grind for Old HillBurying Ground was an ice-cold
(17:33):
milk from the Saltbox Kitchen inConcord.
For more honorary grinds in thearea, please visit the-grimcom.
For now we're closing the gateon Old Hill Burying Ground.
We hope you enjoyed our diginto history, if you did
(17:56):
subscribe today, to join us nexttime when we open the gate on
the Grimm.
Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode we'll beopening the gate and entering
Old Hill Burying Ground, locatedin Concord, Massachusetts.
So grab your favorite mug, cozyup and let's take a dig into
history.
I didn't grow up on the EastCoast.
For most of my life, americanhistory came second hand,
(00:37):
filtered through brittletextbooks and flickering reels
in dimly lit classrooms.
It felt distant, faded, likeechoes from another world.
But then I moved to New England.
History stopped whispering andstarted breathing.
It arises from the ground here,cold and unrelenting beneath my
feet, in worn gravestones andcrooked crypts.
(00:57):
It turns to the fog that clingsto colonial streets at dusk.
I've lived in places wherehistory made its mark colonial
streets at dusk.
I've lived in places wherehistory made its mark, london
among them.
But New England is different.
It doesn't just remember itspast, it wears it.
A second skin stitched fromstone walls, iron gates and the
blood-stoned names etched into achurchyard slate.
(01:18):
The locals might seemindifferent, but don't be fooled
.
They've simply grown used toliving alongside ghosts.
Your memory isn't locked awayin museums.
It walks beside you.
It reenacts itself, not on thisstage, but in fields where
muskets smoke once curled andcries once split in the morning
air and New England.
The past doesn't rest.
(01:39):
It greets those willing torelive it.
Just this past weekend, bostonmarked the 250th anniversary of
Paul Revere's Midnight Ride.
If you were lucky enough to bethere or caught glimpses of it
through glowing screens, theevent was something pulled from
the dreams of every Americanhistory enthusiast.
But it was more than that.
The celebration didn't stopwith lanterns and horses
(02:01):
galloping into the night.
It unfolded into a drone showthat lit the sky of the Charles
River and an art installation atthe Old North Church,
hauntingly titled Silence DoGood, that cast shadows across
sacred spaces in the name ofliberty.
It was beautiful and eerie andsomehow heavy, because beneath
all the commemoration, beneaththe spectacle, there was this
(02:24):
lingering sense that therevolution never really ended.
It only sank deeper into thebones of this place the echoes
of rebellion, of sacrifice andof the silence that caused
dearly and still that hauntthese cobblestone streets.
Yet beyond the cobblestonestreets of Boston, two towns
were first to taste the blood ofrevolution.
Boston, two towns were first totaste the blood of revolution.
(02:47):
The first shots of the war hadbarely faded into silence when
the soil of Concord took on anew weight, grief, memory and
the burden of a nation'sbeginning.
But long before April 1775etched Concord into history,
books and rebellion alike, therewas already a place here for
the dead, a place older thanrevolution, older than cause.
That place is Old Hill BuryingGround.
(03:09):
After Concord officiallyincorporated in the fall of 1635
, one of its earliest acts ofits settlers, alongside raising
a meeting house, was theestablishment of two small
burying grounds.
This one, now known as the OldHill Burying Ground or the Old
Hill Burying Place, was laid outacross the northwest edge of a
long gravel ridge.
(03:29):
That ridge once sheltered thecrude homes of Concord's first
residents, and at its easterntip, near the crest of the hill,
the town's original meetinghouse stood watch over both the
living and the dead.
The second cemetery, the SouthBurying place, was a more modest
half acre near the south sideof Millbrook, but it was here,
atop the gravel ridge, thatnearly all early burials
(03:52):
occurred.
According to tradition, thefirst graves may have been
placed just east of the currentbounds, though no trace remains.
In those earliest decades.
Markers were simple, if theyexisted at all Wooden slabs or
field stones long sincesurrendered to time, weather and
silence.
Only a few stones from that erasurvive.
The oldest visible markerbelongs to Joseph Merrim, who
(04:16):
died in 1677 at the age of 47,but his is simply the oldest
named grave.
How many lie beneath the earth?
Nameless, forgotten even byhistory?
That's anyone's guess.
Many of those buried herehelped build the town from
wilderness.
Others may have lived to see itburn with a spark of revolution
.
The cemetery spans just 1.16acres, a small patch of land for
(04:39):
so many souls.
Nearly 500 gravestones remain,with burials spanning from 1677
to 1854.
The stones range from crudemarkers to finely carved slate,
adorned with winged skulls andsoul effigies, grim testaments
to the region's early Puritaniconography.
And the stone covers you etchedmortality into memory.
(05:00):
In official records, thisburial ground goes by many names
.
The Massachusetts HistoricalCommission lists it as Conn.804,
the Old Hill Burying Ground,and the vital records of Concord
, massachusetts, to the end ofthe year 1850, it's simply
labeled GR1.
But none of these coldcatalogings capture the strange
(05:22):
hush of standing among thesecrooked stones, where wind the
entrance is easy to miss,nestled between the Holy Family
Parish and a brick-endedcolonial house on Monument
Street.
But once you pass through itsgates, time slips.
The present begins to recede,the air stills, the echo of
(05:45):
musket fire.
Just beyond the rise lies theNorth Bridge, where blood once
mingled with river water and therevolution took its first
breath.
And whether you come daylightor dusk, you may feel it too
that this hill is not entirelyat rest.
From here is only a breath awayto the blood-soaked soil of
April 19th 1775, where rebellionwalked and the first to fall
(06:08):
were laid to rest.
Gunpowder and ghosts mingled inthe misty dawn of a new nation,
stepping back into the darkbirthing hour of the American
Revolution, to the fatefulbattles of Lexington and Concord
.
This was no ordinaryconfrontation.
It was a chain reaction ofvengeance and shadow, a spectral
march across the fields ofMassachusetts that left behind
(06:30):
broken bodies, scorched timbersand a silence that only the dead
can keep.
Tensions had simmered formonths.
Colonial anger burned hot afterBritish Parliament imposed the
so-called Intolerable Acts, aseries of punishments for the
Boston Tea Party.
By late 1774, the providence ofMassachusetts Bay was a powder
(06:51):
keg, with the MassachusettsProvincial Congress forming an
open defiance of British rule,training militias and hiding
weapons.
Then came the night of April18th.
The British regulars, some 700of them under Lieutenant Colonel
Francis Smith, slipped fromBoston under darkness, tasked
with seizing arms at Concord.
(07:11):
But the colonials were readyfor a revolution.
Lanterns flickered from thesteeple of the Old North Church.
One if by land, two if by sea.
Riders like Paul Revere andSamuel Prescott flew into the
night, their hooves beating adesperate rhythm against the
stone.
The alarm spread like awildfire.
Bidon militias had aroused from30 towns At Lexington.
(07:34):
As the sun broke through themist, captain John Parker's
militia faced off against theBritish.
The men stood on LexingtonGreen, quiet but unyielding.
Stand your ground, don't fireunless fired upon, parker
ordered.
But if they mean to have a war,let it begin here.
No one knows who fired thefirst shot, but when the smoke
(07:56):
cleared, eight colonials weredead.
Their blood soaked the grass ofLexington Common.
The British moved on to Concord,but the land itself seemed to
rise against them.
At the North Bridge the tideturned.
Many men from Acton, concordand beyond gathered in force.
The British fired first, butthe colonial militia answered
with a deadly volley.
(08:17):
The bridge, now iconic, becamea threshold, the place where
rebellion stepped intorevolution.
Captain Isaac Davis was thefirst to fall his blood, marking
the place that Emerson wouldlater call the shot heard around
the world.
But the horror didn't stop there.
As the British retreated towardBoston.
The militia swarmed likephantoms, firing from behind
(08:40):
trees, stone walls and houses.
In present-day Arlington thefight turned savage.
British soldiers enraged andterrified, stormed homes,
banished innocents and burnedwhat they could.
At the Jason Russell House, 21colonials were slaughtered, some
hacked to death as they fled.
Bullets still scar the woodenwalls and some say you can feel
(09:03):
the dread soaked into the floors.
Even now the road from Concordto Charleston carries an eerie
echo the unrelenting march ofboots, the rattle of muskets and
the cries of those who wouldnot live to see nightfall.
By the time the British limpedinto Charleston under the cover
of their cannons, they had lost73 men, with over 170 wounded or
(09:26):
missing.
The colonists only lost 49.
But the real toll?
It was the moment peace died orhad taken its first true breath
.
In the aftermath, thousands ofcolonial militias besieged
Boston, blood had been spilledand there was no turning back.
So why begin with two battlesthat didn't unfold within the
(09:46):
gates of where we've openedtoday?
Because the echoes of Lexingtonand Concord were buried here,
quite literally the soil of OldHill Burying Ground cradles.
The men who lived through, diedthrough and helped ignite those
first sparks of war.
Fifteen veterans of theRevolutionary War rest behind
these crooked stones.
Their story is woven into thevery landscape.
(10:10):
Among them is a man whose namelooms large in the telling of
America's violent birth MajorJohn Buttrick.
If the name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps the phrase the shot
heard around the world will.
It was Buttrick who led thecolonial militia at the North
Bridge and, according to legend,gave the command to fire.
Whether or not he gave thatfateful order or it was misheard
(10:32):
remains a matter of debate.
But his place in this story iscertain.
He stood at the tipping pointwhere protests turned to war and
Musket's gave rise torevolution.
Born July 20, 1731, in Concord,massachusetts, buttrick was not
bred for war.
He was no general, nostrategist from European courts.
(10:53):
He was the son of the soil, alocal man who knew the bend of
the river better than the twistof a musket.
But on April 19th 1775, assmoke rose from Concordstown
Square and the Redcoats held thebridge, it was Buttrick who
stood at the head of the columnof the trembling farmers and
blacksmiths and gave the orderthat changed everything.
(11:16):
That morning, as British forcesfanned across Concord in search
of hidden arms, colonialmilitias retreated.
Colonel James Barrett,commanding the hastily assembled
force pulled back across theNorth Bridge, giving the town to
nearly 700 British regulars.
But as reinforcements poured infrom Acton, bedford and Lincoln
, the hill behind the bridgeswelled with bodies over 400
(11:39):
many-men-d'arm, mostly untested.
The British guarding the bridgenow found themselves
outnumbered, nearly five to one.
At around 10.30 am, barrettissued the order.
Weapons were to be loaded butnot fired unless fired upon, and
so the long line of militiabegan to march two abreast down
the narrow, flooded road.
(12:00):
At the head walked Captain IsaacDavis of Acton, lieutenant
Colonel John Robinson ofWestford and Major John Buttrick
of Concord.
The British, seeing theapproaching column, began
pulling up the bridge planks.
In desperation, buttrickshouted for them to stop.
And then a crack, a singlewarning shot, then another.
Then a musket ball struck ayoung fifer.
(12:21):
The next tore through Davis'sheart, dropping him mid-step
into the muddy earth.
Moments later, private AbnerHolmser of Acton fell dead.
Beside him.
The farmers halted.
There was a breath of disbeliefand then Buttrick's cry ran out
.
Not just the command, butdefiance, grief and fury.
Fire, fellow soldiers, forGod's sake.
(12:43):
Fire that moment.
That shot was the first returnof fire by colonialists in the
American Revolution.
It wasn't the beginning of war,but it was the moment that
became irreversible.
The volley shattered the lineof stunned British infantry.
They turned and ran, abandoningtheir wounded, racing back
toward the safety of thereinforcements in Concord.
(13:04):
Buttrick and others crossed thebridge, no longer retreating
but advancing, and tookdefensive positions behind a
stone wall.
The battlefield behind them waslittered with the first bodies
that would become a war spanningyears and continents.
Later the British, who searchedin vain for weapons and
ammunitions at Barrett's farm,returned to find their comrades
dead or dying when Salter'sskull cleaved, possibly by a
(13:28):
hatchet, some believed it was.
A scalping Rage simmered intheir ranks and the retreat to
Boston would be a long, bloody,haunting road.
Buttrick's shot, heard aroundthe world's debate, comes from
the historians believing heactually was sick at the time
with tuberculosis, unable to cryout.
His order may have been to holdfire to the colonial militia,
(13:51):
but his men only heard fire.
No one will truly know, but hiscommand fire reverberated
through time.
It was his words that unleashedthe shot Ralph Waldo Emerson
would immortalize in his Concordhymn by the rude bridge that
arched the flood, their flag toApril's breeze unfurled here.
Once the embattled farmer stoodand fired the shot heard around
(14:13):
the world.
That shot, that moment belongedto John Buttrick.
He died May 16, 1791, and liesburied in old hill-bearing
ground in Concord.
His statue, the Minuteman, nowstands near where Isaac Davis
fell back straight, musket inhand, forever watching the
bridge.
And in nearby Finchburg, astreet still bears his name.
(14:38):
But here, among the trees, stoneand water, patrick's too.
Legacy remains in the silencebefore the volley and in the
echoes that still hum across theConcord River when the wind is
just right.
Before the muskets cracked inthe April dawn, before blood
soaked the roadside betweenLexington and Concord.
The men who would shape thatday walked the same New England
(15:01):
paths farmers, blacksmiths,ministers and sons.
And how many of them liebeneath the soil in old hill
burying ground.
This small patch of land holdsmore than weatherboard stones
and crumbling epithets.
It holds the memory of thosewho stood when the first line
was drawn between colony andcrown.
Fifty Revolutionary Warveterans are interred here,
(15:22):
their names sometimes fadingfrom stone, but never in the
history they helped forge.
Among them Colonel JamesBarrett, commander of the
Middlesex Militia, but never inthe history they helped forge
Among them, colonel JamesBarrett, commander of the
Middlesex Militia, whose farmwas the target of the British
expedition.
His son, nathaniel Barrett alsorests here.
Two generations bound to thesoil they defended.
Captain David Brown led one ofConcord's two-minute companies,
(15:46):
turning not just into battle butinto legend.
Reuben Brown, the saddler whosetools and tact helped equip the
militia, watched from his shopas the war thundered past his
doorstep.
And Samuel Brooks, whose housebore witness to the British
retreat, is buried here too, hisfamily's land now woven into
the landscape of memory.
(16:06):
Roger Brown, once a corporal inthe Framingham Minutemen, would
rise to the rank of colonel.
Samuel Brown, jacob Brown andAbner Hosmer, whose son died
that morning on the bridge, areburied nearby their shared
surname, a reminder of howfamilies, not just soldiers,
were shaped by that day.
(16:27):
From the pulpit, reverendWilliam Emerson stirred spirits
and stoked the fires ofresistance.
As Concord's minister, heoffered sermons of liberty
before joining the cause,himself serving as chaplain to
the Continental Army at FortTiconderoga, where he died in
1776.
Names like Nehemiah Hunt,samuel Hosmer, josiah Miriam and
(16:49):
Aaron Wright round out themuster, each tied to the militia
companies that met the Redcoatswith fire and steel.
Others Ephraim Wood, ephraimWheeler, joas Myot and John
Miriam leave behind lessdetailed records but no less
weight in the history theywalked.
Some were old by the time ofrebellion history.
(17:10):
They walked.
Some were old by the time ofrebellion, others still young.
Most were buried here withsimple stones, a few perhaps
without any markers at all, buttogether they rest beneath this
hillside, the same ridge whereConcord's first meeting house
once stood, the same ridge wherethe town's first settlers laid
out their future, never knowinghow fiercely it would be
defended.
The grave grind for Old HillBurying Ground was an ice-cold
(17:33):
milk from the Saltbox Kitchen inConcord.
For more honorary grinds in thearea, please visit the-grimcom.
For now we're closing the gateon Old Hill Burying Ground.
We hope you enjoyed our diginto history, if you did
(17:56):
subscribe today, to join us nexttime when we open the gate on
the Grimm.
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