Minutemen to get their due, 232 years later
They mustered 232 years ago yesterday in what is now downtown Peabody, rushed south to battle the British soldiers retreating from Concord, and were killed in the most ferocious fighting of that first Patriots Day.
Their bodies retrieved by comrades, the four Minutemen were laid to rest at the Old South Burying Ground in long-forgotten locations that now might be covered by a Peabody sidewalk or the asphalt of Washington Street.
That anonymity is about to end. Thanks to city and federal officials, the ultimate sacrifices of Samuel Cook Jr., Benjamin Deland Jr., Ebenezer Goldthwaite, and George Southwick Jr. are being commemorated by headstones placed in the cemetery that holds these original patriots.
‘‘This is near their remains, it’s near people they probably knew in their day, and it’s a nice place to be,’’ said Chris Tighe, Peabody’s veterans agent, who helped spearhead the effort to honor the men.
At 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, the gravestones will be officially dedicated in a ceremony to include a howitzer salute from the Massachusetts Army National Guard, Revolutionary War reenactors, and local dignitaries. Tighe expects several hundred people to pause there in memory of the four Minutemen, whose bodies are believed to have been carried back to Peabody in ox carts.
The known grave of Henry Jacobs, a fifth Minuteman who died that day and whose remains are buried in a family plot elsewhere in Peabody, had its new marker dedicated yesterday. The US Department of Veterans Affairs supplied the five gravestones, which match the memorials used at Arlington National Cemetery, at no cost.
Tighe said the city carried out extensive research, including the use of X-rays, in an effort to pinpoint the four remains at the Old South Burying Ground but could not find them. The configuration of streets near the cemetery, off Main Street near the Salem line, has changed many times over the years, and pavement may cover some Colonial-era graves.
‘‘We have no records that their graves were ever marked with stones or anything like that,’’ said Dan Doucette, who does double duty as the city’s purchasing agent and as librarian for the Peabody Historical Society.
When the remains could not be found, some people wanted to continue the search. However, Tighe said, he pushed to honor the men now, bones or no bones.
‘‘Realistically, it would be great to find the remains,’’ he said. ‘‘And if we ever do, we’ll do whatever we need to do to honor those.’’
With help from Dave Cronin, the city’s cemetery superintendent, a place was selected for the stones, which were erected side by side. The four men — Southwick, 25; Deland, 25; Goldthwaite, 22; and Cook, 33 — are now memorialized with gleaming markers that list their rank of private, their role as ‘‘Minute Man,’’ and the famous date of their deaths.
Tighe said he began working on the idea last year, when he was told that Jacobs’s grave did not have a flag. When he brought the flag to the site, he recalled, he saw that the inscription was illegible.
‘‘We were able to get one stone, followed by four stones,’’ Tighe said.
To Don Perry, an Army Reserve and National Guard veteran, the recognition could help awaken the historical knowledge of many Peabody residents who otherwise would not know about the city’s role in the Revolution.
‘‘It’s hard to picture the way they lived and the way they thought,’’ said Perry, who will be dressed in Revolutionary War garb tomorrow as a member of the Danvers Watch List Company.
Peabody was known as the south parish of Danvers on April 19, 1775, when hundreds of farmers and tradesmen converged on the British column during its retreat following the ‘‘shot heard ’round the world’’ at the Old North Bridge in Concord. Their numbers included two companies of Danvers Minutemen, perhaps 100 in all, who gathered at the modern-9day intersection of Washington and Main streets in Peabody about 10 a.m. and marched about 16 miles in four hours to what is now Arlington.
There, at the Jason Russell House, a fierce battle erupted between the British regulars, who had been harassed constantly during their retreat, and Minutemen and other Colonial militia who had been arriving from many parts of Eastern Massachusetts. The British had been ransacking houses along the Concord Road, which is today’s Massachusetts Avenue, to flush out snipers, whom they considered cowards and traitors.
The British, who had been marching and fighting for more than 24 hours, showed little mercy. Russell was shot on his doorstep and then bayoneted. Four of the five Peabody men to be honored this week are believed to have been killed in the yard of Russell’s house, Perry said. One is thought to have died inside the house.
Tighe, an Army veteran, said their sacrifice, usually consigned to history books, remains important to recall.
‘‘I’m commemorating guys who died in their youth,’’ Tighe said, ‘‘and giving a place for people to go and remember them.’’ 