Seven Woburn Men at the Lexington Battle on the Morning of April 19, 1775
Robert Douglass Jr. Lived near Cambridge and Locust streets. An alarm rider knocked on his door and told him to go to Lexington. A 16 year-old son of a Committee of Correspondence member, he went with Sylvanus Wood and joined with Captain John Parker's company soon before the British attacked. He served multiple times in the war and afterward rose to the rank of Major in the militia. He married Patty Johnson of Woburn and they had many children. In the 1790s the family moved to Portland in the Massachusetts district of Maine. After Patty died, he married Anna Perry and they had more children. He died in 1833.Sylvanus Wood Was staying at a house near Four Corners. He heard the Lexington church bells ringing the alarm. This 23 year-old captured a British a grenadier that day. He became Ensign (2nd Lieutenant) in his brother John's company in the Continental Line. He was a shoemaker and eventually bought the Douglass farm. He obtained a special pension based upon his capture of, as he put it, the first prisoner of the war that day. He died in 1840. His descendants live in the area.
Ebenezer Locke Lived at the house still standing at 183 Lexington St., at Four Corners He heard the Lexington church bells. He was married to Lucy Wood, older sister to Sylvanus, in 1759 and raised three sons. Forty years old at the time of the battle, he and his cousin Amos hastened to Lexington common, but heard a scout's report that there were no British approaching. Leaving Lexington for home, they heard musket fire. Doubling back, they found the body of Asahel Porter about 100 yards east of the common where the British then were. Ebenezer shot at the British. He served in the war until April 1777. Within the next decade or so, he moved to Deering, NH, where he died in 1816.
Amos Locke Lived at the Locke house at 183 Lexington St., and heard the Lexington church bells. He married Sarah Locke, an orphan, in 1769 and raised four sons. He was a veteran of the Seven Years war. Thirty-two years old at the time of the Lexington battle, he accompanied his cousin Ebenezer and wrote a deposition in 1824 confirming their actions that day. He is documented as serving a couple of stints in the war. He moved to Lexington and operated a farm and gristmill. He died in 1828.
Jacob Bacon Lived in Woburn's Second Precinct, now Burlington. It is not known how he heard of the Lexington alarm. Born in Lexington, he married Katherine Davis of Bedford in 1768, and had one son and two daughters. By 1771 he was living in Woburn on a small farm. He was 38 at the time of the battle. According to Lexington minister Reverend Jonas Clark's one-year memorial sermon, he was wounded in the morning fight at Lexington common. Tragedies followed one upon another. His son died later in the summer of 1775. In 1776 he was jailed for spousal abuse and took his own life in the Concord Jail on November 7, 1776.
Asahel Porter Married Abigail Brooks in Seabrook NH in 1773 and lived in her father's house in Woburn. They had one son, Asahel. At age 23, late at night on April 18, 1775 or early in the morning on the 19th, Asahel and his friend Josiah Richardson set out for Boston, normal civilians heading to the markets there. En route in Menotomy (Arlington) they were taken captive by the British column and forced to march with it toward Lexington. Near the common, they were released, but Asahel was shot dead as he hurriedly departed. He was likely the first fatality that day. His wife remarried and had 7 more children.
Josiah Richardson Lived in the center of present day Woburn. He accompanied Asahel Porter on his fateful trip to the market in Boston. Taken up and then released by the British column, Josiah survived. He would have heard and easily could have witnessed the battle on the green. This may be the same Josiah Richardson, blacksmith, that in 1782 married Sarah (Wyman) Richardson, a presumed widow whose first husband, after having gone missing in the war while privateering aboard the Warren in 1776, returned in 1783. That Josiah gave up Sarah to her first husband, Ichabod Richardson.
Josiah Richardson's residence note: Epitaphs, First Burial-Ground. p.46, appended to Woburn Records of Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Marriage Intentions, from 1640 to 1900 Part II, Deaths, 1890. And p.130-131 the Woburn Directory 1868 Said to be at the site of Woodberry's store (Abbot and Pleasant Streets, at west end of the common) So, near today's library.
