Paul Revere – American Revolutionary
Paul Revere – American Revolutionary
The name “Paul Revere” was hardly known to Americans when Longfellow’s poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” was first published in 1861. How times have changed. “Paul Revere” is now one of the most recognized names in American history. Though nearly every American is aware of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride, his contributions to the fledgling nation went far beyond that single ride.
Revere was a rare American figure who played a founding role in not one but two revolutions: the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. While the Paul Revere Heritage Site honors Revere’s role in America’s budding Industrial Revolution, his risk-taking approach to business, his leadership style, and his business acumen were formed well before he founded the Revere Copper Company in 1801.
Revere was born on January 1, 1735 (by the modern calendar), in the North End of Boston, to a French Huguenot father who sought to escape France’s repression of Protestants. When he was just thirteen, Revere left school to apprentice in his father’s silversmith shop. Shortly after his father’s death in 1754, Revere enlisted in the provincial army and fought in the French and Indian War. Upon his return, he assumed control of the family’s silversmith shop, married, and started a family. As a master artisan, Revere oversaw the shop’s workforce, the quality of silver alloy used, and the workmanship of the shop’s products which ran the gamut from spoons to treasured tea sets.
John Singleton Copley’s 1768 portrait of Paul Revere is Copley’s only finished portrait of an artisan dressed in shirtsleeves and shown at work.
Dr. Joseph Warren
Business was slow to develop. Britain’s recession after the Seven Years’ War impacted the colonies. The colonial economies suffered even more when Britain’s Parliament passed the Stamp Act in an attempt to to raise tax revenues – without colonial representation – to help refill Britain’s depleted treasury.
Revere took up dentistry to increase his income. In the process, he formed a friendship with surgeon and budding political activist Joseph Warren. After Dr. Warren’s death at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Revere named a son after him; that son went on to lead the Revere Copper and Brass Company following Revere’s death in 1818.
The Massachusetts colony was at the forefront of America’s revolutionary fervor. Revere became a member of the Sons of Liberty, the organization that organized the Boston Tea Party. During this period, he produced engravings devoted to the patriotic cause, including the well-known Boston Massacre engraving modeled after Henry Pelham’s drawing of the event.
Paul Revere’s engraving, “The Bloody Massacre in King Street,”, portraying British soldiers as cold-blooded murderers, was widely circulated to rouse support for the pre-revolutionary cause.
The Paul Revere House in Boston’s historic North End.
With a growing family (Revere fathered sixteen children during his lifetime), he purchased a house that is now the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston. As revolutionary fervor grew in Boston, Revere became more politically active. Prior to his Midnight Ride, for example, he made at least 18 rides to and from Philadelphia to report on the unrest in Boston. (And you thought he made only one historic ride!)
To “contain” that unrest and punish Boston’s increasingly hostile populace, General Thomas Gage closed Boston’s port in 1774 and forced private citizens to house his troops. In response, Revere and several others began secret meetings to monitor Gage’s military activities. It was in this role that the group came to suspect that Gage planned to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Massachusetts, then march on to Concord to confiscate weaponry stored in nearby Concord, Massachusetts’ armory.
Gage tipped his hand during the days just before April 18, 1775. Revere made arrangements to have two lamps lit in the steeple of the Old North Church when Gage’s troops were ready to march. The rest, as they say, is “history”. Revere probably didn’t yell “The British are coming! The British are coming!” during his ride, but he effectively alerted townspeople in Charlestown, Medford, and Arlington to the British actions.
Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride, April 18, 1775
After the Revolution, Revere honed his business and technical skills by opening iron, bronze, and brass factories – the latter of which produced cannon to protect the new country and large bells that rang in buildings throughout the states. It was Revere’s new military ties that enabled him to found the Revere Copper Company in 1801. Two centuries later, the Paul Revere Heritage Site pays homage to Revere’s entrepreneurial spirit, his innovative approaches to production, and his ability to envision the future.
