Paul Revere

Paul Revere 1735-1818, American silversmith and political leader in the American Revolution , b. Boston. In his father's smithy he learned to work gold and silver, and he became a leading silversmith of New England. He also turned to various other skills—designing, engraving, printing, bell founding, and dentistry. In the French and Indian War he was a soldier, and in the period of growing colonial discontent with British measures after the Stamp Act (1765), he was a fervent anti-British propagandist. He early joined the Sons of Liberty , took part in the Boston Tea Party , and was a courier (1774) for the Massachusetts committee of correspondence. Revere became a figure of popular history and legend, however, because of his ride on the night of Apr. 18, 1775, to warn the people of the Massachusetts countryside that British soldiers were being sent out in the expedition that, as it turned out, started the American Revolution (see Lexington and Concord, battles of ). William Dawes and Samuel Prescott also rode forth with the news. Revere did not reach his destination at Concord but was captured by the British; nevertheless, it is Revere who is remembered as the midnight rider, chiefly because of the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He designed the first seal for the united colonies, designed and printed the first Continental bond issue, and established (1776) a powder mill at Canton, Mass. His military career was not distinguished. On the ill-fated expedition against Penobscot he was arrested for disobeying orders (though a court-martial later acquitted him of the charges), and in 1780 he returned to silversmithing. His shrewdness in other enterprises, particularly the establishment of a copper-rolling and brass-casting foundry at Canton, helped to make his later years very prosperous.

Bibliography: See biographies by E. G. Taylor (1930) and E. Forbes (1942, repr. 1962).

Revere, Paul (1735–1818), Boston silversmith, engraver, legendary patriot hero.Although Revere's silver masterpieces place him among the finest craftsmen in colonial America, his wider fame has resulted from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride (1861), the inaccurate but patriotic poem memorized by generations of schoolchildren.

Revere's famous ride came about through his involvement with Boston's Committee of Correspondence, which kept patriots informed of the movements of British soldiers occupying Boston. In April 1775, the British commander, General Thomas Gage, ordered his troops to capture a store of the colonists' gunpowder in Concord. When committee members learned of the plan (perhaps from Gage's wife), couriers were assigned to spread the news. Among those designated to warn Concord were Revere and William Dawes, who traveled by different routes.

On 18 April, the evening before the scheduled attack, Revere rowed across Boston harbor to Charlestown, where he mounted a horse and rode into Medford and Menotomy (now Arlington). By chance, he met Dr. Samuel Prescott, who volunteered to help spread the alarm. Soon a British patrol overtook the two; Prescott escaped, but Revere was detained for several hours while Prescott, Dawes, and others got the news to Lexington and Concord.

While Longfellow's poem gave Revere greater celebrity than other Revolutionary‐Era patriots who performed similar duties, he remains significant. Revere's occupation as an urban artisan connected with nearly every patriot and civic organization of his day, such as the Committee of Correspondence, Sons of Liberty, North End Caucus, and Freemasons, place him in the nexus of the Boston Revolutionary movement. In later years, his copper‐rolling and brass foundry at Canton, Massachusetts, brought him great wealth. A portrait of Revere by John Singleton Copley is highly regarded.
See also Revolution and Constitution, Era of; Revolutionary War.

Bibliography

David H. Fischer , Paul Revere's Ride, 1994.

Christopher Berkeley

Revere, Paul (1735–1818) American silversmith and patriot, famous for his ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, he rode to warn the colonists of Massachusetts of the approach of British troops at the start of the American Revolution. It was commemorated in Henry Longfellow's poem, “Paul Revere's Ride” (1863).