Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 28.

[p. 44] going without his dinner, he answered, ‘I am going to take powder and balls for my dinner today, or to give them some.’ Another was the Rev. Edward Brooks. From his house near the old slave wall on the Grove street of today, he too went over to Lexington, and with full-bottomed wig, rode on horseback, his gun on his shoulder. From the garret window of that house his son, Peter, prompted as we may fancy by the impulse of more than one boy of the age of eight, listened to the guns of the British at Menotomy and saw them glisten under the morning sun.

Along with the volunteers, throughout the morning the country people were moving through Medford toward Menotomy — in their faces curiosity, suspense, apprehension — in their hearts determination, as they realized that the die was cast.

As the day wore on armed Provincials from other towns trooped through the town. The road between Medford and Salem was the highway leading to the country northeast of Boston. To Malden a horseman from Medford dashed along this road in the early morning, scattering the alarm. His name is lost. The clanging of the meeting-house bell, then on Bell rock, brought the townspeople of Malden to the Kettell's tavern. There seventy-six men under Capt. Benjamin Blaney assembled, and with drums beating, marched to Medford under orders to proceed to Watertown. Near Cradock bridge the company halted while the whereabouts of the British was verified, and then at noon proceeded through the town to Menotomy.

The same messenger, perhaps, carried the alarm to Lynn. At some hour of the morning thirty-eight men from Lynn marched through Medford in the direction of the gun-shots up the Lexington road. The word reached Salem and Danvers at about nine o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth. The Danvers men, three hundred and thirty-one of them, without waiting for a full regiment, set off at nine o'clock. Before noon they