27. Paul Revere

Paul Revere (1735-1818) folk hero of the American Revolution whose dramatic horseback ride on the night of April 18, 1775, warning Boston-area residents that the British were coming, was immortalized in a ballad by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

His father, Apollos Rivoire (later changed to Revere) was a Huguenot refugee who had come to Boston as a child and had been apprenticed to a silversmith. This craft he taught his son Paul Revere, who became one of America’s greatest artists in silver. He not only made silver articles but also crafted surgical instruments, sold spectacles, engraved copper plates, the most famous of which portrayed his version of the Boston Massacre.

In the 1770s Revere enthusiastically supported the patriot cause. In 1773 he donned Indian garb and joined 50 other patriots in the Boston Tea Party protest against parliamentary taxation without representation. Revere served for years as the principal rider for Boston’s Committee of Safety and, in what Longfellow called “the midnight ride of Paul Revere,” Revere rode to nearby Concord to urge the patriots to move their military stores and arranged to signal the patriots of the British approach by having lanterns placed in Boston’s Old North Church steeple: “One if by land, and two if by sea.” Two days later he set out from Boston on his most famous journey to alert his countrymen that British troops were on the march. Because of Revere’s warning, the Minutemen were ready the next morning on Lexington green for the historic battle that launched the American Revolution.

Condensed from:

Article Title: Paul Revere

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 25 January 2024

URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Revere

Access Date: March 20, 2024