William Dawes Rides Into History
By T.M. Jacobs

When Dr. Joseph Warren, a leader of the Sons of Liberty gave the order that John Hancock and Samuel Adams needed to be warned of the British advancement, William Dawes mounted his horse and unknowingly rode into history.

While Paul Revere got more notoriety, it was Dawes who had the longer route through Boston Neck toward the town of Lexington. Along his route he shouted, "The Regulars are out!" Revere arrived at Lexington first and warned Adams and Hancock about the British. Once Dawes arrived, he and Revere set off for Concord with Dr. Samuel Prescott to alert the minutemen.

Dawes' midnight ride was not without mishaps. Prior to reaching Concord, Dawes, Revere, and Prescott were questioned by British soldiers. Prescott quickly jumped a stone wall and ran off through a field, while Revere dashed into the woods, only to be captured by British soldiers hiding behind trees. Dawes escaped. According to Henry Holland's William Dawes and his ride with Paul Revere: "Dawes, chased by the soldiers, dashed up to an empty farm-house, slapping his leather breeches and shouting, 'Halloo, boys, I've got two of 'em!' and his pursuers were fortunately frightened, and made off." He was thrown from his horse on the farmyard and briefly got lost while heading back to Lexington. Prescott was the only messenger to reach Concord.

William Dawes, Jr., son of William and Lydia Boone Dawes, was born in Boston on April 5, 1745. By trade, his father was in the tailor business, but he was later employed as a grocer and eventually formed a partnership with his nephew, William Homes, Jr. as a goldsmith. Dawes, Jr. was the second child of twelve born to William. Nine of William's children were with Lydia, and the other three were born from his second wife.

Before his famous ride and the outbreak of the war, Dawes married on May 3, 1768 to Mehitable May, daughter of Samuel and Catherine Mears May. They were members of the Old South Church and bore six children: Hannah (1769), William Mears (1771), Samuel (1773-1776), Mehitable (1774-1776), Charles May (1776) and Lucretia (1788). He worked as a tanner, and the family resided on Ann Street, almost directly across from Dawes' father. Once the British occupied Boston, Dawes moved his family to Worcester, where he visited them weekly.

Following in his forefathers' footsteps, Dawes became a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1768. His great grandfather, Ambrose Dawes, had joined in 1674, and Dawes' father served as clerk and later as first sergeant for the company. Dawes became Second Sergeant in 1770, Clerk in 1786, and Major in 1787.

It was in 1774, while serving as a correspondence with the Salem Committee of Safety, that Dawes learned that General Thomas Gage was seeking a cannon belonging to Captain Adino Paddock's company. Dawes assembled a group of men and hid the cannon from Gen. Gage. According to Mary Walton Ferris' Dawes-Gates Ancestral Line: A Memorial Volume Containing the American Ancestry of Rufus R. Dawes:

We are told that William Dawes and Samuel Gore were the leading spirits in the purloining of the two cannon owned by the colony, to keep them from being appropriated by the English in the fall of 1774. These guns, three-pounders. . . .were assigned to the use of the Artillery Company and were kept in the gun house at the corner of West Street. . . . Maj. Paddock in charge of these guns had felt it his duty to turn them over to Gov. Gage, but some of the men under him, including William and young Gore had a different idea. . . .late in 1774 several of these men met in the school room and when the attention of the British sentinel stationed at the front door of the gun house was held by roll-call, they crossed the yard, entered the building by a back door and removing the guns from their carriages, carried them silently to the school room and quickly concealed them in the bottom of the wood box under the master's deck. Their absence was soon discovered. . . .[The cannons] remained there for a fortnight and then were removed at night, by wheelbarrow to Whiston's blacksmith shop. . . .whence, by order of the Committee of Safety issued to William, they were delivered to Deacon Cheever on January 5, 1775. They were taken to Waltham by boat and were in actual service during the entire war, being used in seventeen engagements.

After the war, Dawes lived for a time in Worcester and later moved back to Boston where Congress appointed him Assistant Commissary of Issues of the Magazine from 1777 to 1779. He later teamed up with his brother-in-law, John Coolidge, and worked as a grocer.

His wife, Mehitable, died on October 28, 1793 and Dawes remarried on November 18, 1795 to Lydia Gendall. They had one child, Mehitable May, born in 1796.

William Dawes, Jr. died on February 25, 1799 in Marlborough. He was laid to rest at the Kings Chapel Burying Ground in Boston. A plaque there reads:

The direct bloodline of William Dawes, Jr. also includes his grandson, Rufus R. Dawes, Union Brevet Brigadier General and Colonel of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry of the famed Iron Brigade during the Civil War. Dawes' great-grandson Charles Dawes, son of Rufus, served as Vice President under Calvin Coolidge.

Sources:

1) Burg, David F. "An Eyewitness History: The American Revolution."
2) Purcell, L. Edward "Who Was Who in the American Revolution."
3) Holland, Henry "William Dawes and his ride with Paul Revere."
4) Ferris, Mary Walton "Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines: A Memorial Volume Containing the American Ancestry of Rufus R. Dawes."