We remember the founders who survived the American Revolutionary War. We honor their courage and sacrifice in the struggle for liberty and independence. We celebrate their achievements in crafting a democratic, republican form of government. It is fitting that we do so.
Many who fought for the American cause, for liberty and self-government, perished in or by the war. They, too, are founders. There would be no American republic without their dedication and sacrifice. It is fitting that we remember and honor them as well.
Isaac Davis and Hannah Brown wed in 1764 in the village of Acton, Massachusetts. He was nineteen, she was eighteen. Over the next ten years, they built a life together and had six children. Two died as infants.
Gunsmith and farmer, Isaac served as captain of the Acton Minute Company, one of many armed colonial groups that formed in Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775 as resistance mounted to British taxation and British troops. Drawing on his gunsmithing skills, Isaac helped equip and train the men under his command.
Word came in the early hours of April 19, 1775, that British Regulars were approaching nearby Concord and Lexington, intent on destroying arms and other supplies stockpiled by Rebels. The Acton Company soon gathered in front of their captain’s home. There they prepared to march to North Bridge outside Concord to rally with other minutemen and local militia groups.
As Hannah later remembered, her husband “said but little that morning. He seemed serious and thoughtful; but never seemed to hesitate as to the course of his duty.” Before departing, Isaac turned to Hannah, paused for a moment, and spoke simple words that say much: “Take good care of the children.” Isaac, ten years old, Hannah, seven, Ephraim, five, and Mary, fifteen months—all four lay sick in bed with scarlet fever. Hannah watched the company form up, then march away with her husband.
Later that day, Isaac led the Acton Company in the initial advance on British troops at North Bridge. A musket ball in a British volley found his heart, killing Isaac instantly, the first American officer to die in combat during the Revolutionary War.
Return volleys from the Acton Company and other colonial forces compelled the British to abandon the bridge and retreat to Concord. Over the next several hours, the British expeditionary force would conduct a running fight along “Battle Road,” trekking sixteen miles back to Boston—repeatedly ambushed, harassed, and fired upon by colonial forces.
British casualties numbered three hundred soldiers that day. Colonial forces suffered ninety-three casualties, including three deaths in the Acton Company. It was a stinging defeat for the British and a victory for the colonial resistance. Events that day marked a distinct turn to revolution and war. There would be no turning back.
Husband and father, Isaac Davis was skilled, brave, energetic, and a leader of men. He had ample reason to live and much to cherish. Yet he gave the last full measure of his life in the fight for liberty and independence.
Hannah was left with her grief and four fatherless children. She would marry twice more, bear three more children, and outlive all her husbands. Her second husband, stricken with yellow fever, died in 1796. Her third husband died in 1806. After his death, Hannah lived for a time with one of her sons and, for several years, ran a school for children.
In her seventies and struggling financially, Hannah petitioned the government for a war widow’s pension. She was denied. Not until 1840 would the federal government grant her a pension. Hannah died not long after in 1841, at age ninety-five.
In 1837, the Bunker Hill Monument Association and local leaders erected a twenty-five-foot granite obelisk near the site of the old North Bridge to commemorate the events of April 19, 1775. The dedication ceremony featured Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “Concord Hymn,” which he wrote for the occasion, and which gave us that stirring phrase about embattled farmers who “fired the shot heard round the world.”
I cannot match Emerson’s eloquence. Let me instead repeat the last two stanzas of his poem:
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
“Concord Hymn” was published widely in local newspapers after the ceremony. Perhaps Hannah had occasion to read the poem or hear it recited. If so, I hope she found a small measure of comfort in its recognition of what Isaac sacrificed, and what she and the children lost.
Major fighting in the Revolutionary War lasted until October 1781, and the war did not end officially until October 1783. More than 230,000 Americans served in the Continental Army during the war, and roughly 150,000 served in local and state militia. Some, like Isaac, died in combat. Many more died of disease, starvation, and exposure to the elements. Yellow fever was a menace in the warmer months. Smallpox, dysentery (“the bloody flux”), and typhus ran rampant through the Continental Army, especially during the winters of 1777-78 at Valley Forge and 1779-80 at Morristown.
The family lines of Isaac and Hannah trace back to the early days of colonial America. Many others who joined the struggle for liberty and independence were immigrants. Abigail Hartman Rice, for one, was born in Germany in 1742.
Shortly before her eighth birthday, Abigail’s family emigrated to the American colonies. They settled in Pennsylvania and established a farm near other German-speaking households in the Pikeland region. In 1757, Abigail married Zachariah Rice, a Bavarian-born craftsman with skills as a millwright and carpenter.
As one account of Abigail’s life remarks, she “bore approximately twenty-two children over the course of her marriage, seventeen of whom survived into adulthood. Her adult life was defined by sustained domestic labor, child-rearing, and community responsibility. Contemporary descriptions portray her as physically strong, capable, and warm-hearted, traits necessary to manage such a large household.”
George Washington stopped at the Rice home in September 1777 around the time of the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of the Clouds. “Abigail and her children provided the general and his staff something to drink.” British forces would soon capture Philadelphia and defeat Washington’s counteroffensive at the Battle of Germantown on October 4.
Two and one-half months later, more than twelve thousand soldiers of the Continental Army plus four hundred women and children trudged into Valley Forge to build huts and fortifications and pass the winter. “The encampment brought together men, women, and children of nearly all ages, from all walks of life, of every occupation, from different ethnic backgrounds, and of various religions,” says the National Park Service’s Valley Forge website. “While most were of English descent, African, American Indian, Austrian, Dutch, French, Germanic, Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Prussian, Scottish, Spanish, and Swedish persons also filled out the ranks.” Nearly two thousand of them died of disease during that winter encampment. It was but one hard winter in a long war.
In 1778, Zachariah helped build the Continental Army’s first permanent military hospital at Yellow Springs, only a mile or so from the Rice family farm, and about ten miles from Valley Forge. Abigail came often to the hospital on “errands of mercy, carrying foods and delicacies to the sick and wounded soldiers.” In time, she served as a nurse at the hospital.
Abigail contracted typhus from a soldier at Yellow Springs. Never able to fully recover, she died of typhus and its complications in 1789. Her gravestone read “Some have children. Some have none. Here lies the mother of twenty-one.” Legend has it that all seventeen surviving children attended her funeral. Zachariah lived until 1811, passing away at the age of eighty.
Abigail and Zachariah qualify as founders, as do Isaac and Hannah. So do many others who joined the struggle for liberty and independence. They have my deep and abiding gratitude.
Steven J. Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow (joint) and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, where he hosts the podcast Economics, Applied. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).
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