Paul Revere House
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
This modest wooden house is associated with one of the most famous rides in American memory. The historical Paul Revere was more interesting than the lone midnight horseman of schoolbook legend: silversmith, engraver, businessman, political networker and messenger.
On the night of April 18, 1775, Revere rode to warn that British regulars were moving toward Lexington and Concord. But he was not alone. William Dawes took a different route, Samuel Prescott joined the warning network, and many local riders carried messages onward.
Another correction: Revere did not gallop all the way to Concord shouting “The British are coming!” That phrase would have been odd among colonists who still considered themselves British. Revere was captured by a British patrol before reaching Concord; Prescott escaped and carried the alarm farther.
Why do we remember a cleaner version? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” published in 1860, transformed Revere into a national heroic messenger on the eve of the Civil War. The National Park Service explicitly recommends reading the poem as literature and mythmaking rather than a precise account.
The myth is worth keeping — as a nineteenth-century artifact. The eighteenth-century story is a communication network, not one man with excellent cardio.