Rye NH in the Revolutionary War
Colonial Boston’s secret patriot network crackled with the news. Regiments of British troops were on the move, bound for points north to secure military supplies from the rebels. Paul Revere mounted his horse and began a feverish gallop to warn the colonists that the British were coming. Except this ride preceded Revere’s famous “midnight ride” by more than four months. On December 13, 1774, the Boston silversmith made a midday gallop north to Portsmouth in the province of New Hampshire, and some people—especially Granite Staters—consider that, and not his trip west to Lexington on April 18, 1775, as the true starting point of the war for independence.
Smithsonian Magazine, December 12, 2011
Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth in 1774.
We have it on pretty good account…
…that Paul Revere made more than one ride. He warned the locals of impending British reinforcements.
King George III had issued a proclamation that prohibited the export of arms or ammunition to America and ordered colonial authorities to secure the Crown’s weaponry. One particularly vulnerable location was Fort William and Mary, a derelict garrison at the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor with a large supply of munitions guarded by a mere six soldiers. [Smithsonian]
It was believed that British General Thomas Gage had sent two regiments by sea to secure the fort and the supplies there. Paul Revere was sent to warn the New Hampshire residents of this impending assault. This prompted militia units, including those from Rye, to raid Fort William and Mary in New Castle and subdue the British there. They loaded 97 barrels of gunpowder onto gundalows and hid it in the Durham church and elsewhere to be used at Bunker Hill six months later.
By 1775, those on the Isles of Shoals off the NH and Maine coasts were vulnerable, and had to be evacuated. Some even rolled their homes off the rocks and ashore to Rye and other destinations.
Rye’s Revolutionary War participants were numerous, on this day and the years that followed. To read more about them, please read Parson’s account in the History of the Town of Rye, pages 255 through274
Sources:
Parsons, Langdon Brown. History of the Town of Rye, New Hampshire: From Its Discovery and Settlement to December 31, 1903. United States: Rumford Print. Company, 1905.
Smithsonian Magazine, December 12, 2011.
