Paul Revere (1735-1818) Benedict Gombocz

Paul Revere: Facts in Brief• Born January 1, 1735 (O.S. December 21, 1734), North End, Boston, MA.

• Died May 10, 1818 (aged 83), Boston, MA.

• American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and patriot in the American Revolution.

• Most prominent for informing the Colonial soldiers of an invasion by British forces prior to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, as told in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride”.

Southeast View of Boston in the 1700s

For what is Paul Revere best remembered? • Paul Revere is celebrated for his midnight ride to warn his fellow

Americans of a deliberate attack by the British prior to the eight-year Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the war that the Americans fought that led to independence from Great Britain.

• He was also a talented silversmith (a person who makes articles out of silver) and a master engraver (a person who makes designs onto things like metal or wood).

Learning a trade • Paul Revere was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 1, 1735.

• He was the son of Apollos De Revoire, a French Huguenot (member of the Protestant faith) who settled in Boston when he was only thirteen to train in the shop of a silversmith.

• Once Revoire started his own business, he changed his surname to the Anglicized spelling Revere, which became the new family name.

• Paul Revere was the third of twelve children and the eldest of his father’s sons who lived through adulthood.

• As a young man, Revere studied at Boston’s North Writing School.

• He learned the art of gold and silversmithing from his father when he was a teenager.

• After his father’s death, with assistance from his mother, he began managing the Revere family silver shop when he was nineteen.

• He married his first wife, Sarah Orne Jewett, on August 17, 1757; the couple eventually gave birth to eight children.

• Revere began to test carving on copper as early as 1765; among his creations were numerous pictures and a songbook.

• He was popular as a source for carved items including bookplates, seals (stamps with raised designs that could make a pattern on another substance), and coats of arms (designs that hinted at a family line).

Sarah Orne Jewett, Revere’s first wife (m. 1757-1773; her death)

Learning a trade – cont. • Revere also started styling anti-British carvings.

• He carved one of the most prominent pieces of silver of the U.S. colonial period, a bowl that he carved at the wish of the fifteen Sons of Liberty, in 1768.

• The Sons of Liberty (shown right) were organizations established in opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, a levy on printed materials enforced by the British that the Americans believed were unreasonable.

• The bowl that Revere carved was engraved to celebrate the “glorious Ninety-two Members of the Honorable House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay” who defied orders to withdraw a letter they delivered to the other colonies in protest against the Townshend Acts (another measure enforced by the British).

• Revere’s astonishing ability additionally included his carving picture frames for the painter John Singleton Copley (1738-1815).

• Copley painted a renowned picture of Revere where Revere is depicted in shirt sleeves and holding a silver teapot.

Paul Revere, John Singleton Copley, 1768

Revere’s ride • Revere became a trustworthy envoy for the Massachusetts Committee of

Safety, an organization that was founded in resistance to the British.

• He predicted an attack by the British soldiers on the location of military sources in Concord, Massachusetts, and arranged a signal to notify the patriots in Charleston, Massachusetts.

• On the late evening of April 18, 1775, the chairman of the Committee of Safety informed Revere that the British were going to invade Concord.

• Revere gestured by suspending two lamps in the tower of Boston’s North Church; this indicated that the British were approaching Concord “by sea”, or via the Charles River.

• He crossed the river, was lent a horse in Charlestown, and made his way to Concord.

• Reaching Lexington, Massachusetts at midnight, he woke American dissidents John Hancock (1737-1793) and Samuel Adams (1722-1803), permitting the two men to escape to safety.

• That night, Revere was seized by the British, but they released him because he convinced them that the entire countryside was provoked to fight.

• Revere went back to Lexington, where he was a witness to the first shot fired in the first battle of the Revolutionary War, which took place on April 19, 1775.

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) made this ride and series of events famous in the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”.

Battles of Lexington (L) and Concord (R), April 19, 1775

Map of the Battles of Lexington and Concord

A master craftsman • After the Revolutionary War ended in 1883, Paul Revere remained in Boston, where he made his own objects in silver for notable

members of local society.

• He died there on May 10, 1818; he was 83.

• Today, Paul Revere is still honored as a craftsman in silver; he also continues to be honored as a master of carving.

• An on-the-spot writer, Paul Revere kept track of the episodes causing (and the episodes during) the revolution with impressive precision.

• Paul Revere inscribed what he observed on copper plates, which were used to produce patterns on paper that the people of Boston exceedingly loved.

Paul Revere’s grave (L) and the Paul Revere House (R)

References • http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Revere-Paul.html