Note 529 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

One of these despatches, dated Watertown, April 19, endorsed by the officers of the towns through which it had passed, is printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Oct., 1873, p. 434. It is pointed out in Greene's Life of Nathanael Greene (i. 77), how the news affected Rhode Island. The confused statements which reached Connecticut can be seen in the Deane Correspondence in the Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 218, and in the broadside Letter of James Lockwood and Isaac Bears, dated Wallingford, April 24, 1775, respecting the Battle near Winter Hill, in which Lord Percy was killed. The news reached New York, Sunday, April 23, and the response was sudden. Vessels loaded for Boston were seized; arsenals were taken in charge, and cannon planted at Kingsbridge (Dawson's Battles, i. 130, and his Westchester County during the Amer. Rev., Morrisania, 1886, p. 75; Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 328; Leake's Lamb, 101; Mag. of Amer. Hist., Apr., 1882, p. 283). Governor Colden describes the effects in his despatch to Dartmouth (N. Y. Col. Docs., viii. 571). Jones, in his New York during the Rev. War (i. 39, 497), gives a curiously perverted story, saying, among other things, that the British muskets were unloaded when the Americans attacked them at Lexington, and describes the stormy meeting of the governor's council in the afternoon. From New Jersey, Governor Franklin wrote to Dartmouth May 6, and June 5 and 7. (New Jersey Archives, x. 590, 601, 642.) The tidings reached Philadelphia April 24, and the original endorsed despatch is in the Pennsylvania Hist. Soc. library. (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1864, p. 23; Hazard's Reg. of Penna., iii. 175, Christopher Marshall's Diary, p. 18.) In the second week in May the news reached Western Pennsylvania, and the resolutions which were passed at Hannastown were drawn by St. Clair (St. Clair Papers, i. 363). It reached Williamsburg, Va., April 29 (Moore's Diary, i. 75.) It came to Kentucky just as the settlers were founding a town, and they named it Lexington. (Winthrop's Speeches, 1878, etc., p 106.) A despatch which was written at Wallingford, Conn., April 24, embodying the reports which had reached that point, and representing that both the American commander and Lord Percy had been killed, was sent South, receiving endorsements as it passed along, and reached Charleston, S. C., May 10 6.30 p.m. It is given in R. W. Gibbs's Doc. Hist. of the Amer. Rev., pp. 82-91. (See broadside mentioned above.) A military company, the Fusiliers, was at once formed, and its roll and career are registered in the Charleston Year Book, 1885, p. 342.