GENERAL INFORMATION
As the British advance column reached Lexington, MA (April 19,1775), they came
upon a group of militia (the minuteman). After a brief exchange of shots
in which several Americans were killed, the Americans withdrew and the British
advanced to Concord. Captain John Parker, the first American to fall in
the war, is immortalized in a bronze sculpture on the Lexington Green.
The sculpture is more popularly known as the Lexington Minuteman, but Baston
kept the original name.
Lance kept the design in the 1976 transition to
Hudson but discontinued it forever on October 31, 1977.
(Additional
Information) On April 19, 1875, 100 years to the day the opening skirmish of the American
Revolution, the town of Concord, Massachusetts unveiled its famous Minuteman
Statue. It was dedicated to the
patriots who responded to the first alarm in an inconclusive Concord battle,
the first skirmish in the long struggle for American independence.
The sculptor was 22-year old Daniel Chester French.
French was then unknown although clearly talented.
He had recently flunked out of MIT but presumably paid more attention
when he attended Louisa May Alcott’s drawing class for girls.
He went on to create other statutes familiar to Sebastian collectors,
John Harvard (SML-25) and the memorial to Abraham Lincoln in our nation’s
capital (SML-291). Also, it did
not count against the young French that his hometown was Concord and his
father happened to be a local judge. His
heroic bronze minuteman was enthusiastically received. Even President Ulysses
S. Grant (SML-514) was on hand at its dedication although the young artist was
not; he had left for Italy to continue his studies.
Lexington,
realizing that it did not have a “minuteman to spare - although it was now a
full 25 years after the Concord dedication - decided to have its own memorial.
Indeed, the battle had moved from Concord to Lexington where the first
Americans fell on that eventful mid-April day.
The first American killed was Captain John Parker.
But it seems that any estrangement towards the British redcoats was now
history. The town hired English
sculptor Sir Henry Hudson Kitson to create its memorial.
For his model Sir Henry chose an athletic young man, Arthur G. Mather
of Medford, Massachusetts. Keen
observers noted that not only Kitson was English but so even was his model;
Mr. Mather had immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 11.
However, once the rivalry was more closely examined, Captain Isaac
Davis, supposedly the figure represented in the earlier Concord statue, was
also born in England. However, by
the time 1775 had rolled around, Davis’ allegiance was clearly with the
rebel cause.
