CHAPTER VI.

THE WOMEN OF THE AMERICAN

T has begun."

"IT

REVOLUTION.

BY MRS. ELROY M. AVERY.*

No need to tell the eager listeners the meaning. of those words, for the year was 1775, the day April 19th, and the speaker a messenger from Lexington, "herald of battle, fate and fear."

As sped the "fiery cross" of Roderick Dhu, so sped the tidings. of that pregnant hour from lip to lip, from heart to heart, for in every village and at every farm-yard gate sounded the "Lexington Alarm.” Ere the last gun had been fired on Concord Green, church bells in many a pleasant town were calling the devout to action as the pulpits below had been calling them for many a year."

Each messenger was another Cadmus, “armed men sprang up on every side as he sowed his tidings," and

"From the grey sire, whose trembling hand

Could scarcely buckle on his brand,

To the raw boy, whose shaft and bow,
Were yet scarce terror to the crow,

Each valley, each sequestered glen,

Mustered its little hoard of men."

Ere the sun sank in the west, "Massachusetts, New England, America were closing around the city, the siege of Boston and the war of American Independence had begun."

"Leave untended the herd,

The flock without shelter,
Leave the corpse uninterred,
The bride at the altar,"

was the spirit of the times.

* Member Society-" Daughters of the American Revolution."

But mothers took up the hoe that the fathers laid down, and the girls drove home the cows that the boys forsook for battle, and wives equipped their husbands for the most sublime struggle that the world had ever seen, and from every fireside woman sent forth, with her blessing and prayer, the minute-man of the Revolution, "who carried a bayonet that thought, and whose musket loaded with a principle, brought down not a man, but a system."

The women sought not honors a-field, they served not their country in town meeting or legislative hall, but they brought up their children to love honor more than life, liberty more than fame, and to believe that the right will prevail. They spun not only wool, but wisdom, not only linen fibre, but noble thoughts. With their great brown looms, they wove the homespun to protect their sons while "working in the dismal trench, out in the midnight air," but taught them that "there is no better breast plate than a heart untainted. Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just."

On this eventful day, woman took her rightful place in the great conflict. Remember Captain Miles, "who went to battle as he went to church"; remember Isaac Davis, "who making way for his countrymen like Arnold Winkelreid at Sempach," fell dead at Concord bridge; remember the minute-men who "saved civil liberty in two hemispheres;" but do not forget Mrs. Barrett, whose wit and energy contributed to the great cause, or the widow Brown, who counted not the cost when her country called; forget not Mrs. Wood, or Hannah Burns, or the other faithful matrons of Concord, who at the outset proved that "the women of New England are entitled to equal reverence with the men."

No force of circumstances could have made "a Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother" out of a mere toy, but these women came of heroic stock, the blood of martyrs flowed in their veins, their mothers had borne noble part in the old French and Indian war, and they started up at the outset ready armed with self-command and selfsacrifice

From Dedham, every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty hastened to the front, while the women of the households, led by the ready and efficient Mrs. Draper, prepared long tables by the highway, loaded with bread and cheese and cups of foaming cider, that

the patriot that marched might eat. There were refreshed the minute-men, who hastened out of Worcester "one way as the news went out the other, which flying over the mountains sent Berkshire to Bunker Hill." In another part of the town, Mrs. Pond, as patriotic but not as forehanded, was feeding the weary, hungry men with mush and milk till her last grain of golden dust came bubbling from the huge caldron. Surely the kneading bowl and the mush kettle furnished ammunition for the war not less potent than powder and ball.

When the commander-in-chief called for gifts of pewter and lead, these same women brought forth their precious hoard, the children's porringers, the matron's platters and pans, loved heirlooms and rich souvenirs, and willing and determined hands fashioned them into bullets. Such was the aid rendered by women in every town, and though history is silent concerning their deeds, and their names are found on no "military roll," shall we not say that women took their full part in the siege of Boston.

"As for me I will work willingly with my hands; there is occasion for all my industry and economy," writes Abigail Adams.

“I should blush if in any instance the weak passion of my sex should damp the fortitude, the patriotism and the manly heroism of yours," says Mercy Warren, while another pens these earnest words, "I know this as free I can die but once; but as a slave I shall not be worthy of life."

High were the thoughts of the women of the revolution, steadfast their courage, useful the work of their hands, and well were they skilled in the noble "household arts."

“Here are five blankets; what matter how I sleep, if the boys are only warm;" said Mrs. Parmelee, a Connecticut matron, who five times had equipped her son, the brave young captain of a light horse troop. When the great land owner, the free-handed patroon, Van Rensselaer raised a company among his tenants for the Northern Army, his wife gathered the women around her and prepared suits of thick cloth of their own spinning, and finished off the equipment with long thick stockings of their own knitting. La Fayette, tarrying a day in the gracious household, received a pair, the memory of which he recalled with grateful heart to his aged hostess when he again became her guest in 1824. In the City of Brotherly Love, the women