Crowds gathered in Boston, Massachusetts, on Friday evening to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s midnight ride to warn that British troops were approaching.
Those gathered enjoyed taking part in a reenactment of the patriot’s ride as he left his home, wife, and seven children behind, WCVB reported on Saturday.
Video footage shows Revere bidding his wife goodbye as the two embrace before his historic journey begins:
Crowds then walked by the Old North Church where, in 1775, lantern signals were placed in the bell tower.
Video footage taken on Friday shows the Old North Church lit up with the words “Let the warning ride forth once more: Tyranny is at our door”:
Old North Illuminated Executive Director Nikki Stewart explained, “A lot of folks think that the lantern signal is to Revere, but it’s actually from Revere. So he passes the word to a friend … He quietly makes his way to the water, he gets in a rowboat, where he rows across to Charlestown, he picks up a horse at the Deacon Larkin House, then he’s off on his ride.”
According to the Paul Revere House website, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Revere as an express rider who carried news and important documents to different areas.
The site then detailed Revere’s mission, saying he contacted a friend who was believed to be Robert Newman, the sexton of Christ Church (now the Old North Church), telling him to put two lanterns in the church tower to signal fellow Sons of Liberty across the Charles River in case he was prevented from leaving town:
The two lanterns were a predetermined signal stating that the British troops planned to row “by sea” across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than march “by land” out Boston Neck.
Revere then stopped by his own house to pick up his boots and overcoat, and proceeded the short distance to Boston’s North End waterfront. There two friends rowed him across the river to Charlestown. Slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset in the darkness, Revere landed safely. After informing Colonel Conant and other local Sons of Liberty about recent events in Boston and verifying that they had seen his signals in the North Church tower, Revere borrowed a horse from John Larkin, a Charlestown merchant and a patriot sympathizer. While there, a member of the Committee of Safety named Richard Devens warned Revere that there were a number of British patrols in the area who might try to intercept him.
During his ride, Revere narrowly missed being captured outside Charlestown and changed his route to go through Medford where he warned of the British movements. He eventually arrived in Lexington after midnight.
A clip shows the reenactor riding his horse as crowds watched and cheered:
The WCVB article said there will be reenactments of the battles of Lexington and Concord on Saturday.
In a social media post on Friday, the White House said Revere’s ride helped ignite the American Revolution.
“Two hundred and fifty years later, we remember his courage—and the enduring spirit of liberty that defines our nation,” the post reads:
Per the Paul Revere House website, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘Paul Revere’s Ride,’ written in 1860 and published in 1861 in the Atlantic Monthly, transformed Paul Revere from a relatively obscure, although locally known, figure into a national folk hero.”
