The Jason Russell House is a historic house in Arlington, Massachusetts, where at least twenty-one colonial combatants died[1] fighting on the first day of the American Revolutionary War, April 19, 1775 (the Battles of Lexington and Concord). The house was purchased in 1923 by the Arlington Historical Society which restored it in 1926 and now operates it as a museum.
About 1745, a farmer named Jason Russell constructed the house on pasture land he inherited in 1738.[2] To have the front facing south, in the New England tradition, he placed the north side angled toward the Concord Road (now Massachusetts Avenue), so that the east-facing front was facing slightly south. The house is a typical New England farmhouse with five windows across the front, a door in the center and a large chimney in the middle of a pitched roof. There is some evidence that components in the hall (or kitchen) and its chamber above, as well as the garret, were salvaged from Grandfather Jason's original structure of 1680. The hall and parlor of the house, with their chambers and the garret, are essentially unchanged today, although in 1814 a porch (or vestibule) was added to the front door, and further extensions were subsequently added to the sides around 1863. Inside the central part are four rooms: to the left of the entry are the kitchen and children's chamber (above), and to the right, the parlor and parlor chamber. The kitchen ceiling retains its original whitewash and sponge painting decorative surface treatment. The outside walls may have been plastered originally, but in 1924, when the house was restored, wood sheathing was installed.[3]
Robert Nylander proposed in 1964 that the house was built in two stages; however, research conducted in 2012 by the Dendrochronology Laboratory at Oxford University confirms that the home was erected during a single campaign in 1745, as had been maintained by Russell family lore.[4] The Oxford study also revealed that many of the timbers used in the house were made from lumber cut in 1684–85 or earlier and was probably salvaged from an older building on the property.[5]
April 19, 1775
Monument in the Old Burying Ground, Arlington, Massachusetts, to twelve slain on April 19, 1775.
On April 19, 1775, the house and its surrounding yard was the site of one of the biggest conflicts of the first battle in the Revolutionary War, resulting in more colonial troop deaths than anywhere else along the battle road.[6] As British troops marched back towards Boston, heavy fighting occurred along their route through Arlington (then Menotomy). Houses along the way were ransacked and plundered by the retreating British.[7] The running battle continued to Jason Russell's house, where Russell was joined by men from Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Salem, Dedham, and Needham at his house.
The history of the Jason Russell House on April 19, 1775, is also the history of a family. Jason and Elizabeth Russell had raised six surviving children here. Three had married and moved to Mason, New Hampshire; a fourth, Thomas had established a grocery store across the street in 1773[8] and had married the following year.[9] Remaining at home were Elizabeth (called Betsey by the family), who was 18, and Noah, who had just turned 12 the previous month.[10]
But on that day the history of the house and yard became the history of a whole region as part of the Battle of Menotomy.
Around midnight of the night before, a rider named Paul Revere had passed the house on his mission to warn that the British regulars (soldiers) would be coming by on their way to Lexington and, ultimately, to Concord.
About half an hour later William Dawes would pass by with the same message.[11]
And around 2 in the morning about 700 troops under the command of Lieutenant Col. Francis Smith would march “quietly” by.[12]
The Troops Assemble
Meanwhile, the rides of Revere and Dawes triggered a flexible notification system (express riders as well as bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires, and a trumpet) to let the towns within 25 miles of Boston know that a sizable body of troops was on the move. Accordingly, militias and minutemen companies from many outlying communities assembled and began marches that would eventually bring them to Jason Russell's property.[13]
Needham dispatched three companies of militia comprising 185 men.[14] Five of them would never return home.[15]
Around 9 am troops began to assemble in Danvers, including the part that is now Peabody, comprising two companies of minutemen under Israel Hutchinson and Gideon Foster as well as three militias under Samuel Flint, Samuel Eppes, and Jeremiah Page. These left at different times and via different routes but all arrived in Menotomy about the same time.[16] One body of minutemen had gathered at the Bell Tavern, at the corner of what is now Main and Washington in Peabody. Setting out at 10, they covered 16 miles in 4 hours, to arrive in Menotomy by early afternoon.[17] The Town of Beverly contributed three companies of militia, some of whom were trained as minutemen.[18] In all, perhaps 300 men assembled from just Danvers, Peabody, and Beverly.[19]
Around noon or so, Jason Russell, who was “old” (59[20]) and lame, started bringing his family up to the George Prentiss house, beyond the ridge of the hill behind the house, where they could be safe with others. But partway up, he let the family go on alone and returned “to look after things at home.”[21] On his arrival, provincial militias were already stationing themselves around the house. From bundles of shingles that were lying about, because Jason had been preparing to reshingle, he and some provincial militias formed a barricade behind his gate, thinking this would be a good position from which to fire on the enemy as they returned.[22]
Some men from Danvers went into a “walled enclosure” and reinforced that protection with additional shingles.[23] Other troops stationed themselves among the trees on the property, such as those in the orchard on the slope behind (on the south side of) the house. Danvers's Gideon Foster, having been warned by the more experienced Hutchinson of the possibility of a flanking attack, also set up among the trees rather than behind barricades.[24]
Jason and the provincial militias positioned themselves somewhat back from the road itself. At that time, a little west of Russell's house, the road traversed a hilly area that obscured the provincials’ view of the approaching armies – as well as the armies' view of the provincials.[25] On the far side of the road lay a mill pond with a “margin” that extended across to the space in front of the provincials.[26] A brook that flowed between Russell's house and that of his northerly neighbor[27] may have marked the near edge of the margin.
The Battle
“Unfortunately, Jason Russell and the others had made one great miscalculation....”[28] Around four o'clock the British left the Foot of the Rocks, about a mile up the road, and while the main column was coming by the main road, flanking parties were also advancing on both sides.[29] The provincials had not counted on the flanking parties.[30]
While the troops were still on their way, Ammi Cutter, Jason's neighbor on the north side of the road, spotted Russell among the militias, crossed over the road and the brook, and begged Jason to go to a safer spot. But Jason replied, “An Englishman's home is his castle,” and stayed with the waiting ambush.[31] As Cutter returned across the hollow, the north side flanking party spotted him and took pot shots at him. He managed to reach the old mill, where he tripped and fell among some logs, with bullets sending chips of bark all around him. Fortunately, the flanking party left him for dead and passed on.[32]
Meanwhile, the southside flankers came upon the provincials stationed on the slope that rose south of the house.[33] Jotham Webb, a minuteman serving under Danvers’ Colonel Hutchinson,[34] was “shot through the body and killed by the first fire.”[35] Abednego Ramsdell of Lynn also "fell immediately”.[36][37] Reuben Kennison, from Beverly, was felled by British musket balls and bayoneted to boot.[38]
Two friends, Daniel Townsend and Timothy Munroe, who were from the part of Lynn that became Lynnfield, were standing in the yard behind the house, firing at the British troops. Then, according to Lewis and Newhall,
"Townsend had just fired, and exclaimed, 'There is another redcoat down,' when Munroe, looking round, saw, to his astonishment, that they were completely hemmed in by the flank guard of the British army, who were coming down through the fields behind them. They immediately ran into the house, and sought for the cellar; but no cellar was there. They looked for a closet, but there was none. All this time, which was indeed but a moment, the balls were pouring through the back windows, making havoc of the glass. Townsend leaped through the end window, carrying the sash and all with him, and instantly fell dead. Munroe followed, and ran for his life. He passed for a long distance between the parties, many of whom discharged their guns at him. As he passed the last soldier, who stopped to fire, he heard the redcoat exclaim, 'Damn the Yankee! He is bullet proof – let him go!' Mr. Munroe had one ball through his leg, and thirty-two bullet holes through his clothes and hat. Even the metal buttons of his waistcoat were shot off."[39]
And it was not just the window fragments that did Townsend in; he had also been shot through with seven bullets.[40]
Lieut. John Bacon of Needham was positioned behind a stone wall, next to a veteran nicknamed “Old Hawes,” when Hawes exclaimed “Run, or you are dead; here's the side guard.” Bacon tried to clamber over the wall, but was shot through near the third button on his vest – and was later found laid out with the others inside the house.[41]
As the flankers closed in and the main body of regulars was advancing along Concord Road, Jason Russell and a number of other troops rushed to take refuge in the house. It is said that, because Russell was old and lame, he was in the rear and was felled by two bullets at his own doorstep, then received "eleven bayonet stabs from the exasperated enemy as they passed in and out."[42]
Eight of the colonials who did manage to find their way into the house – a combination of men from Danvers, Beverly, and Lynn – also managed to find their way to the basement. They were safe there (at least for the time being), as any redcoat who tried to open the basement door and come down could easily be shot himself, and one did yield his life in the attempt.[43] Another British regular was shot elsewhere on the premises.[44]
Three men from the now-Peabody part of Danvers – George Southwick, Joseph Bell, and Dennison Wallis – managed to find their way upstairs. Sensing a lull, they then ventured down the stairs with Southwick in the lead, till suddenly the outside door was flung open to admit British soldiers. The outcome was gruesome; the first soldier swung his sword and killed Southwick by cleaving his head.[45]
Joseph Bell was taken prisoner and spent the next two months of his life aboard a British frigate.[46]
Dennison Wallis also surrendered and was relieved of his watch and wallet. Meanwhile, outside, three or four of the Danvers men from the enclosure, having nowhere to go, had surrendered as prisoners of war ... but then “were butchered with absolute severity.”[47] When Wallis saw the British killing the others, he took off running. He received twelve or thirteen bullets in the attempt and finally fell beside a wall that he was trying to jump over.[48] Fortunately, the British left him for dead, and he lived to tell the tale.[49]
Were there still others who rushed into the house ahead of Jason Russell?
None of them survived to tell the story.
Twelve bodies would be found on the kitchen floor at the end of the day[50].Some of these may have died in the house, yet many would eventually be found to have been killed outside. With some bodies being brought in, and others perhaps reclaimed, the number who died within remains uncertain. (See “The Bodies on the Floor” below for further detail.)
But in an unsigned letter a British soldier would later described some events of that day -- events that may well have occurred at Jason's house -- in this way:
“In another house which was long defended by eight resolute fellows, the grenadiers at last got possession, when after having run their bayonets into seven, the eighth continued to abuse them with all the [beastlike rage] of a true Cromwellian, and but a moment before he quitted this world applied such epithets as I must leave unmentioned..."[51]
Such a bloodletting would be consistent with the copious amounts of blood that surrounded the bodies at the end of the day.[52]
More fortunate were the troops under Gideon Foster's command. When they found themselves nearly surrounded, Foster led them down the hill, along the margin that extended from the mill pond into Russell's property, and across the road in front of the advancing British column, finally finding a safe position behind a ditch wall on the north. From there, they continued firing at the retreating British until the column passed beyond reach. Foster himself believed that he fired as many as eleven times with two balls each that day.[53]
Aftermath
Returning the Casualties to Their Homes
After the fighting was over, Timothy Munroe, who had escaped by following his companion Daniel Townsend through the south window, returned to claim his friend's body, and joined Townsend's brother and others in returning the body to Lynn End (later Lynnfield) that same night.[54]
Townsend and his wife Zerviah had been married just over eleven years, and he left behind five small children.[55] Zerviah never recovered from the shock and died the following October.[56] A historical marker now rests at the site of their one-time home.[57] Munroe kept his own bullet-riddled clothes as a souvenir until he tired of showing them.[58]
That night of the 19th the men of Danvers (including what is now Peabody) gathered their slain and retired to Medford, the town next door to Menotomy, for the night. They sent John Sawyer back to Danvers with the news of the day.[59] A number of women were gathered in the New Mills section. Among them Lydia Webb, who had married Jotham only days earlier,[60] thus learned from Sawyer's report that she had that day become a widow.[61]
The next morning, learning that the British had all returned to Boston, the Danvers men gathered up their slain and brought them back to town by ox-cart.[62] They were met by the townspeople, and the sexton of the south parish drove four of them to the home of Samuel Cook, Sr. on Central Street in what is now Peabody. These four were Samuel Cook, Jr., George Southwick, Henry Jacobs, Jr., and Ebenezer Goldthwait.[63]
The other three belonged to Capt. Hutchinson's company and were brought in the evening of that day to their captain's home in Danversport. Their names were Benjamin Daland, Jr., Perley Putnam, and Jotham Webb.[64]
Also on the 20th, the body of Reuben Kennison was returned to the Ryan Side neighborhood of Beverly to be buried in a plot next to the farm where he had been living and working with his wife Apphia; they had been married for less than a year.[65] Apphia later remarried, but when she died in 1842 at the age of 89, she still had in her possession the shirt that Reuben had been wearing on April 19, 1775.[66]
The Bodies on the Floor
Bullet holes in the main staircase of the house are still visible.
Speaking in 1864, Samuel Smith reported that "[o]ur people gathered up the Americans who were killed in and about the house, and laid them side by side in the south room, and when Mrs. Russell came back to her home she found them there, weltering in their own blood, her husband and eleven others. She said that the blood in the room was almost ankle deep. The house itself was riddled with bullets, and the marks of them in many places are still visible. The same blood-stained floor remained on that room till a year ago" - that is, until 1863.[67]
Smith reported that the bodies were buried in haste, at least for the time being:
“In the consternation and fear of that hour, the dead were placed on a sled, and drawn by a yoke of oxen upon the bare ground to the grave-yard. A single grave was hastily dug, and the twelve were laid in it side by side, “head to point,” with their clothes on just as they fell.”[68]
A Capt. William Adams, who lived nearby, is reported to have brought a sheet from his house for Jason himself, as he could not bear to see his neighbor buried without a winding-sheet.[69]
A story passed down to John Bacon's great-grandson emphasizes how quickly the twelve were buried, and notes that the men's outer clothes must have been saved off before the burial:
“Immediately on receiving the news my grandfather (son of Lieut. Bacon) went off to see how it was, and near night, April 20, came home with his clothes, the body having been buried at West Cambridge. The clothes were found in the school-house, and the moment grandfather entered the room he knew the old striped hat which was put on top of the roll of clothes.”[70]
A plain obelisk of New Hampshire granite was later raised above the grave. The inscription on the monument reads:
"Erected by the Inhabitants of West Cambridge, A.D. 1848, over the common grave of Jason Russell, Jason Winship, Jabez Wyman and nine others, who were slain in this town by the British Troops on their retreat from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775. Being among the first to lay down their lives in the struggle for American Independence."[71]
The names of the other nine bodies were still unknown in 1880,[72] but by 1894[73] someone had figured out that they were:
Of the twelve, a number are known to have been killed outside the house. As noted above, Jason Russell himself is said to have been felled on his own doorstep, while Abednego Ramsdell was one of the first to be killed by the flankers rounding the south side of the house, and Lieut. John Bacon lost his life trying to escape over a wall. Jonathan Parker was killed in a barn after being surprised there by a flank guard.[74] Two others, Jabez Wyman and Jacob Winship, died not at Jason Russell's house, but "were most barbarously killed and mutilated" down the road at Cooper's tavern,[75] and were evidently placed with the others after the fighting had ceased. Others may have been killed inside, although other bodies could have been added or removed before Mrs. Russell returned home to see them.
Russell Family
Jason Russell's estate was settled in 1776. His house and 117 acres of land were divided between Noah, his only son left at home, and his widow, Elizabeth. She received the 17 acres the house was standing on together with half the house, "Libberty to ues [sic] the oven when wanted" and additional privileges of use, including space in the barn. Noah received the other half of the house, half the barn and some lands. Other children got other parts of the estate. Elizabeth Russell lived in her northerly rooms until the eleventh of August 1786 when she died aged 65.[76]
↑ King, p. 12; Chase p. 130. In 1896 the road, which had been renamed Massachusetts Avenue in 1894, was regraded to allow the Boston Elevated Street Railway to extend its tracks to Arlington Heights, along with leveling out some of the adjoining land (Parker, p. 160), so that the obscuring hill is no longer evident.
↑ Tagliapietra, Margaret (Townsend) (1909). Townsend--Townshend, 1066-1909: the history, genealogy and alliances of the English and American house of Townsend. New York: Press of the Broadway publishing company. p.29.
↑ Wells p. 219. Here Wells is quoting an 1898 article by Thomas R. Southwick, almost certainly the grandson of the George Southwick featured here. ("Thomas Harding Southwick", Family Search, retrieved January 24, 2025)
↑ Nylander p. 38. Nylander does not provide a citation for this dramatic story. But if it is authentic, there is no other site along the entire Battle Road for that day, except for the Lexington Common, where as many as eight colonials could have died in one place, according to the list in [MSSAR 1894].
↑ Hurd p. 520. A separate historiographic tradition (Sanderson 1909 p. 48, Philbrick p. 157) claims that the burial did not occur until two days after the battle
↑ [MSSAR 1894] pp. 126-127. The names are echoed by Parker p. 185 and Chase pp. 134-135, although the town names vary. The towns assigned by Parker are chosen here, as they agree with Hurd p. 520, for example, that Jonathan Parker was from Needham.
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