Introduction: In this article – in honor of the upcoming Patriots’ Day celebration – Melissa Davenport Berry describes Vice President Dawes in 1925 recreating his famous ancestor’s warning ride in 1775. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “Concord Hymn,” 1837

Today I look back on past Patriots’ Day celebrations in Massachusetts preserved in special collections and GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives.

Patriots’ Day is an official state holiday in Massachusetts (and celebrated in seven other states) commemorating the first battle of the American Revolution on 19 April 1775 in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, and the “Shot Heard Round the World.”

In this photo collage we see reenactors of the Revolutionary War’s first battle. The initial, tense confrontation occurred at Lexington Green, but the phrase “the shot heard round the world” is most closely associated with the skirmish at the Old North Bridge in Concord.

William Dawes Jr. – Another Patriot Rider (Not Paul Revere)

On 20 April 1925, thousands gathered for the Patriots’ Day celebration, specifically in the Lexington and Arlington area, and Vice President Charles Gate Dawes was a guest of honor.

He had been sworn in as the nation’s 30th vice president in March 1925 with his running mate, President John Calvin Coolidge.

Vice President Dawes was a direct descendant of William Dawes Jr., renowned for his historic ride (along with Paul Revere and others) on 18 April 1775 to warn the minutemen that the British were coming.

Dr. Joseph Warren had been informed of British plans to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Lexington. He sent dispatchers to warn them about the impending arrival of British troops.

Revere’s deposition in 1775 records:

“After I had been there [Lexington] about half an hour Mr. Dawes arrived, who came from Boston over the neck. We set off together for Concord.”

The Boston Herald reported on Vice President Dewe’s participation in the Patriots’ Day celebratory events with a headline that reads:

“Dawes Rides as Did His Forbear: Vice-Presidential Journey over Famous Route Is Continuous Ovation. Crowds Cheer Him as Patriot of 1925.”

This article reports:

Gen. Charles G. Dawes, Vice President of the United States, rode yesterday over the ground traversed by his famous ancestor, William Dawes Jr., in spreading the alarm that prepared the Middlesex Minute Men for the coming of the British troops in 1775 and resulted, eventually, in the birth of the nation.

But the ride of the twentieth century Dawes, one of the most impressive single events in the Lexington-Concord celebration, was in striking contrast to that of his illustrious predecessor. The first to bring national fame to the family name galloped on horseback over rough roads through the darkness, calling out his warning at the widely scattered habitants of the colonists. His equally famed descendant rode yesterday in a luxurious limousine, over modern macadamized highways, through densely populated communities to the acclaim of more than 100,000 present-day patriots.

Below are images taken that day from the scrapbook collection of Boston’s Mayor James Michael Curley, housed at the College of the Holy Cross.

When Dawes Meets Dawes

Vice President Hands Orders to “Courier Dawes”

“Dawes & Coolidge” Family Partnership

Henry Ware Holland, a Harvard graduate of Boston, was the Dawes genealogist who first traced Vice President Dawe’s lineage. For readers who are also descendants there is a society you can join: The Descendants of William Dawes.

A link was found between Coolidge and Dawes that went back generations. Before they were elected, the Los Angeles Examiner featured a very interesting story on the two men running for the ticket.

This article reports:

The Coolidge and Dawes families are not so unacquainted as the distance between Massachusetts and Illinois might make it appear. Their ancestors knew each other and worked together. Now it is “Coolidge and Dawes,” candidates for the two highest offices in the land.

Many years ago, about 1770, it was “Dawes & Coolidge,” grocers of Worcester, Mass.

The Dawes of the firm was the great-great-great-grandfather of the Republican nominee for vice president. The Coolidge of the firm was an ancestor of the President of the United States.

The grocer Dawes was William, referred to usually as “the patriot,” who was the companion of Paul Revere on his famous ride.

The Daweses for five generations up to that time were builders and masons, but William’s father had a clubbed foot and could not follow the trade. He became a goldsmith. In 1742 he married Lydie, daughter of Nicholas Boone, a bookseller of Boston, who, one authority asserts, published the first newspaper in America. Nine children were born of this marriage, of whom William “the patriot” was the second, born September 6, 1745. The third child was a girl named Lydie, who was born February 10, 1747. She married John Coolidge on January 5, 1772.

I found a newspaper clip in which William Dawes Jr. announces the dissolution of the “Dawes & Coolidge” company in 1785.

Stay tuned for more Patriots’ Day history!

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Note on the header image: “The Lexington Minuteman,” by Henry Hudson Kitson, erected in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1900. Credit: Daderot; Wikimedia Commons.