Paul Revere

For the American musician and founder of Paul Revere & the Raiders, see Paul Revere (musician).

Paul Revere (/rɪˈvɪər/; December 21, 1734 O.S. (January 1, 1735 N.S.) – May 10, 1818) was an early United States Patriot and a leader of the American Revolution. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and worked there as a silversmith. He was married twice and became the father of 16 children.

Paul Revere
John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Paul Revere. c. 1768–1770, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Born	(1735-01-01)January 1, 1735 (O.S.: December 21, 1734) North End, Boston, Massachusetts Bay, British America
Died	May 10, 1818(1818-05-10) (aged 83) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Silversmith, colonial militia officer
Political party	Federalist
Spouse(s)	Sarah Orne (m. 1757; died 1773) Rachel Walker (m. 1773; died 1813)
Children	8 with Sarah Orne 8 with Rachel Walker including Joseph
Parent(s)	Apollos Rivoire (father)
Signature

Revere was a member of a group called The Sons of Liberty. This group wanted better treatment for the American colonies from the British government. Revere made a silver engraving of the Boston Massacre. This engraving made Americans even more angry with the British.

Revere was a courier and soldier in the American Revolution. After the Revolutionary War in 1801, he opened a metal foundry in Boston called the Revere Copper Company which was the first copper rolling mill in North America. It is still in operation today. He died in Boston, and was buried in the Granary Burying Ground. He is most famous for alerting the colonial militia that British soldiers were coming before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In 1860, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about this called "Paul Revere's Ride."

Midnight Ride

Revere is most famous for his "Midnight Ride". It happened on the night of April 18–19, 1775. British officials had learned that American Patriots (the leaders of the American Revolution) were storing guns in Concord, Massachusetts. They wanted to destroy the guns. The Patriots thought the British also wanted to capture Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams. The two leaders were staying in Lexington, Massachusetts. Revere and a man named William Dawes rode on horseback from Boston to Lexington, Massachusetts to warn Adams and Hancock that the British were coming. Revere warned other Patriots along the way.

People commonly believe that Paul Revere arrived in Lexington and shouted his famous quote ("The British are coming!"), but this is false. When Revere arrived in Lexington, he quietly woke up the people and told them about the British to avoid drawing attention to himself. Revere was soon joined by Dawes, who also told the people that the British soldiers were coming. In Concord, Samuel Prescott joined Revere and Dawes. All three were stopped by British soldiers in a field in the city of Lincoln, Massachusetts. Prescott and Dawes escaped quickly. However, the British soldiers held Revere for about an hour before letting him go. Because his horse was gone, Revere ran back to Lexington, where the fighting had already begun. Almost a hundred years later, Paul Revere's Ride revived his fame.

Paul Revere Media

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  Paul Revere's dental tools.

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  The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5, 1770, a copper engraving by Paul Revere modeled on a drawing by Henry Pelham, 1770.

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  An eight-pence bill engraved and printed by Revere in 1778. The engraving of the pine tree on the verso (back of the bill) is likely the work of silversmith and engraver Nathaniel Hurd.

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  Drawing depicting the arrival of the French fleet in Narragansett Bay in 1778

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  Tea urn for Hannah Rowe, 1791, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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  Revere Coat-of-Arms engraved by Paul Revere

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  1813 portrait of Revere by Gilbert Stuart

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  Extract from membership register for Revere, Warren and Palfrey.

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  Paul Revere's grave site in the Granary Burying Ground

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  Paul Revere Equestrian Statue by Cyrus Edwin Dallin on Paul Revere Mall (2022)

Further reading

• Alexander, John (2002). Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9780742521148.
• Boatner, Mark Mayo, III (1975) [1964]. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Library of Military History. New York: David McKay. ISBN 978-0-618-00194-1.
• Brooks, Victor (1999). The Boston Campaign: April 1775 – March 1776. Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Combined Publishing. ISBN 978-0-585-23453-3.
• Drake, Samuel Adams (1899). Historic Mansions and Highways Around Boston. Boston: Little, Brown. p. 128. OCLC 1838072.
• Falino, Jeannine (2001). "The Pride Which Pervades thro every Class": The Customers of Paul Revere. Boston, Massachusetts: University Press of Virginia.
• Federhen, Deborah (1988). From Artisan to Entrepreneur: Paul Revere's Silver Shop Operation. Boston, Massachusetts: Paul Revere Memorial Association.
• Fischer, David Hackett (1994). Paul Revere's ride. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508847-6. This work is extensively footnoted, and contains a voluminous list of primary resources concerning all aspects of the Revere's ride and the battles at Lexington and Concord.
• Forbes, Esther (1999) [1942]. Paul Revere and the World He Lived in. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-00194-1.
• Gettemy, Charles (1905). The True Story of Paul Revere. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 1375230.
• Goss, Elbridge Henry (1891). The Life of Colonel Paul Revere. Boston: J. G. Cupples. OCLC 3589045. (Volume 2)
• Ketchum, Robert (1999) [1974]. Decisive Day: The Battle For Bunker Hill. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 9780805060997.
• Martello, Robert (2010). Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise. Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• McDonald, Forrest; McDonald, Ellen (April 1980). "The Ethnic Origins of the American People, 1790". The William and Mary Quarterly. Third. 37 (2): 179–199. doi:10.2307/1919495. JSTOR 1919495.
• McNamara, John (1978). History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names, Borough of the Bronx, New York City. Fleischmanns, New York: Harbor Hill Books.
• Miller, Joel J. (2010). The Revolutionary Paul Revere. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson. ISBN 978-1-59555-074-3.
• Murrin, John M.; et al. (2002) [1996]. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume I: To 1877. Florence, Kentucky: Wadsworth–Thomson Learning.
• Paul Revere, Artisan, Businessman and Patriot: The Man Behind the Myth. Boston: Paul Revere Memorial Association (PRMA). 1988.
• Revere, Paul (1961). Paul Revere's Three Accounts of His Famous Ride. Introduction by Edmund Morgan. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. ISBN 978-0-9619999-0-2.
• Ruland, Richard; Bradbury, Malcolm (1991). From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature. New York: Viking.
• Schmidt, Leah A (2002). Revere Beach. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-1030-9.
• Steblecki, Edith J. (1985). Paul Revere and Freemasonry. Boston: Paul Revere Memorial Association (PRMA). OCLC 17485269.
• Triber, Jayne (1998). A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1-55849-139-7.
• United States, National Archives and Records Service. Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. National Archives and Records Administration, General Services Administration.
• Upham, Warren (1920). Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origin and Historic Significance. St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society. OCLC 34232868.
• Waters, Deborah Dependahl (2013). A Handsome Cupboard of Plate: Early American Silver in the Cahn Collection. Cambridge, England: John Adamson. ISBN 978-1-898565-11-6.

Other websites

•   "Revere, Paul". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh). (1911). Cambridge University Press. 
• Paul Revere Heritage Project
• The Paul Revere House
  • An interactive map showing the routes taken by Revere, Dawes, and Prescott
• Original copper engravings and other documents in collections of the Massachusetts State Archives
• Revere Rolling Mill – about the endangered original Revere copper works site in Canton, MA
• Booknotes interview with David Hackett Fischer on Paul Revere's Ride, July 17, 1994.
• Works by Paul Revere at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)