Paul Revere

Paul Revere was born in Boston’s North End on December 21, 1734, according to the Old Style calendar, or January 1, 1735, in the modern system. He died on May 10, 1818. A silversmith, military officer, and industrialist, he became a key figure in the early months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts. His most famous act was a midnight ride in 1775, warning minutemen that British troops were approaching before the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Revere’s father, Apollos Rivoire, was a French Huguenot who arrived in Boston at age 13 and apprenticed with silversmith John Coney. By 1729, he had anglicized his name to Paul Revere and married Deborah Hitchborn, whose family, of English origin, had run a small shipping wharf in Boston since the 1640s. Paul was the third of twelve children and the eldest surviving son. He grew up surrounded by the Hitchborn family and never learned his father’s native French. At thirteen, he left school to apprentice with his father, a trade that connected him to a wide range of Boston society—connections that later proved useful during the Revolution.

In 1750, at fifteen, Revere helped ring the new bells at Christ Church (the Old North Church). He later began attending services at the West Church, led by the provocative minister Jonathan Mayhew. His father, who raised him in the Calvinist New Brick Church, disapproved and reportedly beat him once for it. Revere returned to his father’s church, but he remained friends with Mayhew and eventually went back to the West Church in the late 1760s.

Revere’s father died in 1754, when Paul was too young to legally run the family silver shop. In February 1756, during the French and Indian War, he enlisted in the provincial army—likely because the economy was weak and military pay was steady. He became a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment and spent that summer at Fort William Henry in New York, part of a failed plan to capture Fort St. Frédéric. He left the army soon after, returned to Boston, and took over the silver shop in his own name. On August 4, 1757, he married Sarah Orne; their first child was born eight months later. The couple had eight children, but two died young.

After the Seven Years’ War, a British recession hurt Revere’s business, and the Stamp Act of 1765 made things worse. By late 1765, someone tried to seize his property. To make ends meet, he even took up dentistry. One of his patients was Joseph Warren, a physician and political leader who became a close friend. Both were active in the same Masonic lodges. In 1765, Revere joined the Sons of Liberty, a militant group opposing British policies.

Starting in 1765, Revere produced political engravings. His most famous is a depiction of the March 1770 Boston Massacre, which he engraved from Henry Pelham’s drawing without permission. The engraving was colored by another man and printed by a fourth, but only Revere was credited. Pelham later wrote Revere a letter accusing him of theft, saying he felt “robbed as truly as if you had plundered me on the highway.” He hoped the world would know of Revere’s dishonorable actions.

In 1770, Revere bought a house on North Square in Boston’s North End, which is now a museum. During the Revolution, he supported the Patriot cause and helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to track British troop movements. His midnight ride made him a folk hero, later dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” He also served as an officer in the Massachusetts Militia, but his military career ended after the Penobscot Expedition, a disastrous American campaign for which he was cleared of blame.

After the war, Revere returned to silversmithing. He used profits from his growing business to fund work in iron casting, bronze bells and cannons, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. In 1800, he became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels.