“Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled”: Emerson and April 19th
A photograph of the Concord Museum's North Bridge Battle diorama, depicting a view that may be similar in perspective to the scene Phebe Emerson saw from her home on April 19, 1775. Photo by Daderot.
On the morning of April 19th 1775, the Emerson family watched history unfold. In the night, the British Army had marched roughly eighteen miles from Boston to Concord, seeking hidden colonial military supplies. Approximately 100 British redcoats were stationed at Concord’s North Bridge, beside what is now known as the Old Manse—the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s paternal grandparents, William and Phebe Emerson.
Reverend William Emerson was the town’s minister and chaplain of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress—the local legislature set up by the colonists following the “Intolerable Acts,” which included the repeal of Massachusetts’ colonial charter by the Crown government. He was out doing reconnaissance with the Concord militia that morning. At home with four children under six years old, his wife, Phebe, also witnessed the colonial militia meet the army at the North Bridge. Earlier that morning, blood had been shed in nearby Lexington. Her brother had recently been run out of Concord on threat of his life, under suspicion that he was a Loyalist spy. Although William’s exact whereabouts are unknown, the Emerson family was close enough to have smelled the musket-smoke, possibly recognized men as they fell, and to have heard the order given to the colonial militia to fire back on the British Army, beginning the American Revolutionary War. Phebe and William’s yet-unborn grandson Ralph Waldo Emerson would, sixty years later, famously call the militia’s first shots fired at Concord’s North Bridge, “the shot heard round the world.”
The Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1883 print by O.W.H. Upham.
In April 2025, Concord and neighboring towns are commemorating the 250th anniversary of April 19, 1775: the semiquincentennial of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. 150 years ago, in 1875, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s family and their neighbors celebrated the centennial. Preparations were a year in the making. Emerson served on the town’s General Committee of Invitations and the Committee of Reception. He also played a chief role in securing local sculptor Daniel Chester French’s commission for The Minute Man statue. His son, Dr. Edward Emerson, headed the dinner and decoration committee—responsible for decking the town’s edifices and trees with patriotic bunting, flags, and historical signs; trimming the speaker’s stage and dinner tents; and transforming the cattle show hall into an exquisite ballroom, professionally bedecked in flags and weaponry borrowed from the Armory. Edward was also a ceremonial marshal, although he had to miss the evening ball as he attended to a patient.
Concord’s centennial celebration was attended by President Grant and his cabinet. The town had underestimated the overwhelming spectator crowds who came by train. As part of the Reception Committee, the Emersons hosted as many as sixty people in their home for refreshments during the day—visitors who were not among those invitation and ticket holders entertained in the dinner tents. The family also had 14 personal house guests to stay, including the Emersons’ younger daughter, Edith, and two of her children. The Emersons’ elder daughter, Ellen—who enjoyed the festivities at the tents and helped her mother, Lidian, manage the household—regretted not being more hospitable, as other Concord households accommodated as many as forty guests to sleep! But her father had forbidden further invitations owing to their household duties on the Reception Committee.
The Minute Man statue by Daniel Chester French at the North Bridge in Concord, MA, with a verse from Emerson's “Concord Hymn” inscribed on the base. Photo by Leon H. Abdalian (1930).
At the ceremonies, 72-year-old Emerson delivered a short address dedicated to the unveiled Minute Man statue; the last of many speeches he gave for the town of Concord over forty years. The first stanza of his poem “Concord Hymn” was engraved on the new monument’s base:
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.
Emerson had composed the “Concord Hymn” in his home study shortly after he settled in town. The battlefield landscape and its history were familiar to Emerson from time staying at his grandparents’ home—inspiring, in part, his ideals for individual intellectual independence and his work toward crafting an original “American” literature. The poem was sung to the tune of “Old Hundredth” at the 1837 dedication of the obelisk Battle Monument, which stood on the opposite riverbank from the new 1875 Minute Man statue: Emerson’s words bridging Concord’s public memorialization of the April 19th 1775 events at the North Bridge.
— K.L. Martin, PhD, Emerson House guide
