A rare recording has resurfaced from the repository of GBH Archives. It’s the voice of the late Dr. Alfred Worcester of Waltham, who at age 95, shared an eyewitness account of the first Patriots’ Day, April 18, 1775, as told to him by his great-grandmother. She had witnessed the dramatic events firsthand as a child growing up in Waltham.
Worcester, a trailblazing physician, was interviewed by Parker Wheatley, who was then the general manager of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council.
You can hear an excerpt from that recording above, or listen to the full, 14-minute broadcast from 1950 below.
Parker Wheatley: "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." That’s how Ralph Waldo Emerson described the battle at the Concord Bridge in his "Concord Hymn."
What did the Battle of Lexington and Concord mean to people living here in 1775? This afternoon Dr. Alfred Worcester will tell you what the Battle of Lexington meant to his great-grandmother, who was a little girl living in Waltham 175 years ago on the original Patriot’s Day.
Dr. Worcester was told this story by his great-grandmother 90 years ago, and he has been passing it on for many years. Today, for the first time, Dr. Worcester tells this story on the radio, transcribed direct from the study of his home in Waltham by the Lowell Institute in cooperation with Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern and Tufts.
We take you now to Waltham and Dr. Alfred Worcester.
Dr. Alfred Worcester: I’m going to tell you today what I heard from my great-grandmother about 90 years ago. She told me what she remembers of the Battle of Lexington, then when she was 90 years old, and her story went back to when she was a little girl of 5 or 6. I wish I could offer illustrations, for I see her very plainly: a little, old, wrinkled-face woman with a lace-ruffled cap, such as women — old women — used to wear.
When she began to tell the story, the first words were: "My father had gone on the day of the Lexington battle. When I waked up, my father was gone. And they said the soldiers have gone. The Minute Men were called out in the night. My father had to go. Well, well then you can hear the drums now. And the fight — the soldiers have stopped on their march. They say there’s been fighting up in Lexington, and the British have come to search all our houses. They think the British are after the Minute Men’s stores of guns and powder. All that we had was taken before I was up.
"I don’t believe I had any breakfast that day. But I heard the drums and I ran. North around the road, I crossed the meadows. We children had been playing in those meadows. They were just going out. And Grandma and Grandfather’s house was over the corner of the Lexington road and the Lincoln road. And though we could not of see them from where we lived, I ran across country to my grandfather’s house, and there the soldiers were on the opposite side of the road. A great lot of them! They kept coming, and their wives and their children with them. Their children and wives, when the men folks left, would be at the mercy of the British soldiers.
"We soon heard the rumors. A horseman — one after another — would come with news. A horse, covered with bolls, with orders from time to time, from Colonel Prescott. I remember that name."
She said the danger was — why the women and children were there — the danger was that the British might come back not from Concord where they’d been fighting, that we heard, but might come back either by Lincoln or by Lexington. And if they came by Lincoln, they would go down through the Waltham settlement, the Waltham plains, and the town would be burned.
Then she said, "I don’t know does exactly what time it was, but it was long hours after I reached Grandfather’s house. And I stayed til the news came that the soldiers, the Minute Men, must go to Lexington ... troops from Concord were approaching."
Afterwards, I remembered that she had nothing to say about the reinforcements that saved those harassed Britishers. But she pretty soon changed her tone. She said "I’ve seen many sad partings in my long lifetime, but never have I seen any sadness like to them. And well, they had reason for their sadness, for many of those men have never seen a life afterwards."
She wandered off as she told the story. And what had really impressed — more than the guns that she heard, the British guns — for the relief of the Concordites, Concordite soldiers pressing the British, they got some cannon into the pursuit, and then the British reinforcements got up as far as Lexington, and there was cannonading from then on. The first cannonading came as the troops were leaving Concord.
It is very easy to ramble on, but I think I’ve told you all that I want to carry away: the picture of the Battle of Lexington that my great-grandmother would give me out of memory.
I can see the wrinkles on grandmother’s face. I loved them. I still do love her wrinkles of the aged face. I can hear her voice. I can hear her say, "I’ve seen many a sad parting, but nothing like to this. And right they were, for that was the last they ever saw those they loved." Now I must say goodbye.
Wheatley: You have heard Dr. Alfred Worcester, speaking from his home in Waltham, telling the story of the Battle of Lexington as it was told to him by his great-grandmother 90 years ago.
Dr. Worcester, now nearly 95 years old, was a practicing physician in Waltham from 1883 to 1925, and is Henry K. Oliver Professor of Hygiene emeritus at Harvard. Dr. Worcester was among the first physicians to operate for appendicitis, and he was the founder of the Waltham Training School for Nurses. Dr. Worcester, incidentally, is the oldest living graduate of Harvard College, and for several years he has led the alumni procession at Harvard commencement.
This special Patriot's Day broadcast was transcribed for you by the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, and presented as a public service by station WCOP and WCOP FM.
