Revolutionary Heroes, and Other Historical Papers

Excerpt

GENERAL JOSEPH WARREN.

A fiery, vehement, daring spirit was this Joseph Warren, who was a doctor thirteen years, a major-general three days, and a soldier three hours. In that part of Boston which is called Roxbury, there is a modern house of stone, on the front of which a passer-by may read the following inscription:

"On this spot stood the house erected in 1720 by Joseph Warren, of Boston, remarkable for being the birthplace of General Joseph Warren, his grandson, who was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775."

There is another inscription on the house which reads thus:

"John Warren, a distinguished Physician and Anatomist, was also born here. The original mansion being in ruins, this house was built by John C. Warren, M.D., in 1846, son of the last-named, as a permanent memorial of the spot."

I am afraid the builder of this new house poetized a little when he styled the original edifice a mansion. It was a plain, roomy, substantial farm-house, about the centre of the little village of Roxbury, and the father of Warren who occupied it was an industrious, enterprising, intelligent farmer, who raised superior fruits and vegetables for the Boston market. Warren's father was a beginner in that delightful industry, and one of the apples which he introduced into the neighborhood retains to this day the name which it bore in his lifetime, the Warren Russet.

A tragic event occurred at this farm-house in 1775, when Warren was a boy of fourteen. It was on an October day, in the midst of the apple- gathering season, about the time when the Warren Russet had attained all the maturity it can upon its native tree. Farmer Warren was out in his orchard. His wife, a woman worthy of being the mother of such a son as she had, was indoors getting dinner ready for her husband, her four boys, and the two laborers upon the farm. About noon she sent her youngest son, John, mentioned in the above inscription, to call his father to dinner. On the way to the orchard the lad met the two laborers carrying towards the house his father's dead body. While standing upon a ladder gathering apples from a high tree, Mr. Warren had fallen to the ground and broken his neck. He died almost instantly.

The Boston Newsletter of the following week bestowed a few lines upon the occurrence; speaking of him as a man of good understanding, industrious, honest and faithful; "a useful member of society, who was generally respected among us, and whose death is universally lamented."

Fortunate is the family which in such circumstances has a mother wise and strong. She carried on the farm with the assistance of one of her sons so successfully that she was able to continue the education of her children, all of whom except the farmer obtained respectable rank in one of the liberal professions. This excellent mother lived in widowhood nearly fifty years, saw Thomas Jefferson President of the United States, and died 1803, aged ninety-three years, in the old house at home. Until she was past eighty she made with her own hands the pies for Thanksgiving-day, when all her children and grandchildren used to assemble at the spacious old Roxbury house....