Inside a modest, two-story, colonial farmhouse just off Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington, Doris Birmingham opens a creaky, heavy-hinged door, revealing a dank, boarded up passageway that once led to a functioning basement. Inside the dim cubby, light blares through two small openings that could easily be dismissed as knot holes in the timeworn wood. They aren't. The holes are, instead, a tangible reminder of America's violent beginning.
The bullets that tore the holes in this wall were fired by British soldiers on April 19, 1775, as they tried to flush 8 men out from the basement. If that date rings a bell, it should. It was the opening day of the American Revolution, when Paul Revere made his famed ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord set the American Colonies on an historic path.
We don’t know how long the standoff between the British soldiers and American militiamen lasted, but we do know how it ended.
"They survived," said Birmingham, who sits on the board and runs the guide program for the Arlington Historical Society. "They managed to stay there for as long as they needed to. So they were very, very fortunate."
Not everyone here at Jason Russell's farmhouse was nearly as fortunate that day.
"It was a terrible, terrible event," explained Birmingham. "It really kind of brings home to you, when you come here, the brutality of war."
Today we remember April 19 for the Battles of Lexington and Concord, but the majority of the fighting and the dying that day actually took place in Arlington, known then as Menotomy. It was here that more than half of the 122 Americans and British who were killed that day lost their lives.
It was mid-afternoon as the British troops marched back to Boston following those more famed skirmishes on Lexington Green and at Concord’s North Bridge. As they marched along what is today Massachusetts Avenue, they crossed from Lexington into Menotomy. Almost immediately, shots rang out.
"The troops were being shot at form all angles because so many Colonials had gathers in Menotomy during the day and they were waiting for the British," explained Birmingham.
Americans had traveled from Beverly, Salem, Needham and elsewhere to gather behind trees, on porches, and in fields throughout Arlington, to take the fight to the Redcoats. But the British were no fools. And, expecting as much, had dispatched two columns of soldiers to outflank the militiamen.
"A lot of men got caught," said Birmingham. "They got pinched between flanking troops and the main set of marching troops."
Including Jason Russell – a 59-year-old farmer who walked with a limp – and a group of men gathered in and around his farmhouse, within musket range of the main road. The British charged Russell on the front steps of the home; a home that he built with his own two hands, where his wife gave birth to nine children.
"Troops started chasing him and they shot him and bayonetted him on the front doorstep, so he was killed immediately," said Birmingham.
Some colonials ran, others rushed into the house seeking cover, with the British in pursuit.
It was mayhem. There was shooting, fighting, looting, and that tense standoff at the entrance to the basement. Inside the Jason Russell House, Birmingham points to south-east facing wall. "Two men jumped through the window that we’re seeing right there," she said. "One of them was killed immediately, we don’t know whether by broken glass or musket balls. The other one managed to escape." When the dust finally settled, 12 Americans were dead. It was the single bloodiest conflict of that first day of the American Revolution.
That evening, Russell’s wife and their two children, who had earlier been sent away to safety, returned home.
"And there they found here on the floor all twelve of the men who had been killed here. Her husband and the eleven others were laid out, and you just have to imagine this poor woman’s shock, and horror, and sadness."
Scenes of horror like this would play out countless times – across the 13 colonies – in the years that followed. Perhaps that’s why Birmingham thinks Russell’s home is such a perfect emblem of the American Revolution. A poignant reminder that America’s freedom was won by actual people. Living, breathing people, not than unlike you and me.
"The horror of war for an ordinary, average citizen comes home to you visit this house, she said. "We think of April 19 [as] so heroic. It’s the American Revolution, and our independence ahead, but we have to remember that there was a lot of suffering."
