Listen, and you’ll hear of … Bissell

By Amanda Francoeur SPECIAL TO THE Telegram & Gazette and Mark Ellis TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF



WORCESTER— Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of … who? Israel Bissell? Who’s that?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow might not have written a poem about him, and it’s unlikely he’ll be remembered at Patriot’s Day activities in Lexington and Concord this weekend, but Massachusetts residents — and indeed all citizens of the United States — owe a debt of gratitude to Israel Bissell.

Riding five days with little food and even less sleep, passing through what became five states, and running at least one horse to death along the way, Israel spread the word of the start of the Revolutionary War in April 1775 to cities, villages and hamlets from Watertown, outside Boston, to Philadelphia.



“He was one of the most important people in this country’s history because, if it wasn’t for him, people in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania wouldn’t have known the war was starting,” Framingham artist David Roth said yesterday. Mr. Roth did a series of paintings of historical people and scenes for the Union Oyster House of Boston between 1995 and 1997. Bissell is included in the series.

Born in East Windsor, Conn., in 1752, Bissell was a 23-year-old postal express rider at the time he received an order from Gen. Joseph Palmer to ride through Central Massachusetts to Connecticut to warn the colonists of the Battle of Lexington.

His journey began in Watertown on April 19, the morning after Paul Revere made his historic ride through Lexington and Concord rousing the Massachusetts Minutemen to arms against the Redcoats. Bissell rode along the Old Post Road, arriving in Worcester — normally a day’s worth of travel — in only two hours. His horse collapsed and died from the intense ride.

After spending the night in Worcester and securing another horse, Bissell left Worcester early on April 20 and rode to Connecticut, where he met Gen. Israel Putnam at his farm in Pomfret.

According to the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, Gen. Putnam, who had retired from the military after serving during the French and Indian War, was working in his field with his son, Daniel.

The society’s Web site says Gen. Putnam jumped at the opportunity to offer his services again and, eight hours and 100 miles later, arrived in Cambridge to re-enlist. The site quotes Daniel as later writing of his father’s quick departure, “He loitered not but left me, the driver of his team, to unyoke it in the furrow, and not many days to follow him to camp.”

Bissell continued his journey to New London, New Haven and Fairfield, Conn., crying in each town, “To arms, to arms, the war has begun!” His efforts managed to spark the interest of 3,600 men from Connecticut to aid in the battle, the SAR Web site states.

On April 23, Bissell arrived at Wall Street in New York City, where his warnings triggered an armed conflict. “In many places along the route the news created disturbances and excitement, but in New York City it caused a riot which developed into armed revolt,” the Web site states. “Judge Thomas Jones, an ardent New York loyalist, described the scene there when the news of Lexington and Concord arrived: “The mails were stopped and opened and letters read; a mob broke open the city arsenal and forcibly removed 1,000 stand of arms. The entire city became one continuous scene of riot, tumult and confusion.’ ”

On the last day of his adventure, April 24, Bissell traveled through New Jersey and finally arrived at 5 p.m. at City Hall in Philadelphia.

Today, about the only places that Israel Bissell is remembered are the Union Oyster House and a small cemetery in the small town of Hinsdale in Western Massachusetts. He lived his last years in the town. He died at age 71 in 1823 and was buried there.

“He’s not forgotten around here,” said Carol Forward, chairman of the Hinsdale Bicentennial Committee. The town has been commemorating Bissell’s patriotism since the town’s bicentennial in 2004 and residents have been sprucing up his homestead on Plunkett Reservoir Road as well as his gravesite at the Maple Street Cemetery.

“It was a wonderful thing that he did,” noted Philip G. Collins of Hinsdale. While several men set out from Watertown that day 233 year ago, “he was the one that went the farthest,” Mr. Collins said.

Mr. Roth, whose painting of Israel Bissell is featured on his Web site at www.dwroth.com and will be displayed at a two-day open studio next weekend at Fountain Street Studios in Framingham, said he chose the unsung hero for his American history series at the Union Oyster House because Bissell played such a prominent role in the Revolutionary War. He’s an important figure in American history, he said. “No one knows about him because nobody wrote a poem about him.”