The Stories We Tell
By David Wright, Town Historian
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on the evening of April 18th and into the early hours of April 19th, 1775, silversmith Paul Revere set off on his “midnight ride” from Boston to Lexington to warn the men of the town’s citizen militias of an impending British attack. Revere was to have ridden on to Concord, but British soldiers stopped him en route and arrested him. Samuel Prescott completed the ride to Concord.
Of course, it would have been incredibly terrifying to have made that ride, as Revere knew he was committing a seditious act of rebellion against the British. We’ll speak more of that momentarily.
It’s interesting to note that Paul Revere was 41 years old at the time of his midnight ride, and that his entire ride covered 12½ miles.
Following the British attacks on Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, it was absolutely vital that word of the attacks was carried south to Connecticut and New York. That’s where the Stratford connection to Paul Revere’s ride begins.
“IT WAS NEARLY dusk on Friday, April 21, 1775, when ferryman Josiah Curtis eased the horse boat into the Stratford slip and the post rider rode into town with a message that would change history. Two days before, Israel Bissell had left Massachusetts with the news that General Gage had sent troops out of Boston to Lexington and Concord. As he rode into each town, Bissell shouted, “To arms! To arms! The war has begun!” At 4 A.M. on Friday he reached Saybrook and handed his dispatch to the next rider, who would carry it the last 137 miles to New York. That rider was Ebenezer Hurd of Stratford.
All day Hurd rode, toward home and rest. He had been post rider on this route for forty-seven years, and he had turned seventy-three only two weeks earlier. Hurd spent a long night in Stratford with his family, gearing up for the final ride. It was Sunday noon when he delivered the message to Isaac Low in New York, to be forwarded to Philadelphia.
Post riders were somewhat akin to Pony Express riders in that they carried mail from one town to the next along their routes. Ebenezer Hurd was appointed post rider in 1728, 25 years before Benjamin Franklin marked the postal route through Stratford in 1753. Hurd would have spent the prior 25 years finding his way along the shoreline with no directional markers, to New York City”. (Excerpted from In Pursuit of Paradise, 1989.)
Like Revere, Ebenezer had to have known that carrying word to the Patriots that war had begun between the colonies and Britain was essentially a treasonous act. He had to have known, too, that any British soldiers he met on his ride to New York would consider him an enemy, if they had heard of the battle at Lexington and Concord. His family, when he stopped at his Stratford home, would have been worried sick about the ride he was about to make to New York City.
Perhaps most remarkable, Ebenezer was 32 years older than Revere at the time he made his ride in 1775, and while Revere’s ride was 12½ miles, Ebenezer’s ride from Old Saybrook to New York City was 137 miles. Like many things about Stratford, we’ve always been at the forefront of history, yet so few people know.
As we commemorate Paul Revere’s ride this April 18th, I’m hopeful you’ll also think of our Ebenezer Hurd, and how our Stratford played such a vital role in the opening days of the Revolutionary War.
Ebenezer Hurd (1668 – 1765), Born 7 Nov 1668 in Stratford, Fairfield, Connecticut, British Colonial America, Died 4 Mar 1765 at age 96 in Killingworth, Middlesex, Connecticut
