6. (5 soldiers) Lincoln Cemetery
(entrance off Lexington
Road; between Trapelo
Road and Route 2) After entering the cemetery, make the first turn to the left. The marker is just over a small rise and
faces the road. A gravestone for a black
man who was also a soldier is close by.
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FIVE
BRITISH
SOLDIERS
SLAIN APRIL 19, 1775
WERE BURIED
HERE
ERECTED BY THE
TOWN OF LINCOLN
1904
From
an account from Mrs. Samuel (Mary) Hartwell, as told to her grandson:
“Although
Mrs. Samuel Hartwell had good reason for entertaining vindictive feelings
towards the invading army, her actions proved that her better nature soon
prevailed. She said, "I could not sleep that night, for I knew there were
British soldiers lying dead by the roadside; and when, on the following
morning, we were somewhat calmed and rested, we gave attention to the burial of
those whom their comrades had failed to take away. The men hitched the oxen to
the cart, and went down below the house, and gathered up, the dead. As they
returned with the team and the dead soldiers, my thoughts went out for the
wives, parents, and children away across the Atlantic, who would never again
see their loved ones; and I left the house, and taking my little children by
the hand, I followed the rude hearse to the grave hastily made in the
burial-ground. I remember how cruel it seemed to put them into one large trench
without any coffins. There was one in a brilliant uniform, whom I supposed to
have been an officer. His hair was tied up in a cue." For more than a
century this common grave remained unmarked, until the people of the town,
considering the events of that day with a forgiving spirit, have within a few
years erected a memorial stone over the resting-place of the unknown dead.”
In
1943, a grave for a Mr. Nicholson was being dug in the Donaldson plot in the Lincoln cemetery. The skeletons of five British soldiers were
found. They were not completely
uncovered, but they did see belt and boot buckles, buttons, and bits of red
uniform cloth. The bones were left in
the same spot. The marker for the
British soldiers is 40 feet from the location of the skeletons. The soldiers were buried in the “potters
field” section of the cemetery, near the grave of Scipio Brister, a black man.
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