Free Republic

Paul Revere gets all of the credit, but he never actually finished that famous ride, and in fact warned the British that the Americans were coming. William Dawes and Samuel Prescott were left out of the poem and subsequently most elementary history books: it was actually Samuel Prescott who completed the midnight ride.

Sixteen year old Sybil Luddington was a hero of the Revolutionary War.....as revolution number two shapes up, we could learn some lessons from our ancestors.

...Paul Revere, born in Boston in 1734... After the death of his father in 1754, Paul enlisted in the provincial army to fight in the French and Indian War... When the war was over, he returned to Boston to take over his father's silversmith business, only to fall into financial difficulties during the Stamp Act of 1765. Frustrated by this gave him cause to join the Sons of Liberty... On the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren sent Revere to send the signal to Charlestown that the British troops were on the move... His journey ended in Lexington where...

Revere thoroughly deserves his place in American history, but another courageous American has been ill-served by those who write books about the Revolutionary War. Revere was 40 at the time of his journey, but she was a girl of 16. Born at Patterson, Putnam County, N.Y., on April 5, 1761, she was the eldest of 12 children born to Henry and Abigail Ludington. On the stormy night of April 26, 1777, she is said to have been putting her younger siblings to bed when the family had a visitor. Close to exhaustion, a messenger had come to tell her father...