The Midnight Ride of William Dawes

Every year on Patriots' Day since the 1980s, there has been a celebration in the Roxbury Highlands of William Dawes's 1774 ride from Roxbury to Lexington, bringing notice to the American guerrillas of British infantry movements.

This year, the 380th anniversary of Roxbury's founding, is no exception, with the annual celebration occurring on Monday, April 19, from 8am to 12:30pm.

Discover Roxbury has the details. There is free breakfast, presentation of the Warren I. Brown scholarship, a lecture by the local architects of Donald Stull and David Lee [their corporate web site], and a trolley tour of the neighborhood.

Open, and free to the public, on that day are the Dillaway-Thomas House (183 Roxbury St), the Shirley-Eustis House (33 Shirley St), and the Eliot Burial Ground (Washington St. at Eustis).

The ceremonial equestrian unit, the National Lancers, is providing a couple of horses and a Dawes facsimile for the ceremony in the yard at the First Church, before setting off on this route to Lexington. The National Lancers have a hodgepodge of photographs from 2008 at their Picasa site, starting with this picture (presumably of William Dawes with his dear mother).

Of course, Wikipedia has an article on William Dawes, too. WGBH did a short feature back in 1991. The Fort Hill Civic Association has some pictures of the 2006 festivities half-way down this page. Wicked Local Brookline has this 2008 story. Visit this historic marker the next time you are near Harvard Square. The Paul Revere House website shows the routes of Revere, Dawes, and the British.

And then there is the Jimmy Hatlo They'll Do It Every Time rendition.