Rebecca Barrett's Field

Colonel James Barrett's farm was the primary target of the British expedition. Intelligence reports had identified it as a major storage site for colonial military supplies—cannons, powder, shot, provisions. When warning came overnight, the Barrett family faced a desperate task: hide everything before dawn.

According to tradition, Barrett's granddaughter Rebecca worked through the dark hours plowing fresh furrows in a field. Into these furrows went gun barrels and other supplies, covered with earth to look like freshly tilled ground. When British search parties arrived in the morning, they found a farm—not an arsenal.

Did Rebecca actually plow the field? The story may be legend, or it may be true. Colonial farms had women who could handle horses and plows; Rebecca was young and strong. The detail has the specificity of lived experience.

What we know for certain is that the British found far less at Barrett's farm than they expected. Supplies had vanished overnight—hidden, dispersed, buried. The community effort to protect its military stores involved everyone: old and young, men and women.

Rebecca Barrett, if the story is true, helped save the weapons that would arm the siege of Boston. She never fired a shot, never stood in a militia line. But her furrows may have mattered as much as any volley at the bridge.