Copp’s Hill and the American Revolution

In the eighteenth century, Copp’s Hill stood higher than it does today. On April 23, 1775, days after the battles of Lexington and Concord, British Admiral Samuel Graves received General Gage’s permission to build a redoubt there to protect his ships from rebel fire from Charlestown. His seamen hauled six twenty-four-pound cannon up the hill and built a temporary battery above the burying ground near Hull and Snow Hill streets. At 9:00 am on June 17, 1775, the battery opened fire on Colonial forces across the harbor, and later that day it fired carcasses into Charlestown, helping ignite the blaze that destroyed the town. General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from the battery and vividly described the burning town, the surrounding spectators, and the roar of cannon, mortars, and musketry. Copp’s Hill is also associated with Robert Newman, born in 1752, a breeches-maker and sexton of Christ Church, who at age twenty-three hung the lantern in the church steeple on April 18, 1775, as a signal to Paul Revere and others. Captain Daniel Malcom, born in 1725, was a mariner, merchant, and, according to the British, smuggler who became one of the strongest opponents of the British Revenue Acts. In September 1766, when customs officers tried to search his house and cellar for smuggled wine, he threatened violent resistance and the officers withdrew after a mob gathered. He was later arrested for helping unload wine from John Hancock’s sloop Liberty in April 1768. A Son of Liberty and active member of the Charitable Irish Society, he was serving as its vice president when he died in 1769. Tradition holds that holes in his gravestone came from British soldiers at the Copp’s Hill battery using it for target practice. His wife Ann Fudge Malcom died six months after him, and their gravestones were carved by their friend Captain John Homer. Malcom’s father Michael Malcom, who died in 1775, and possibly his sister Sarah Malcom, who died in 1767, are buried beside them. Many gravestones at Copp’s Hill predate the American Revolution, and the burial ground is believed to contain twenty-nine participants in the Boston Tea Party and at least forty-three Revolutionary War veterans.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States