State militias provided vital assistance to the Continental Army through self-trained, mobile companies known as Minutemen, who were reputed to be ready at a minute's notice and meant to respond to threats quickly. What they lacked in training they made up for with speed and guerrilla tactics, augmenting the formally trained Continental regulars by acting as skirmishers and sharpshooters and impeding British movements throughout the war. Though famous for their part in the Revolutionary War, these always-ready soldiers existed earlier in the Colonies, as shown in the French and Indian War when Massachusetts militia commander Samuel Thompson recorded that, after his regular troops were gone, he was sent “... eleven more at one minute's warning, with three days provision ...” Henry Hudson Kitson created this statue in 1924, and an almost identical statue designed by Kitson stands in Lexington, Massachusetts, with the two statues serving as bookends to the war at the places where it began and ended.
