14 Facts About William Dawes

William Dawes became a tanner and was active in Boston's militia.

William Dawes was appointed as the company's second sergeant in 1770.

William Dawes hurt his wrist in the escapade, and some days later, went to a fellow member of the Sons of Liberty, Dr Joseph Warren, for treatment.

William Dawes demurred, and Warren wisely responded by saying that it was best that he did not know.

William Dawes' mission was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that they were in danger of arrest.

William Dawes took the land route out of Boston through the Boston Neck, leaving just before the British sealed off the town.

Revere no doubt knew that the Provincial Congress had stored munitions there, including the cannons which William Dawes had helped to secure.

William Dawes, according to the story he told his children, rode into the yard of a house shouting that he had lured two officers there.

William Dawes's horse bucked him off and he had to walk back to Lexington.

William Dawes later said that in the morning, he returned to the same yard and found the watch that had fallen from his pocket.

William Dawes was believed to have been buried in the King's Chapel Burying Ground, but modern research points to his resting place now being in his first wife's family plot in Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.

In 1896 Helen F Moore, dismayed that William Dawes had been forgotten, penned a parody of Longfellow's poem.

William Dawes's ride is commemorated on a traffic island in Cambridge, Massachusetts, heavily travelled by pedestrians, at the intersection of Garden Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square, and known as William Dawes Island.

William Dawes' great-grandson, Rufus Dawes, was a Civil War military officer and congressman; Rufus Dawes' children included Charles G Dawes, who served as Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge, Rufus C Dawes, a businessman, Beman Gates Dawes, a businessman and congressman, and Henry M Dawes, a businessman and banker.