Minute Man Memorial

A bronze tablet set within a large boulder at Minute Man Park in Pepperell commemorates the local militia men who were summoned from this site to the opening battles of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775.

Dedicated on July 26, 1926, the boulder was described in the article “Large Number Attend Dedication of Boulder,” published in the following day’s issue of the Worcester Evening Gazette, as “the old boulder of Revolutionary fame at the Page farm” located in a field just off the main road. As the plaque succinctly recalls, it was from the top of this boulder that the, “elder Bancroft and his son rallied the sturdy farmers to repel the British at Concord and Lexington.”

The monument was erected in memory of Lucy Bancroft Page, a descendant of Benjamin Fletcher, a captain in the 7th Middlesex Regiment; Edmund Bancroft, a member of the Committee of Safety of Pepperell; Jonas Smith, a private in the militia; John Hoar, a Patriot who wrote an account of the Battle of Lexington; and Leonard Hoar, who served several enlistments as a private in the Middlesex county militia.

The inscription reads:

FROM THIS BOULDER
THE MINUTE MEN OF PEPPERELL
WERE CALLED TO JOIN
COLONEL PRESCOTT AT GROTON
ON APRIL 19, 1775
BY CAPTAIN EDMUND BANCROFT
AND HIS SON LUTHER

PLACED BY
GRACE E. GREENHALGH
IN MEMORY OF HER MOTHER
LUCY BANCROFT PAGE