Isaac Davis Monument

Standing on Acton’s town common, a seventy-five-foot granite obelisk commemorates Revolutionary War hero Captain Isaac Davis, the first officer to fall at the Concord fight. It also honors two of Davis’s fellow militiamen: Abner Hosmer, also killed at Concord, and James Hayward, who was mortally wounded in Lexington during the British retreat.

Believing that Davis, Hosmer, and Hayward were “deserving of a better fame than history has usually afforded them, and a more commanding and enduring structure than ordinary slabs of slate to tell the story of their martyrdom,” the citizens of Acton voted on November 11, 1850, to erect the monument in their honor. A committee was appointed to choose a site and solicit financial support from Congress and the State Legislature. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts appropriated $2,000.00 for construction while the Town of Acton contributed $500.00. ^[1]

The monument was built of granite quarried from Acton, and Davis, Hosmer, and Hayward were re-interred there in 1851 from their original resting places in Acton’s Woodlawn Cemetery. A vault atop an arched Romanesque pedestal at the monument’s base contains their remains, each marked with their original slate gravestones.

The cornerstone was laid on August 20, 1851, followed by a formal dedication ceremony on October 29, 1851. The dedication was described by historian James Fletcher as a “day to be remembered by every loyal citizen of the town; indeed, by everyone present true to the flag of the Union.”^[2] An elaborate affair, it featured a military escort and civic procession to move the bodies from the cemetery to the town center where orations, poems, and speeches by a series of "distinguished gentlemen,” including Governor Boutwell, took place. Five thousand people are said to have attended the ceremony and a dinner, held in a patriotically decorated tent, accommodated 1,000 people.

Admired for its beauty, simplicity and impressiveness, the monument is capped with a 25-foot-tall flagpole. In the dedication’s closing words Governor Boutwell remarked, “Here its base shall rest, and its apex point to the Heavens through the coming centuries. Though it bears the name of humble men and commemorates services stern rather than brilliant, it shall be as immortal as American history.”^[3]

On April 19, 1900, the Town of Concord presented a steppingstone from the causeway of the North Bridge, where Davis purportedly fell, to the Town of Acton. It was set into the earthen mounds on which the Isaac Davis Monument stands.

The inscription on the monument reads:

THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS,
& THE TOWN OF ACTON

COOPERATING TO PERPETUATE THE FAME
OF GLORIOUS DEEDS OF PATRIOTISM, HAVE
ERECTED THIS MONUMENT IN HONOR OF

CAPT. ISAAC DAVIS,
& PRIVATES ABNER HOSMER & JAMES HAYWARD,

CITIZEN-SOLDIERS OF ACTON & PROVINCIAL MINUTE
MEN WHO FELL IN CONCORD FIGHT THE 19TH OF APRIL
A.D. 1775.

ON THE MORNING OF THAT EVENTFUL DAY THE
PROVINCIAL OFFICERS HELD A COUNCIL OF
WAR NEAR THE OLD NORTH BRIDGE IN
CONCORD & AS THEY SEPARATED, DAVIS EXCLAIMED,

"I HAV'NT A MAN THAT IS AFRAID TO GO"
& IMMEDIATELY MARCHED HIS COMPANY FROM THE
LEFT TO THE RIGHT OF THE LINE, & LED IN THIS
FIRST ORGANIZED ATTACK UPON THE
TROOPS OF GEORGE III IN THAT MEMORABLE WAR,
WHICH, BY THE HELP OF GOD, MADE THE
THIRTEEN COLONIES INDEPENDENT OF GREAT
BRITAIN & GAVE POLITICAL BEING TO THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

ACTON AP. 19TH 1851.

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