James Hayward Home Site Memorial

The James Hayward Home Site Memorial indicates the location where the young minute man lived in West Acton. Located just west of Sarah Lane on Arlington Street, the memorial was funded with a combination of private and public donations and dedicated on Memorial Day 1977.

The marker reads:

SITE OF THE HOME OF CAPTAIN SAMUEL
HAYWARD AND OF HIS SON, JAMES, WHO
WAS MORTALLY WOUNDED AT LEXINGTON
ON THE 19TH OF APRIL, 1775.
“WHEN FIGHTING FOR HIS COUNTRIE’S LIBERTY
HE AND HIS FOE WERE BY EACH OTHER SLAIN.”

Hayward was killed when he stopped for a drink at a well at the Fiske farmhouse in Lexington. In 1885, the Town of Lexington erected a monument on the site where both Hayward and the British soldier he encountered died.