Lexington Historical Society: Daughter Of Liberty

Press release from the Lexington Historical Society:

January 24, 2022

Next to the window in Buckman Tavern’s West Room hangs a portrait of John Buckman, tavern proprietor in 1775. When I look out the window at the sight of the battle across the street, however, I don’t feel like I’m looking through John’s eyes. Rather, I wonder what the tavern’s
other keeper, Ruth Buckman, must have been thinking, as a revolution broke out within steps of her ancestral family home.

Ruth Stone Buckman was born in 1744 to Samuel Stone and Jane Muzzey, daughter of Buckman Tavern’s first owner, John Muzzey. Growing up down the road in what is now Burlington, little Ruth must have spent quite a lot of time in her grandfather’s establishment, as her father was eventually chosen as the heir to the home and business. When John sold the tavern to
Samuel in 1764, Ruth would have been an important part of keeping the family tavern running. Located just off the town common at the juncture of two important roads, the Great Road to Boston and the Bedford Road, the tavern was an important establishment, and Ruth’s days would have been busy helping her parents and sister to feed, house, and entertain scores of both locals and travelers.

It is not known when Ruth began courting John Buckman, but family tragedy likely played a part
both in the timing of their marriage, and in the establishment of the tavern to his ownership. John’s mother, Mary, died February 10, 1768, and his father, John Buckman Sr., followed a week later on February 17. He left behind both a retail business and two children still at home, John and his younger sister Ruth, aged 13. While John, just 23, was still grieving for his parents, Samuel Stone died shortly thereafter on April 2nd. John and Ruth were married on July 21st of that year, with just Ruth’s mother Jane to watch over the newlyweds.

While the tavern quickly became known as Buckman's Tavern, Ruth would have been just as involved in the whirlwind of daily activities in the space as her husband. Farming, milking cows, cooking, and cleaning for a family was hard enough in the 1770s, but to keep a business like a tavern running was a gargantuan task. The tavern boasts nine fireplaces spanning three floors. Stables outside required frequent cleaning. Five cows, two oxen, two pigs, two sheep, and a horse needed to be fed. The family brewed their own hard cider for personal use, enough to fill fifteen barrels, and may have brewed beer as well. On Sundays, dozens of townsfolk flocked from the meetinghouse across the street for their nooning break, seeking cold beer and a hot fire. All of this was accomplished without the standard gaggle of children for assistance.

As the Revolution dawned, Ruth would have been intimately aware of the town’s politics in a way few other women were. There is much we do not know: What did she hear when she was clearing tables in the taproom? Was she a part of the female-driven protest movement of the 1760s, perhaps camping out for the day on her neighbor Anna Harrington’s lawn spinning flax to make patriotic homespun clothing? Was she in agreement with her husband when he allowed secret meetings to take place in the tavern, once public gatherings had been banned by the royal governor? How did she react when Paul Revere knocked on her door in the middle of the night? When the smoke cleared and she saw the bodies left lying on the common? When the town doctor began hauling wounded men into her parlor, placing them in her care?

We will never know, but as I walk through the rooms of the tavern, I think about the unspoken roles women played in keeping the town running, and how much their contributions and memories have played a role in our history and its preservation. Ruth Buckman died in 1778, likely the victim of an unnamed epidemic that swept through the town that summer, carrying off nearly forty people in the span of just a few weeks. She didn’t live to see the end of the war, but she would have heard the news barreling through town of the Declaration of Independence, the Battle of Trenton, and the slow struggle to birth a new nation. Her words haven’t survived, but perhaps
she knew that she had an important role to play in the beginning of that struggle. The words of other women town have survived, though. From the memories of Dorothy Hancock and Elizabeth Clarke, we know firsthand the weight of the chaos and emotion the night of the battle. From the
memories of Anna Munroe, we know about a child’s experience of war, and of George Washington’s historic visit to town in 1789. We cite these women’s stories, indispensable to our understanding of these historical events, to visitors who arrive not knowing their names nor expecting to learn them.

It’s a curious thing about museums: they are often founded and staffed by women to tell the stories of men. Anyone who’s taken an academic class in the museum field has been introduced to the Grand Dame of museums, Ann Pamela Cunningham, founder of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. Having seen Washington’s mansion sitting all but collapsed from a riverboat, Cunningham’s mother had written a letter to her daughter. “If the men of America have seen fit to allow the home of its most respected hero to go to ruin,” she said, “why can't the women of America band together to save it?”

That was in 1853, and since then, we have seen a centennial, a bicentennial, and are coming up on a semiquincentennial (250 years) of the country’s founding. Just now we are finally breaking free of the mold set up before the Civil War and beginning to tell the stories of the less lauded segments of society who nevertheless helped to change the course of history: the poor, the enslaved, the children, the women. As we move forward to the next great anniversary, I hope that we can strive to remember that the Revolution did not happen in a vacuum around the seventy men who stood on the common, but that it was the efforts of a community coming together for a common cause that allowed those men to stand up for what they believed in.

-Sarah McDonough, Programs Manager

This press release was produced by the Lexington Historical Society. The views expressed here are the author’s own.