Paul Revere Short Takes

All roads lead to Needham, and the road from Canton is no exception. Revere was nationally important, but also important to Needham in roundabout ways, as I learned on a recent visit to his foundry.

Another NARM-membership visit with my buddies, this time to the Paul Revere Museum of Discovery and Innovation in Canton. (We did have fun this summer!)

We all know about Paul Revere’s career as a silversmith, and as a Son of Liberty. Probably less well-known is that after the Revolutionary War he branched into other forms of industry – most importantly copper-rolling and metal casting. His innovations brought important manufacturing technology to the new republic, but were also a crucial factor in our early military defense as he cast cannons and rolled sheet copper (to clad the hull of the USS Ironside, for example). He’s also indirectly responsible for your older Revere Ware cookware – his company continued in business until 1982. For an excellent and enjoyable account of Paul’s post-war career, read Rob Martello’s Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn.

The site in Canton that is now the Innovation Museum was the site of Revere’s metal working projects. The former rolling mill is now preserved as part museum, part restaurant. An old barn adjacent to the mill has been renovated into the main part of the museum with exhibits and lots of activities for both kids and adults, and the mill pond is now a feature of the grounds. That the site still exists at all is pretty amazing, since it was in industrial use for various businesses over the years. At some point the city of Canton bought the whole parcel, turned some of it into housing, some into a park, and leased the original buildings for the museum.

But, of course, all roads lead to Needham, and the road from Canton is no exception. Several of the sights at the museum have a trail that leads back to us.

Paul’s Progeny
George Revere, one of Revere’s grandsons, moved to Needham in the 1830s or 40s. In 1844 he built one of the earliest retail and meeting halls in Needham, which was known as Nehoiden Hall, or Revere Hall after its owner.  Nehoiden Hall was located near the corner of Nehoiden Street and Central Avenue, in the heart of the old town center. The first floor housed Revere’s shoe shop and a general store. It was also Needham’s first Post Office. On the second floor was a large public hall that was used for a variety of official purposes – including Town Meeting, the Needham Lyceum (a series of lectures/debates on topics of the day), and the Civil War recruiting station. But it was also used for balls, banquets, and other celebrations, because there just weren’t that many big party spaces in those days. Reminiscing in 1911, Selectman Edgar Bowers recalled that when he came to Needham in 1857, “All social functions too large for the ordinary dwelling were held in Nehoiden Hall …  there convened the Needham Lyceum, and institution in its day that met to discuss moral, political and religious problems… Lectures and debates on all sorts of subject which concerned the well-being of the community were listened to, and participated in by men from all parts of the town… thus, this was the forum of the day.” The Hall fell into disuse after 1869 when town meeting functions were moved to the meeting rooms at the new poor house/town hall in West Needham (now Wellesley). Jonathan Avery bought Nehoiden Hall and converted it into tenements.  In 1906, William Carter bought the building and moved it to its current location at 270 Rosemary Street, where he refurbished it into housing for his mill workers. Sometime after the 1950s, the house was converted into apartments, as it currently remains (recognizable by its three chimneys).  Although now an unremarkable building on a side street, it was once the most important building in Needham.

Revere descendants lived in Needham until around 1960. A funny story that someone passed on to me years ago – Revere’s most recent Needham descendant was also named Paul, and he lived on Central Avenue, right next door to the Dwight School. One night in 1950 there was a fire at the school, so he called it in to the fire department. When asked his name, he replied “Paul Revere.” The officer who answered the phone laughed and said “Sure, and I’m George Washington.” It took three calls for Paul to convince him that the call was legitimate.

The Revere Bell
In addition to casting cannons, Revere also learned to cast bells, which until then had to be imported at great cost from Europe. His company made 398 bells between 1792 and 1828, though the bell-making was carried on longer by former employees and apprentices. Of these, 146 Revere bells are still known to exist.

One of them is in Needham. Just over two centuries ago, Needham decided to celebrate its centennial in 1811 by buying itself a bell for the First Parish meeting house. Apparently deciding that this was not a time to skimp, Needham went for the best – a bell from Paul Revere and Sons.  Revere had opened the bell foundry in 1792 in partnership with his sons Paul Jr. and John Warren Revere, and they soon became the area’s most prominent bell-makers.  Making bells is not easy. If the percentages of copper, tin, zinc (etc) in the alloy are not precise, or if the bell casting does not cool properly, the bell becomes brittle rather than resonant, and is prone to crack.  The Liberty Bell, for example, was riddled with cracks, not just the famous one. Revere’s bells tended to be durable.

The bell cost $408 dollars, and weighed 960 pounds.  To accommodate it, the parish added a tall steeple to the side of the meeting house. The steeple cost an additional $750, so overall the project cost about $1150.  This does not sound like a lot to us, and direct calculations for the value of old money are imprecise.  Even so, this was not cheap – it was the rough equivalent of the net worth of ten comfortable families.  The bell was completed and installed in time for the centennial celebrations.  It first rang on November 15, 1811 for the centennial worship service. It was the first time such a bell ever rang in Needham. Our bell is foundry number 126, and probably among the last ones that Paul supervised himself before he retired.

Unfortunately, swinging half a ton of bronze atop a narrow tower created a strain that destabilized the meeting house.  After 25 years, in 1836, the church had to be pulled down and rebuilt. This time with a proper steeple to hold the bell.  The current First Parish church is the 1836 structure (the one shown in the picture, above), and the steeple is the one that was built to hold the bell, which still rings every Sunday and on other important occasions.

The Blake Bell
There is a second bell in Needham, this one not a Revere, but Revere-adjacent. The bell that used to sit in front of the History Center (and now hangs in the new Heights Fire Station) was made in 1897 by the Blake Bell Company.  It was originally a school and alarm bell, housed in the Parker School on Charles River Street. That part of town was too remote to hear the regular alarm bells, so they needed one of their own. William Blake was an apprentice of Paul Revere’s grandson, Paul III, and worked at the Revere Bell foundry.  In 1823, Blake went into partnership with Paul III to form the Blake & Revere Foundry (the company name changed several times over the years as partners came and went). In its day, Blake’s was a busy and innovative bell-maker, and they made hundreds of church and school bells.  Many are still in use in this area.  Our bell was cast in 1897, near the end of the Blake company’s life. The inscription cast around its top reads: “Blake Bell Co. Boston Mass 1897.”  It also bears the company’s original Blake & Revere foundry mark, with a bell and eagle. The Blake Bell Company operated in Boston until about 1900, and then moved to Waterbury, CT.

The Niagara Fire Engine
In the display on the upper floor of the rolling mill, the museum houses a hand-pump fire engine built in 1829 by the William C. Hunneman Company of Boston. The “hand-tub” consists of a large copper tank on wheels, with hand-rails on each side. The tank was filled with water; the pump was operating by pulling up and down on the side rails.  The engine was horse-drawn, but when time and distances were short, the firemen could pull the engine by grabbing the rails and running alongside. William Hunneman was an apprentice of Paul Revere, and  learned to roll copper at his foundry. The copper sheet used to build the tank probably came from Revere’s mill.

Needham’s first fire engine was also a Hunneman hand-tub, called “Niagara.” It was built in 1843 by Hunneman for the Hingham Fire Department. Niagara was purchased by Needham from Hingham in 1884 for a sum of $250.  For the first year or so, there was no fire house to put it in, so it stayed in a succession of private barns near the center of town. Niagara was used in Needham until about 1916, when its copper tank was sold for scrap.

Alexander Quapish

Among the displays in the rolling mill are life-size cutouts of individuals, representing various people in the area and their experience in the Revolutionary War. One such individual depicted is Alexander Quapish. Alexander Quapish (1741-1776) was a Wampanoag man born in Yarmouth, and one of about 50 Wampanoag men who volunteered for the Continental Army in 1775 after the Lexington alarm. They enlisted in the hope (sadly, wrong) that their participation would result in greater self-determination after the war.

Quapish moved to Dedham sometime in the 1760s, and married Sarah David, a member of the Natick Praying Indian community, in 1767.  They had at least one child – a daughter, Alice.  Sarah died in 1774.

In 1775, Quapish enlisted in Captain Daniel Whiting’s Company (Dedham/Dover) of the Colonial militia. He was stationed in Cambridge and served at Bunker Hill.  He fell ill in Cambridge in November 1775, and was taken to the Needham home of his comrade Michael Bacon, where he died in March of 1776.  This final chapter of his history is recorded in the MA State Archives, in the form of a petition by Michael Bacon to the MA General Court for compensation for his care and burial: “That one Alexander Quapish a Poor Indian Belonging to this State who was taken Sick in the Army Near Cambridge and was Dismised Came to the House of your Petitioner in Said Needham in a Suffering Condition on the 15th Day of November 1775 And Remained there Sick untill the 23d Day of March 1776 and then Died, and your Petitioner was at Great Trouble & Charge in Boarding Nursing, and Burying Said Indian.”  The petition was endorsed and paid by the Needham Selectmen.  Quapish and Bacon were in the same militia company, and were among several soldiers from the Needham area who were camped together in Cambridge, so it is not surprising that they knew each other.

Alexander Quapish was buried, it is assumed, at the Indian Burial Ground on Pond Street in Natick, near the Bacon’s home (long story, but this part of Natick was part of Needham at the time). This assumption is based in part on its proximity to the Bacon’s, in part on the allocation of the ground to Native American militia, and in part because the interment costs are included in the Needham petition. In all, at least 17 Native American militia members were buried in this cemetery.

But Quapish was not allowed to rest in peace. By the 1850s, his remains were in Dedham.  It is possible that they were moved from Natick at some point. It is also possible that he was in fact buried in Dedham to start with, and the assumption that he was buried near the Bacons is incorrect.  Either way, in 1856 they were disinterred by Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow and given to the collections of the Warren Anatomical Museum at the Harvard Medical School, where they were held until 2020. The remains came under review as a result of the Warren’s ongoing research on its collections required by the federal Native American Graves Repatriation Act (1990), and were returned to the tribe. Alexander Quapish is again buried in the Pond Street cemetery among his comrades, where he belongs.