Paul Revere¹

 As a child Paul Revere attended the North Writing School and learned the goldsmith industry from his father from whom he inherited his name. It was during his youth that he served as a 2^nd lieutenant against the French at Crown Point in 1756. On September 23, 1773, after the death of his first wife Sara (Orne) Revere, he married Rachel (Walker) Revere. It was during this time that Revere’s sympathy for the colonists grew and led him, along with Williams Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Lexington and those overseeing the gunpowder stores in Concord of British advancement on the night of April 18, 1775. During the Revolutionary War, in which Revere served as a lieutenant colonel, he assisted in the establishment of a powder mill in Canton and becoming commandant at Castle Island. During this period Revere may have also opened a small forge with Richard Gridley on Shepard’s Pond and produced agricultural products, such as, swords and sickles.

In 1800 Revere decided to establish a copper business (a business he learned from a Frenchmen named Marguelle) to increase United States (U.S.) economic self-sufficiency and purchased land on the Neponset River in Canton from the Kinsley Iron Works for $6,200 (with a $10,000 loan from the government), opening his Revere Copper Company in 1801 with an order for the state house building. In 1804, after selling ½ of the business to his son Joseph Warren Revere, the business practices of the company came under scrutiny as the Kinsley Iron Company sued the Revere Copper Company over water usage on the Neponset River. Both companies needed to keep their factory/mills running. Kinsley Iron accused Revere Copper of moving up a mutually agreed upon hole in a boulder that was used to measure the water level, in order to increase the water level in favor of the Revere  Copper Company. Revere lost the suit and was ordered to pay $110.19 in taxes and although Kinsley Iron continued to pursue legal means to address their grievances they were continually frustrated. Paul Revere’s industrial neighbor was not his only critic, as by 1814 many clients of the company began voicing their displeasure with the quality of copper they received. In that year Robert Fulton stopped purchasing copper from the company and the towns of Chesterfield, NH and Brookfield NH also began expressing their displeasure with the company and Chesterfield even took the step of returning their copper bell. However, by this time Paul Revere had taken a less active role in the company spending his time either in Boston or at his Canton Dale home located on the Neponset River near the Fowl Meadows where he hunted. On May 10, 1818 Paul Revere died.

Resources¹

Mrs. Joseph A. Cushman, "Paul Revere, Patriot," 1-18.

Daniel Erickson, "Paul Revere's Life in Canton, Massachusetts," 1-29.