Mary Hartwell

Mary Flint Hartwell was an American woman who played a prominent role in the battles of Lexington and Concord, during the American Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1783.

Early life

Mary Flint was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1747, to Ephraim Flint, a founder of Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Ruth Wheeler. She was the second of their five children.

On September 12, 1769, a 22-year-old Flint married Samuel Hartwell, son of Ephraim and Elizabeth, who was five years her senior.

In the early hours of April 19, 1775, during Paul Revere's "Midnight Ride", Samuel Prescott escaped a British Army patrol on Battle Road in Concord, Massachusetts. He emerged onto nearby North County Road and sought assistance at Hartwell Tavern. Ephraim Hartwell, the tavern's owner, sent his black slave, Violet, down the road to the Samuel Hartwell House to alert his son, Samuel, and his family of the impending arrival of the British soldiers. Mary made her way to alert Captain William Smith, commanding officer of the Lincoln minutemen, who lived nearby. The minutemen received the notice in time, and arrived at Old North Bridge before their enemy. Prescott, meanwhile, made it to Concord.

Hartwell died in 1846, aged 99. She had survived her husband by seventeen years, and was buried beside him in Lincoln Cemetery.