One of the Lexington Munroes, Ensign Robert, was the first man killed by Pitcairn’s volley; he was sixty-four years old, and had been color-bearer in the capture of Louisburg by assault in 1745. Two of his sons and two sons-in-law were in his company on Lexington Green, and eleven of the Munroe clan were in arms that day. Captain Parker did not long survive the battle, dying the next September; but when the Civil War came on, his grandson Theodore had bequeathed to Massachusetts, and Governor Andrew had placed in her Senate Chamber, beside the trophies sent by Stark from Bennington, “two fire-arms, formerly the property of my honored grandfather,--to wit, the large musket or King’s arm, which was by him captured from the British in the battle of Lexington, and which is the first fire-arm taken from the enemy in the war for Independence; and also the smaller musket used by him in that battle.” Theodore Parker had died in May, 1860. Pitcairn and his redcoats, delayed only half an hour by this bloody overture to Washington’s grand career, marched on towards [Illustration: MUSKETS OF CAPTAIN JOHN PARKER.] Concord, little knowing what would meet them there. As they climbed the hills in Lexington and Lincoln, they could surmise, however, that the country was rising, for the church-bells were ringing an alarm of fire. Pierpont, at Acton, overlooking the neighboring towns named by him, gave the geography of this rising in spirited couplets: “Now Concord’s bell, resounding many a mile, Is heard by Lincoln, Lincoln’s by Carlisle, Carlisle’s by Chelmsford,--and from Chelmsford’s swell Peals the loud clangor of th’ alarum bell, Till it o’er Bedford, Acton, Westford spreads, Startling the morning dreamers from their beds.” These are the small towns lying along the Concord and Merrimac rivers, and their tributaries, which sent forth the minute-men to fight at Concord Bridge. Prescott had done his warning work well; and as Emerson said in 1835: “In these peaceful fields, for the first time since a hundred years (King Philip’s War), the drum and alarm-gun were heard, and the farmers snatched down their rusty firelocks from the kitchen walls, to make good the resolute words of their town debates. These poor farmers acted from the simplest instincts; they did not know it was a deed of fame they were doing.” It was Emerson’s grandfather, the town minister, who met them on Concord Green, before his church, and who entered that night in his almanac the events he had witnessed, as soon to be quoted.