Who was Paul Revere?
Paul Revere (1735-1818), the American hero whose exploit is celebrated in a poem by Longfellow, was born in Boston, son of Apollos Rivoire, a silversmith who had come to America from Guernsey . Paul served as a lieutenant of artillery (1756) and later became an ardent opponent of British authority. He took part in the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and joined the Boston Anti-British Society, whose members kept watch on the British troops at the time when the patriots were accumulating warlike stores at Concord. On 18 April 1775 800 British soldiers set out from Boston after dark, but they were seen and from his post in the church steeple Revere flashed warning lantern signals.
Then he mounted his horse and rode hard across country to Lexington, warning minutemen as he went and rousing the patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock from their beds.
During the war Revere became lieutenant-colonel of artillery, and as an expert craftsman he designed the first paper money for Congress and made the first seals for Massachusetts and the united colonies . He also went to Philadelphia to make gunpowder for the war effort. Later he discovered a method of rolling sheet copper and founded the Revere Copper Company, but his greatest talent was as a silversmith, whose work fetches fabulous prices today.