Along with the Boston Marathon and a home Red Sox game, today Massachusetts observes Patriots’ Day. This holiday, the third Monday in April since 1969, commemorates the Battle of Lexington on 19 April 1775.[1] In Lexington, the reenactment of the battle begins in the early morning hours as the Regulars – the British soldiers – march toward the town’s Common, and the militia company exits the adjacent Buckman’s Tavern to gather on the Common, now known as Battle Green.
Buckman’s Tavern, the first public house in Lexington, was also a headquarters for the militia and a meeting place for the local training band under Capt. John Parker. At that time, John Buckman was the owner of the tavern.
However, it was Benjamin Muzzy (1657–1732) who built the house. Benjamin, born in Malden, was a large land owner in the center of town and one of the largest taxpayers in 1693. That year, on 20 October, he bought land from Edward Pelham. According to the deed, Edward Pelham of Newport, Colony of Rhode Island, merchant, for one hundred pounds, sold a parcel of lands amounting to about two hundred and six acres to Benjamin Muzzey, farmer.[2]
In a later deed, dated 14 June 1711, Benjamin Muzzy, along with his sons John and Richard, sold about two acres of land for about sixteen pounds to the “Inhabitants of Lexington,” by subscription, for a common, and an eventual site for a meeting house.[3]
On 28 June 1714, John Muzzy was licensed to open the first public house in Lexington:
At a metting of ye selectmen it was agred that John muzzy should have thare aprobation to Kep a publique House of Entertainment: and his father did Ingage before the selectmen to a Comadate his son John with stablle roome haye and Pastuering: so fare as he stood In nead: for the Suport of Strangers.”[4]
Benjamin Muzzy’s probate record (he died intestate) included an inventory taken on 16 June 1732; it listed a mansion house, barn, outhouse, cider mill and press, with about one hundred and eleven acres of orchard, meadows, and upland.[5]
John Buckman Jr. (1745–1792) was married first to Ruth Stone, daughter of Samuel and Jane (Muzzy) Stone. Jane Muzzy was the daughter of John Muzzy and granddaughter of Benjamin. John Buckman resided in the house and kept it a public house. [6] It was also a store and later the town’s first post office. Today the house is owned by the Lexington Historical Society, and is a National Historic Landmark.
http://www.lexingtonminutemen.com/the-battle-of-lexington.html
http://www.lexingtonhistory.org/
Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 (Online Database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-16).
Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts; from its First Settlement to 1868, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913).
Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986, viewed on Family Search.
Middlesex County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1648-1871, viewed on AmericanAncestors.org.
[1] Lexington Historical Society; http://www.lexingtonhistory.org/
[2] “Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986,” images, FamilySearch, Middlesex > Deeds 1684-1693 vol 9-11 > image 419 of 741; county courthouses and offices, Massachusetts.
[3] Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts; from its First Settlement to 1868, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 1: 39-40.
[4] Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 1: 48.
[5] Middlesex County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1648-1871.Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2014. (From records supplied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.) Case 15751, 1-7.
[6] Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 2: 77-78, 467-68.
