12 Great Road, Bedford, MA - The Fitch Tavern
Circa 1731, the Fitch Tavern has withstood the American Revolution, the Civil War, the 70’s and the patter of many, many small feet on its wide pine plank flooring. It no longer charges for the beer and wine it serves and to be a guest is by invitation only, but during the days leading up to the Revolutionary War, it was a central meeting place for locals.
Before dawn on April 19, 1775, long before the firing started on the town green of Lexington, Massachusetts, Bedford’s Minutemen had been warned by Lexington’s Captain Parker, who had sent two young men, Benjamin Tidd and Nathaniel Monroe into Bedford as couriers. The men rode up to the door of Cornet Page’s house, and striking the door shouted, “Get up, Nat Page; the Redcoats are out.” They proceeded to the oldest structure in the center of Bedford, the historically significant Fitch Tavern. It was here, while Jeremiah Fitch, a sergeant of the Bedford Militia company, was operating it as a tavern, that twenty-six Bedford Minutemen gathered on the morning of April 19, 1775, following the alarm that the British were on the march from Boston. It was in the old kitchen that Mr. Fitch called the Minutemen to gather about the warmth of the fireplace while young Lydia Fitch served up cold cornmeal mush and hot buttered rum. Captain Jonathan Wilson looked into the eyes of his men and spoke the famous words, “It is a cold breakfast, boys, but we’ll give the British a hot dinner; we’ll have every dog of them before night.” The Minutemen then marched on foot to Concord, joining the fifty men of the Bedford Militia en route.
The Fitch Tavern falls within the Historic District of the Town of Bedford.