According to family lore, on the night of December 16, 1773, Cambridge, Massachusetts resident John Hicks snuck out of his home via the second floor and made the eight-mile trek into Boston.
When he returned home later that night, he allegedly left his boots outside overnight. According to family history, his wife, Elizabeth, saw a number of tea leaves falling out of the boots the following morning and remarked, “That kind of night prowling was alright by her.”
A carpenter by trade, Hicks built his family home in Cambridge in 1762 and by 1771 was influential enough to be elected town tax collector. However, in 1773, he was so far behind in his remittances that the town brought him to trial and seized his house to satisfy the uncollected tax debt.
One of the first casualties of the American Revolutionary War, John Hicks, was tragically killed during the British retreat from Concord on April 19, 1775. Upon hearing the news of fighting in Lexington and Concord, John Hicks had retrieved his musket and rode out to North Cambridge to catch the retreating soldiers and engage them. When he came within sight of British troops, two other men, Moses Richardson and Isaac Gardner, reportedly joined him as they hid behind barrels and opened fire on British forces. It is said that Hicks and the other two men met their death immediately upon the soldiers’ return volley. John Hicks’ home still stands on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge and is used as a student library today.
John Hicks was buried in the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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