For most of us when we think of the founding fathers of our nation we think of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin or John and Samuel Adams. However, Dr. Joseph Warren, who played a major role in events leading to the rebellion, remains our forgotten “founding father.”

Who was Warren? Brought up on a farm yet superbly educated he has been called a combination of a working class farmer and a gentleman scholar allowing him to move in all levels of Boston society. Historians believe that in the years leading up to the Revolution his leadership role was equal if not superior to that of Samual Adams and John Hancock.

Joseph Warren was born on June 11, 1741, in Roxbury Mass., to Joseph and Mary Warren. His father was a respected community leader and farmer who died when Joseph was 14 after he fell from a ladder while picking apples in his orchard.

Warren was educated at the Roxbury Latin School after which he enrolled at Harvard College, graduating in 1759. A brilliant student, Warren, then pursued a Master of Arts Degree in medicine at Harvard graduating In 1763. He then apprenticed under Dr James Lloyd who would become the first specialized obstetrician in America.

On Sept. 6, 1764, he married 18 year old heiress Elizabeth Hooten with whom he had four children. Unfortunately, his wife, Elizabeth, died in 1775 probably due to complications in giving birth. In the ensuing years Warren would establish a successful medical and surgical practice in Boston providing care to members of all classes. During a smallpox outbreak in 1765 Warren was said to have inoculated hundreds of citizens.

In these years he also became involved in Freemasonry becoming a member and eventually the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of St. Andrew. As a Mason he came in contact with men like John Hancock, Samual Adams, and Paul Revere, who were leading members of the Sons of Liberty.

He first became active in the radical cause with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767 writing a series of articles protesting British actions. He became more active in the radical cause after the Boston Massacre in February 1770 when he became the head of the Boston Committee of Safety.

As the conflict with the British government came to a head in 1774 he was appointed to the Boston Committee of Correspondence and wrote the Suffolk Resolves that expressed colonial grievances and outlined a strategy for resistance against the Intolerable Acts

By the spring of 1775 with leading roles in the Sons of Liberty, the Committee of Correspondence, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress Warren was for all practical purposes the leader of the revolutionary movement.

In the spring of 1775 word came to Warren that Gen. Thomas Gage, the British commander in Boston, was planning to send a force to seize the large supply of powder, rifles, and artillery that the patriots had collected in the village of Concord. Warren’s informant remains unknown, although some historians strongly suspect that the informant was Margaret Kemble, Gage’s American wife. She did not make a secret of her divided loyalties and once said that “she hoped her husband would never be the instrument of sacrificing the lives of her countrymen.” General Gage stated later that he had told only two people of the plan, which was to be kept a “profound secret”: his second-in-command, and one other person. Some of the other top British officers suspected that the other person was Margaret and as she was a patient of Dr. Warren she certainly had the means.

Warren then directed Paul Revere and Samuel Dawes to set out on their rides on the evening of April 18 through the New England countryside to call out the local militia to confront the British force and to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were hiding in Lexington that the British were intent on arresting them.

Near midday on the 19th hearing that fighting had broken out between the British and the Militia Warren left his patients in the care of an assistant and rode out of Boston towards the fighting where he joined in the fighting. Warren would spend the next six weeks treating the wounded and negotiating with the British to ensure the wellbeing of civilians trapped in Boston during the siege.

On June 14 Warren was commissioned a Major General of Militia. On the morning of June 17th Warren received word that British troops had landed on the Charlestown shore just across the the harbor from Boston.

Around noon he rode out to the American fortifications on Breeds Hill where General Israel Putman was in command. Despite his high rank and realizing that Putman who had led colonial troops during the French and Indian War had far more battlefield experience told him that he would serve as a regular volunteer.

It was during the third and final British assault as Warren attempted to rally the exhausted American troops that he was shot between his eyes and died instantly. Buried in a common grave on the battlefield by the British, his remains were later moved to the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.

Joseph Warren was devoted to the cause of liberty and independence from Great Britain. Well educated and with high intelligence coupled with superb organizational and management skills he was the right man for the job at a critical time in our nation’s history.

Thomas Kirkpatrick is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com.