Patriots' Day & the Dawes Family

William Dawes rode through Brookline on the night of April 18, 1775, on his way to Lexington to warn that British soldiers were on their way. The ride is recreated each Patriots' Day. But he was not the last member of the extended Dawes family to leave his mark on the town in the month of April.

Seventy-six years after Dawes' ride, on April 23, 1861, his grandson, William Dwight Goddard, became the first Brookline man to enlist in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. Goddard was the son of William Dawes' youngest child, Mehitabel May Dawes.  Born in 1796, she married Samuel Goddard of Brookline in 1818.

William D. Goddard served only a short time in the army. He died in 1866 at the age of 32. Mehitabel Goddard died in 1882. Both are buried, along with Samuel and other family members, in the Old Burying Ground on Walnut Street.

Headstones in the Old Burying Ground marking the graves of Mehitabel May Dawes Goddard and her son William Dwight Goddard

On April 20, 1925, William Dawes' great-great grandson, U.S. Vice President Charles Dawes, came to Massachusetts to mark the 150th anniversary of his ancestor's ride and the start of the American Revolution. Among his stops as he followed the route of Dawes' 1775 ride was the Edward Devotion School (now the Florida Ruffin Ridley School) in Coolidge Corner.

Schoolchildren presented a pageant in honor Dawes' visit. Thirteen-year-old Margaret Stein, a student at the school portraying William Dawes' daughter Hannah, presented the vice president with a pair of gloves that had belonged to Hannah. She also read a poem in the voice of Hannah Dawes. (The poem inaccurately described Hannah as Charles Dawes' great-great grandmother.; a half-sister of Mehitabel, she was actually Dawes' great-great aunt.)

Vice President Charles Dawes and a poem read in his honor at the then Edward Devotion School (Click image for a larger view)