Israel Bissell, Postrider of the American Revolution
This document on Israel Bissell, Postrider, was updated in July 2023, in order (1) to reflect information from a well-researched article about Bissell in the Berkshire Eagle April 18, 2022 by the paper's Features Editor Jennifer Huberdeau, and (2) be more current for posting on the Facebook page of the group "Descendants of Captain John Bissell of Windsor."
It includes both the traditional, slightly more mythical description of Bissell's four-day ride, ending after nearly 400 miles in Philadelphia, PA.; and also excerpts from Huberdeau's article making clear that such a ride for one person in 1775 was impossible, that multiple post riders carried the notice that fighting had begun, but that Israel Bissell's name on the original Lexington Alarm proves that Israel was the first rider carrying the message from Watertown to Worcester on April 19, 1775. Jennifer Huberdeau's complete article text is at the end of this document.
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Note as well that since this Bissell Family History web page was developed to show the genealogy of the Richard and Adelaide Bissell family, the chart below shows the link between that family of Groton, MA and the historic Israel Bissell, Jr. of Hinsdale, MA., but does include the genealogy trail from Israel back to Captain John Bissell.
This picture of Israel Bissell's ride is available in the form of a beautiful 13 X 19 print on archival watercolor paper from artist David Wells Roth, by email at at printpublishing@dwroth.com, or call (508) 872-2077.
Israel Bissel is a third cousin, seven times removed to the Bissell 3G generation. Israel, of course, was the 23-year old postrider who on April 19, 1775 carried the message "to arms, to arms, the war has begun," spreading the alarm that the Revolutionary War had begun with the British attack earlier that day at Concord and Lexington.
On the morning of April 19, approximately 700 British regulars marched out of Boston and up to Concord to raid the colonists' military supplies there. Learning of this plan, on the night of April 18 Paul Revere and Wiliam Dawes rode towards Concord to warn the colonists there. They only got as far as Lexington before being turned back by British sentries. A third messenger, Dr. Samuel Prescott, jumped his horse over a stone wall, escaped and rode on to warn Concord.
When the British troops got to Lexington, they were greeted by 70 armed militiamen. The war for independence began when a shot was fired, British guns fired a volley and eight Americans were killed. By 10 a.m. when the British reached Concord (American supplies had been removed the night before), word reached Col. Joseph Palmer of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety in Watertown, Mass. (about six miles south of Lexington) that fighting had begun. The Committees of Safety were established in the year or two leading up to the Revolution, for the purpose of taking more control of the colonial government operations from the British. In Massachusetts, where John Hancock and Samuel Adams had been leaders of the Committee of Safety, it was particularly strong.
Col. Palmer wrote a call to arms, a message with the following words,
"Wednesday morning near 10 of the clock - Watertown. To all the friends of American liberty be it known that this morning before break of day, a brigade, consisting of about 1,000 to 2,000 men landed at Phip's Farm at Cambridge and marched to Lexington, where they found a complany of our colony militia in arms, upon whom they fired without any provocation and six men and wounded four others. By an express from Boston, we find another brigade are now upon their march from Boston supposed to be about 1,000. The Bearer, Israel Bissell, is charged to alarm the country quite to Connecticut and all persons are desired to furnish him with fresh horses as they may be needed. I have spoken with several persons who have seen the dead and wounded. Pray let the delegates from this colony to Connecticut see this. J. Palmer, one of the Committee of Safety."
This is the purported timeline of Israel Bissell's ride:
April 19, 10 a.m., Watertown, Massachusetts
April 19, 12 noon, Worcester, Mass.
April 19 Pomfret, Connecticut
April 20 11 a.m., Brooklyn, CT
April 20, 4 p.m., Norwich, CT
April 20, 7 p.m., New London, CT
April 21, 1 a.m., Lyme CT
April 21, 4 a.m., Old Saybrook, CT
April 21, 10 a.m., Guilford, CT
April 21, 12 noon,Branford, CT
Fairfield, CT
April 23, 4 p.m., Wall Street, New York City
Elizabeth, New Jersey
New Brunswick, N.J.; Trenton, N.J.
April 24, 5 p.m., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
At age 23, Bissell rode day and night for four days, six hours and some minutes, covering 345 miles from Watertown, Mass. to City Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Along the way, his stops included Pomfret, Brooklyn, Plainfield, Norwich, New London, Lyme, Saybrook, Killingsworth, East Guilford, Guilford, Brandford, New Haven, Milford, Stratford, Fairfield, Sagatuck Bridge, Norwalk, Stamford and Horse Neck, CT.; New York City; Hackensack, Passaic, Newark, Elizabeth Town, New Brunswick, Kingston, Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey; and ultimately Philadelphia. In Worcester, his first horse collapsed and died. In Philadelphia, the pealing of the Liberty Bell caused a crowd of 8,000 to assemble to hear the news.
At each town, church bells were rung and muskets fired to spread the word and the message was copied and troops headed off toward Boston. Within a few days, 20,000 militia men were gathered in Boston, ready to face the British.
Bissell returned to his home in East Windsor, CT. and served briefly in the militia with his brother Justis. He lived out his years as a sheep farmer in Middlefield, Massachusetts and died in Hinsdale, Mass. in 1823. He is buried in the Maple Street Cemetery in Hinsdale. (Most of this information is from the Boston Sunday Globe 4/20/1997).
Here's how Jennifer Huberdeau's article describes the delivery of the Lexington Alarm, and Israel Bissell's role in that event:
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"On April 19, 1775, near 10 a.m., Joseph Palmer, a member of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, wrote a short letter detailing the arrival of British troops in Cambridge and the ensuing battle that happened at Lexington.
Palmer, then stationed at Watertown, sent the express rider (named Israel Bissell in numerous copies of the letter) to “alarm the country quite to Connecticut.” The letter, now known as the Lexington Alarm, first traveled to Worcester, where, under the order of the city’s Committee of Correspondence, it was copied, attested to by Col. Foster, a delegate and Town Clerk Nathaniel Balding, and dispatched with express riders. News of the battle at Lexington spread as the letter made its way through Connecticut and into Rhode Island. Five days later, the letter had made its way to New York City some 345 miles away. It continued from there to New Jersey and to Philadelphia, arriving on April 26, as members of the Second Continental Congress had just started to arrive...
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A copy of the alarm, held in the digital archive of the New York Public Library, transcribed from numerous copies prior to being transcribed by the chairman of the committee of safety in Elizabethtown, N.J., still bears the name Israel Bissell, as does a broadside held by the Library of Congress, printed on April 23 1775 in New York City. The broadside speaks of the news of the battle arriving by two vessels from Newport, R.I., and by an express by land. The Lexington Alarm, passed on from Providence, R.I., and copied numerous times over, also bears the name of Israel Bissell...
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An amazing story, if it was possible to travel 70 miles a day without resting. If possible, Bissell would have needed to ride at least one Narraganset, a now extinct breed of race horse that could travel a mile in 2 minutes time and could, according to accounts, travel 100 miles in a day. But, as the alarm letters show, the word was spread far and wide by a system of express carriers carrying copies. Most likely Bissell rode from Watertown to Worcester, where Col. Foster, a delegate of the state's Second Provincial Congress was stationed, as well as two notable members of the Constitutional Convention, John Adams and John Hancock (who, having been spirited away from Concord ahead of the British arrival, thanks to a famous alarm, were headed to Philadelphia.)"
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First Day Cover, this stamp was one of many issued in the early 1970s to celebrate the events that led to independence and the upcoming Bicentennial celebration in 1976. It was one of a set of four stamps chronicling the ways patriots communicated (Printers, Posters, Drummers and Postriders). The Postrider stamp just happened to be issued in Rochester, N.Y., Craig's hometown. Craig and his father collected first day covers.
This commemorative envelope was issued in Hinsdale, Mass on the 150th anniversary of Israel Bissell's death. Betsy got hers sent to her by her older brother George Bissell, who lives in Dalton, MA not far from Hinsdale.
The Bissell Connection to Israel Bissell
4th Cousin, seven times removed
Bissell “3G” Generation
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Joyce, Meredith, George, Gwen, Roger, Arthur, Eleanor, Chip, Carolyn, Betsy, Clyde
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Adelaide Lyon Boutelle ---- Richard Meredith Bissell
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Mertie Ella Bisbee ---- Herbert Hunt Bissell
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Julie Ann Richardson ---- John Hatch Bissell
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Mercy Ann Searle ---- Benoni Bliss Bissell
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Tirzah Pierce ---- Solomon Bissell Israel
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Israel Bissell, Postrider b. 1752 East Windsor, CT Eunice Olcott ---- Noah Bissell
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Israel Bissell b. 1720 Silence Burt ---- Noah Bissell
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Jeremiah Bissell - Mehitable White Ruth Warner ---- David Bissell
b. 1677 b. Abt 1682 ]
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John Bissell - Israel Mason Mindwell Moore ---- Nathaniel Bissell
b. Abt 1629 b. Abt 1638 ]
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[------------------------- Captain John Bissell - Mary -------------------------]
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From an article in the Berkshire Eagle on Patriot’s Day April 18, 2022
“Who traveled farther to warn the “British are Coming”? Paul Revere or Hinsdale’s Israel Bissell
This Patriot's Day, let Israel Bissell be the folk hero we need
By Jennifer Huberdeau, Features Editor, The Berkshire Eagle
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On April 19, 1775, near 10 a.m., Joseph Palmer, a member of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, wrote a short letter detailing the arrival of British troops in Cambridge and the ensuing battle that happened at Lexington.
Palmer, then stationed at Watertown, sent the express rider (named Israel Bissell in numerous copies of the letter) to “alarm the country quite to Connecticut.” The letter, now known as the Lexington Alarm, first traveled to Worcester, where, under the order of the city’s Committee of Correspondence, it was copied, attested to by Col. Foster, a delegate and Town Clerk Nathaniel Balding, and dispatched with express riders. News of the battle at Lexington spread as the letter made its way through Connecticut and into Rhode Island. Five days later, the letter had made its way to New York City some 345 miles away. It continued from there to New Jersey and to Philadelphia, arriving on April 26, as members of the Second Continental Congress had just started to arrive.
That letter, and the name of the express rider who carried it, should have faded into history and most likely would have, had Henry Wadsworth Longfellow not penned a poem about Paul Revere and his famous midnight ride. Not wanting to let Boston get all the credit for rousing the country to its feet, a rider who appeared to travel farther than Revere was stirred up nearly 141 years later, when the tale of Connecticut-born Israel Bissell was told. In this heroic tale, Bissell, later a resident of both Middlefield and Hinsdale, gallops from Massachusetts to New York City in less than a week, warning all he passes that the British have arrived and attacked Lexington.
But was this rider Israel Bissell the same one who lived out his days in Hinsdale? This has been a subject of debate for some time, with credit now, erroneously, being given to another rider, Isaac Bissell of Suffield, Conn., despite evidence favoring Israel Bissell. (It should be noted the name Isaac Bissell appears in some later transcriptions of the Lexington Alarm, as does the name Tryal Russell.)
The earliest documentation of Israel bissell’s ride found by this reporter appears in the Hartford Courant on July 23, 1916, in a column, “Famous Ride of Israel Bissell: How the East Windsor man carried the news of the Battle of Lexington and Concord from Watertown, Mass. to Philadelphia.” In it, the author recounts the tale of how the Continental Post Riders were established in March 1774 by the patriot printer William Goddard (misspelled Goddard in the column), of which (the author claims) the most trusted riders were “Israel Bissell of Connecticut, Cornelius Bradford of New York and Paul Revere of Massachusetts.” It may be this column that sparked the legend of Bissell’s five-day, 345-mile trip and spurred numerous individuals to celebrate him, not Revere, as the true champion of spreading the alarm.
By 1929, an article in “The Minute Man” credited the ride to an Israel Bissell of East Windsor, Conn., who years after the war, moved first to Middlefield and later to Hinsdale, where he is buried. That fact, repeated in a May 1932 Berkshire Eagle article, drew the attention of Phillip Mack Smith. In a letter to the editor he wrote: “Upon the appearance of this article in “The Minute Man” in April 1929, I made inquiry as to his authority of the identity in question, and he replied, citing “The History of Middlefield, Mass.,” which was written by my brother, Edward Church Smith and myself. In justice to us, may I say, wherever the long distance ride is mentioned in that volume it is stated that Israel Bissell of Middlefield and Hinsdale was “probably” the man who made the ride.”
Smith continued on in the letter that the brothers were uncertain as to which Israel Bissell made the ride. There was the Israel Bissell of Middlefield and HInsdale, who lived in East Windsor in 1775, and his father, of the same name. Both Bissells served during the Revolutionary War. The younger, noted as Israel Bissell Jr. in some records, but not all, served in Capt. Stoughton’s muster in June 1775 and in Capt. Wolcott’s muster in 1776. “The question, therefore, is, did Israel Sr., aged 55, or his son Israel, aged 23, make the remarkable ride?” Smith wrote.
Nevertheless, East Windsor and Hinsdale were happy to celebrate their patriotic son, who received numerous accolades over the ensuing decades, including a graveside marker, placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, detailing his feat. Hinsdale named a park in his honor and hosted an annual 5K race bearing his name. There was even a postage stamp and cancellation stamp issued by the U.S. Post Office.
The unsung hero, as many articles called him, became a favorite story for the press to recycle around Patriots’ Day for the next 80 years or so. That was until 2007, when Stockbridge historian Lion Miles made a case against Israel Bissell. (He had done so many times in previous years, but the 2007 letter to the editor in the March 26, 2007 issue of The Berkshire Eagle is of significance. That letter, along with a 2004 iBerkshires.com column by Miles are cited most often by historians crediting Isaac Bissell with the ride.)
In the 2007 letter, Miles wrote: “There are absolutely no “authenticated records” that a man named Israel Bissell did anything at all during the American Revolution and there is no documentary proof that he even was a post rider. The entire ridiculous story is based on the misspelling of the actual rider’s name in a newspaper account that was carried throughout the colonies by a series of established express riders, all the way to South Carolina.” He also chided anyone for believing a lone rider could travel from Waterford to Philadelphia in six days.
He further contends in the letter that the rider’s real name was Isaac Bissell, based on documents held by the William L. Clements Library at the University of Maryland and in the Massachusetts Archives at Columbia Point. “He rode only as far as Hartford, as the original order reads … He signed the documents clearly as Isaac Bissell.” (This letter may be one sent by the Committee of Safety on April 20, 1775.)
Earlier, in 2004, Miles claimed the post rider was Isaac Bissell based on a letter from he rider to Palmer, requesting payment for a post delivery in April 1775. Miles wrote: “In March 1776, he petitioned Col. Palmer for help and wrote [sic], “Sir you may Remember when Lexington Fite was you gave me an express to Cary to Hartford in Connecticut which I did,” adding, “I think I Earn my money.” He signed with the clear signature, “Isaac Bissell of Suffield.” (Massachusetts Archives, vol. 303, p. 162.)”
In the past dozen years since Miles wrote his letter, institutions across the country have brought their historical collections online, providing researchers from afar the ability to view original source document. And thus given this reporter the ability to make a case for Israel Bissell.
As to Mr. Miles’ claim that there are “no “authenticaed records” that a man named Israel Bissell did anything at all during the American Revolution,” we point out that there are several Revolutionary War documents that can be viewed on FamilySearch.org, ancestry.com and fold3.com that prove otherwise. There are several muster rolls showing both Israel Sr. and Israel Jr. among the ranks of Connecticut musters in 1775 and 1776. And on fold3, a document from Capt. Wolcott’s muster shows payment of 30 shillings to Israel Bissell for his service in 1776.
As to his claim that Israel Bissell’s name does not appear on the actual Lexington Alarm, but was a misspelling repeated in a newspaper article, there is proof that Bissell’s name does appear on numerous hand written copies of the document. There are several copies of the Lexington Alarm that can be viewed online. One held by the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library in Lexington, clearly states the bearer of the letter as Israel Bissell. It’s a copy-of-a-copy, written by Daniel Tier Jr. Tyer made the copy when it arrived in Brookline, Mass., on April 19, 1775, from a copy received by express and penned by Balding in Worcester. (Thus, if the rider’s name was incorrectly transcribed, it would have happened in either Worcester or Brookline.)
A copy of the alarm, held in the digital archive of the New York Public Library, transcribed from numerous copies prior to being transcribed by the chairman of the committee of safety in Elizabethtown, N.J., still bears the name Israel Bissell, as does a broadside held by the Library of Congress, printed on April 23 1775 in New York City. The broadside speaks of the news of the battle arriving by two vessels from Newport, R.I., and by an express by land. The Lexington Alarm, passed on from Providence, R.I., and copied numerous times over, also bears the name of Israel Bissell.
As for the matter of Isaac Bissell being paid for his ride, which is held high as the proof that he was the Lexington Alarm rider, it’s much more likely he received his payment of two shillings for delivery of another letter sent by the Committee of Safety on April 20.
One can view the April 26, 1776 resolve to pay Isaac Bissell’s payment “for his riding express to Hartford, Conn. in April last past” on FamilySearch.org. The journals of each Provincial congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of safety on archive.org contains the acts ordering his request be considered and at the transcription of a letter (on page 518) dispatched by the Committee of Safety on April 20, 1775 to the governments of the colonies of Connecticut and New Hampshire. This is the letter Isaac Bissell most likely delivered and requested two shillings payment for.
As Miles points out, Isaac Bissell only went to Hartford as his letter instructed, something that wasn’t part of the Lexington Alarm letter. As the surviving copies of the Lexington Alarm fail to give the direction to bring the note to Hartford, it is safe to surmise Isaac Bissell was not charged with carrying the letter dispatched from Watertown on April 19. Making it more likely than not that Israel Bissell delivered the letter from Watertown to Worcester.
But what of the claim that Israel Bissell traveled further and faster than Revere?
An amazing story, if it was possible to travel 70 miles a day without resting. If possible, Bissell would have needed to ride at least one Narraganset, a now extinct breed of race horse that could travel a mile in 2 minutes time and could, according to accounts, travel 100 miles in a day. But, as the alarm letters show, the word was spread far and wide by a system of express carriers carrying copies. Most likely Bissell rode from Watertown to Worcester, where Col. Foster, a delegate of the state's Second Provincial Congress was stationed, as well as two notable members of the Constitutional Convention, John Adams and John Hancock (who, having been spirited away from Concord ahead of the British arrival, thanks to a famous alarm, were headed to Philadelphia.)
But at the end of the day, does it really matter if the tale of Israel Bissell, of Middlefield and Hinsdale, is 100 percent true if it excites enough people to celebrate the founding of our country and the patriots who risked life and limb for it? Why not let Israel Bissell be the folk hero we need?
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