Rebekah Fiske

Daughter of Israel and Elizabeth Howe, Rebekah was the youngest of five children. In historical sources, her name is sometimes spelled “Rebecca” and “Rebekah,” but on her headstone it is spelled with a K. Her father died before she was born, but her mother remarried and Rebekah’s stepfather was Stephen Barrett. 

In 1767, Rebekah Howe married Benjamin Fiske. Her husband’s family had lived at Fiske Hill just west of the village of Lexington for four generations. The large farm was situated on both sides of the road that headed west toward the town of Concord. Sometimes called “the red house,” the Fiske’s home may have been used as an inn, since Rebekah’s father-in-law Ebenezer Fiske had an innkeeping license. Benjamin Fiske, Rebekah’s husband, had “a certain indisposition [and] was incapacitated for military service.”

In the dark morning hours of April 19, 1775, news came that British soldiers had left Boston and were marching to Concord. Local militia men gathered at Lexington’s village green while Rebekah and her husband considered what to do. She later remembered hearing the first shots and wanted to flee, but could not easily leave since her father-in-law was ill and bed-bound. British soldiers marched passed the Fiske home but did not stop as they headed toward Concord. The sounds of fighting escalated later in the day. Rebekah and Benjamin Fiske lifted Ebenezer into an oxcart and hurried to seek safety at a neighbor’s house. Before leaving the Fiske home, Rebekah hid some of the family’s valuables and locked the windows and doors. 

At the neighbor’s home, the residents had already fled, and Rebekah stayed with her father-in-law. Soldiers came near again, and she retreated to the neighbor’s cellar. Peeking outside, she saw “the terrific array of war soon came fully into view, and as soon passed off again from before my eyes, like a horrid vision, leaving only a cloud of smoke behind and the groans of the dying, who were strewed in its wake.”

The British column was retreating from Concord. As fighting continued along the road, a sharp skirmish occurred as the British reached Fiske Hill. Colonial militia ambushed the British from behind a “pile of rails.”  Reaching the Fiske home, some of the British and Americans paused to get water or enter the home. Enemy stragglers met each other and fired.

When Rebekah returned home, she found destruction, three wounded men with their blood pooling on the house floor and a dead British soldier on the doorstep. Benjamin buried the fallen British soldiers on the property. The fighting at Fiske’s Hill along Battle Road became an important part of historical memory for April 19, 1775, and in 1827, Rebekah Fiske shared her reminiscences of the scenes she witnessed and found. 

After the battles that opened the Revolutionary War, the Fiskes continued to live on their farm near Lexington. Rebekah and Benjamin had a daughter in 1783. Two years later, Benjamin died. Widowed, Rebekah eventually remarried in 1786. With her second husband, William Merriam, she had another daughter in 1790. Rebekah Howe Fiske Merriam died in 1845 and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.