The Green Dragon was the meeting place for Paul Revere’s St. Andrew’s Lodge.

Paul Revere’s role as the midnight messenger of April 18, 1775 is well known. His philanthropy, on the other hand, is not. At this time when the coronavirus is isolating us, it is vital that we help each other as best we can. Paul Revere did the same. Examples abound of how he extended himself and his resources to family, friends, and neighbors.

When Revere died on May 10, 1818, at the age of 83, his obituary in the Boston Intelligencer on May 16 shared that the community had sustained an “irreparable loss,” noting Revere’s “performance of acts of disinterested benevolence.” His “ample property, which his industry and perseverance had enabled him to amass, was always at the service of indigent worth.” They continued by noting that “His opinions…were always sound and…his advice was therefore as valuable as it was readily proffered to misfortune.” Indeed, “honors, love, obedience, troops of friends, have followed him to the tomb.”

Taking care of one’s own was not a foreign concept to Revere. In 1760 when he was 25, he became a Freemason in St. Andrew’s Lodge. Their congeniality and ideals of virtuous conduct and benevolence must have appealed to him because he remained an active Mason for forty years. The first example of charity in the St. Andrew’s Lodge minutes occurred in February 1761 when the Lodge gave five pounds, six shillings and eight pence to Brother Black who had “been a Sufferer in the Late Fire when Fauniel [sic] was burnt.” In 1766, Revere served on a committee to “draw some new regulations for Charity & a New Book be bought for the Same.”

Examples of charity dot the Lodge minutes, usually in the form of petitions for relief, many from wives and widows in “distressed circumstances.” In 1769, after Revere and a few others looked into the situation of Widow Darracott, the Lodge awarded her over eleven pounds between July and November. In other appeals, the members “voted that the hat should go round” to collect money. Some petitioners received funds out of the Lodge account. Still others apparently received relief without appealing directly to the Lodge, a practice which was discouraged. In 1783, St Andrew’s voted “For the future, no sum or sums of money shall be paid by Saint Andrew’s Lodge to any member or members who shall advance any money to any persons who shall apply to them for Charity out of the Lodge.”

Lodges also welcomed Masons who were not members, from near or far, in a spirit of fellowship. This courtesy proved essential during wartime, when St. Andrew’s Lodge aided “distressed strange brethren.” Such was the case of “Brother Moses Abraham Wallach,” who appealed for help in 1778 while Revere was Lodge Master. According to the minutes, he was “a Dutch Young Gentleman who was taken by one of Tyrant Georges Frigates & had everything taken from him, even to his Certificate.” The members voted unanimously to find him “suitable Lodgings and a passage to some Dutch Island in the W. Indies” and “present him a Certificate from this Lodge.” The Lodge also assisted British prisoners of war, such as Sergeant James Andrews “as a Token of the Love and friendship this Society has for one of the Fraternity tho’ an Enemy.”

Revere also held offices in the Massachusetts Grand Lodge founded in 1769. The minutes include references to charity, such as taking up collections for Boston’s poor. In 1780, after one of their annual feasts, they donated the leftover food to the prisoners in the jail. Years later in 1795, Revere had the honor of giving a brief speech at the Masonic ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone of the new Massachusetts State House in Boston. He appealed to his Masonic brethren to “so Square our Actions thro life as to shew to the World of Mankind, that we mean to live within the Compass of Good Citizens.” In 1797, Revere recommended raising a committee to develop regulations for the dispersal of charity, and served on the committee the following year.

In 1800, when Revere was 65, he established a mill to roll sheet copper in Canton, Massachusetts. According to a poem he wrote about his mill property around 1810, he enjoyed both the clanging of the machinery and the idyllic rural environment where he could walk his property or rest under a tree and read a book. It was there “in the country” that he met Deborah Sampson Gannett, a neighbor from Sharon, who, remarkably, had fought in the Revolutionary War disguised as a man until she was wounded and her secret discovered. Many years later, married with a family, she appealed to Revere for help. Revere wrote a letter of support when she applied to the government for a military pension (which she received) and also gave her financial assistance. In a letter written in 1806, when asking Revere for a loan of ten dollars, she was embarrassed “that after receiving ninety and nine good turns as it were – my circumstances require I should ask the hundredth.”

In his poem about his mill property “Cantondale,” Revere described not only his retirement life but also how he viewed himself – as the “poor man’s hope; the Widow’s friend; the orphan’s guide; who often lend.” This self-assessment was not without justification. When his daughter Frances died in 1799, Revere took in her three children and assumed the care of her mentally unstable husband Thomas Stevens Earyes. At significant expense, Revere placed his son-in-law under the care of Doctor Samuel Willard, who kept numerous patients similarly afflicted at his home in the country. Revere saw to his son-in-law’s humane care when the man’s own family would not. Olive Willard, the doctor’s wife, wrote a letter to Rachel where she lauded the compassionate care of the orphans around the Revere’s table, likely referring to the Earyes’ children who had in essence lost both parents. Willard lauded Rachel, saying “how little did I know your worth till I visited you in your own hospitable family, and saw your heart open to the Orphans which surrounded your Table and were fed from your hand.- this has written your memory upon my bosom.”

While in Canton, Revere also wrote a letter in 1806 appealing to the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society (of which he was a member) on behalf of a neighbor, John Endicott, whose house had been destroyed by fire. Revere no doubt hoped that his testimonial to the man’s character as a hard-working farmer would help him obtain financial assistance. The Fire Society was one of numerous organizations he chose to support, including the Boston Library Society and the Massachusetts Humane Society.

The creed of giving back to the community was embedded in the Republican ideology of his day, in the belief that a successful society depended upon the virtue of its citizenry. Revere clearly took this seriously. Although driven by ambition, he was generous with his resources and was, by all accounts, an affectionate family man, a fair employer, and a compassionate friend.

Edith Steblecki is Curator and Assistant Director of the Paul Revere House