Isaac Davis (soldier) - Legacy

Legacy

In February 1851, shortly after the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Concord, Rev. James Woodbury of Acton petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for funds to build a large monument to Isaac Davis in Acton. After the legislature appropriated $2,000 for the project, the 75-foot tall stone obelisk was completed that fall and dedicated on October 29, 1851. The remains of Davis, Hosmer, and James Hayward (an Acton soldier who was killed in Lexington later in the battle) were moved and re-interred beneath the monument. At the base of the monument is a stone brought from the vicinity of the Old North Bridge in Concord which is, according to an inscription, the stone upon which Davis's head fell when he was killed.

In 1875, on the centennial of the Battle of Concord, a statue called "The Minute Man" was placed on the approximate site of Isaac Davis's death. The statue was the first public work of sculptor Daniel Chester French, best known for his 1920 statue, "Abraham Lincoln", in the Lincoln Memorial. Although commissioned to sculpt a generic provincial soldier, French was inspired by the story of Isaac Davis and modeled the facial features of his statue after photographs of Isaac Davis's descendants. Davis's plow, which is currently on display in Acton's Town Hall, was used as the model for the plow on the statue.

On the base of the statue is inscribed the first stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn written in 1836:

Representing Davis, the statue of "The Minute Man" with a musket in one hand and the other resting on a plow remains an iconic symbol, and can be found on the Massachusetts state quarter, corporate logos, and the seal of the National Guard of the United States.

The route of the Acton Minutemen is retraced every Patriots' Day in April by today's recreated company of Acton Minutemen, and by citizens and visitors. Now called the Isaac Davis Trail, the seven mile route from Acton to Concord traverses roads still in use as well as woodland trails. The path was established in 1957 by a group of Acton Boy Scouts who researched the historic route, cleared the portions of the path no longer in use, and placed markers. The trail was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.