Dr. Joseph Warren - The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty

Dr. Samuel A. Forman, author of the definitive biography of the hero of Charlestown's Bunker Hill, will reveal how Warren may have collected military intelligence from a network of spies acting as patients.

Warren served as president of the 1775 Massachusetts Provincial Congress. He learned of the British plan to march to Concord to seize munitions from the Minutemen. Warren sent Paul Revere and John Dawes to warn the patriots that the Regulars were coming.

Dr. Joseph Warren was one of the many heroes who died on June 17, 1775 fighting the British to gain the colonies independence. Son of a Roxbury farmer, Warren became a doctor after Harvard to fight smallpox and other deadly illnesses. His wife died in 1773 leaving him an eligible widower with four young children. Active in the Sons of Liberty, Warren had a sharp tongue. .

Dr. Warren spoke and wrote about the injustices imposed by the distant British Government and their local officials, and especially about the Boston Massacre.

Warren was appointed a Major General by the Provincial Congress three days before the Battle of Bunker Hill, but refused General Putnam and Colonel Prescott's request that he become their commander. Instead, he volunteered as a private and went where the fighting was heaviest to rally the patriots against the British. Warren was killed on the final assault by the British under controversial circumstances.