TwHistory

Paul Revere, the folk hero of the American Revolution whose dramatic horseback ride on the night of April 18, 1775 warning Boston-area residents that the British were coming, was immortalized in a ballad by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Revere was mainly distinguished in the colonial era as a master silversmith -- a craft he learned from his father, Apollos Rivoire, a Huguenot refugee who changed his name to Revere in the New World. To support his large family, the versatile and energetic craftsman also made surgical instruments, sold spectacles, replaced missing teeth, and engraved copper plates, the most famous of which portrayed his version of the Boston Massacre.