This triangular patch of grass marks where the American Revolution's first shots rang out on April 19, 1775. On the morning of April 19, 1775, Captain John Parker assembled about seventy-seven militia men on this green as a column of approximately 700 British regulars marched toward them from the direction of Boston. Parker's orders were not to let the British pass, but also not to fire first.
The British commander ordered the colonists to disperse; some began to do so, others held their ground. Then a shot was fired — no one knows by whom, the British or the colonists — and the regulars opened fire. Eight militiamen were killed and ten wounded; the British marched on to Concord.
The first official military deaths of the Revolution occurred on this green, in the morning light, before most of the colony knew the war had begun. Parker's words to his men — Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon.
But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here — are inscribed on the boulder at the edge of the green, though historians doubt he said exactly that. The Lexington Minuteman statue by Henry Hudson Kitson, dedicated in 1900, stands at the far end of the green looking down Bedford Street toward the British line.