The Lexington Paper
By: Sydney McManemin
The Committee Meeting
On April 18, 1775, the committee members of Lexington had their weekly committee meeting at the church. The men discussed town issues and where they stood with fighting the British.
Jeremiah Phitts began the meeting by giving a financial report. Then the meeting was called to order by Samuel Hodley, who brought up a few points at the meeting that night. Hodley gave results of the weapon count for the village. There was a total of about 116 assorted weapons. There were seven close-bore guns with rifled barrels, around sixty smoothbore guns.
Among the sixty there were about ten old-fashioned firelocks and fourteen were British army guns. There were five dragoon pistols, and the rest were fowling guns for pepper and salt shots.
Hodley also brought up that the town should have a central shot and powder depot in the middle of the village because he read somewhere that any place that is under siege should have an ammunition depot. But the notion was voted down by the committee since none of the men thought having one would be necessary.
Clarence Pinckney mentioned his pet notion about drilling, but the notion was put down because April wasn’t the right month to ask farmers to come out and drill. The notion has been put down for a fortnight.
There was discussion for a newspaper, but it was almost immediately shut down since most of the men believed that such a small village would barely be able to hold up something like a newspaper.
There was yet another argument of whether or not minutes should be kept, which is discussed towards the end of nearly every committee meeting. Once again, Moses Cooper proudly rises to the occasion of supporting a case if anyone ever disagrees with him. He spoke about this manner for so long that there were only a few minutes left in the meeting when he was done.