As recalled in Samuel Worcester’s 1897 History of Hollis N.H., about noon on the 19th of April 1775, news that the British were marching upon Concord and Lexington, forty-two miles away, reached the town. Tradition maintains that Deacon John Boynton, a member of the Committee of observation, rode through Hollis at breakneck speed warning, “The regulars are coming and killing our men.” The response was immediate, and others soon joined him in spreading the alarm.

The story continues that on that fateful afternoon, three of the five Nevens brothers were working with crowbars digging stone to build a stone wall near their home.  As a messenger approached with the news, they were in the process of raising a large flat stone from a farm roadway. This they propped up with a small boulder as they stopped to listen. The stone was left in that position as they speed home, took up arms and hastened to the Hollis common to assemble with a company of 92 Minute Men and proceed to Lexington, Massachusetts to support the Revolutionary cause. Two of the five brothers would not return.

For seventy years, the stone and boulder remained in the location where they fell on that morning.  Both were eventually removed to the town common to mark the spot where the Minute Men gathered and departed on April 19, 1775.

A bronze plaque listing the names of the 92 men who served in the Revolutionary War was placed on the stone. In Footsteps of the Patriots: Beside Old Hearth Stones written by Abram English Brown and published in 1897 he notes that “Although beyond the limits of Middlesex County and of Massachusetts, the town of Hollis has been the first town to set up a monument on which can be read the names of all who responded to the alarm of April 19, 1775.”

The Nevens Stone was dedicated on June 17, 1898. The inscription reads:

The Nevens Brothers were at work on this stone, on their farm, April 19, 1775, and left it in this position at the Minute-men’s alarm, to join their comrades upon this Common.

This story is featured in How We Remember: Monuments, Memorials & Markers in the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area, part of our semiquincentennial initiative, Freedom’s Way 250, made possible with support from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and the National Park Service.