[BOWMAN, Thaddeus, his copy]. A New Version of the Psalms of David. Boston, N.E.: J. Kneeland and S. Adams for Wharton and Bowes, 1765.
12mo (142 x 85 mm). Title printed within a double rule border; with appendices of Hymns and Music with separate title-pages and pagination. (Lacking 20pp. of Psalms, 20pp. of Hymns, and 18pp. of Music; some overall browning and spotting). Provenance: Thaddeus Bowman (signature on flyleaf, "Thad. Bowman his Psalm Book 1777", additionally signed at end).
Early American edition. Thaddeus Bowman was the last scout sent out by Capt. John Parker on 19 April 1175 at Lexington, Massachusetts, and was the scout who found British troops approaching and returned to warn the militia. "At Lexington, Revere's alarm at midnight had called out Captain Jonas Parker and his company of minutemen. One hundred and thirty of them gathered on the village green' but no more news came and the night was cold...At half past four at full gallop. Thaddeus Bowman brought it. The British are coming! They were close at hand, less than half a mile behind them! Alarm guns were fired" (Christopher Ward, qtd. in The War of the Revolution). While Paul Revere's Midnight Ride is very well known (and was even memorialized in a poem by Longfellow), less is known about the key role Thaddeus Bowman played that same night. It was Bowman's warning that the British troops were advancing that readied the Minutemen, leading to "the shot heard round the world."