When Doug Scott and I published Bullet Strikes From the First Day of the American Revolution in November 2024, we knew, or at least thought more bullet-struck objects and architectural elements might pop up over time. It wasn’t even a month after the book was printed that just such an item appeared. One evening my phone began to ring about an intriguing object that we needed to check out, and I fumbled with my phone to click on the link and see what it was.

It seems a curious fragment of wood appeared at an auction house in Massachusetts which was scheduled for auction on January 4, 2025. As soon as we saw the images we knew what it was and when it was found. A piece of bullet-struck clapboard from the Captain William Adams house which stood in the Cambridge village of Menotomy, now Arlington, Massachusetts. Prior to 1855 a daguerreotype image of the house had been taken, so we have a great view of the now-gone historic structure.

The Captain William Adams (1725-1787) house was built circa 1680. In 1846, a part of the house was taken down for the new railroad which was to pass behind it. During July 1855, the rest of the house was taken down. A July 12, 1855 article in the Daily Atlas stated as the Captain William Adams house was being razed “Mr. Josiah Russell, takes pains to secure every bullet found in the building, and disposes of them at the rate of one dollar each. Yesterday afternoon a small piece of clapboard which had been perforated by a bullet, was sold for half a dollar.”  The small piece of bullet-struck clapboard had reappeared!

A few days after we were notified about the clapboard we made the trip up to Amesbury, Massachusetts, to see this new find. A mahogany frame had been made for it after its purchase with a glass window on either side of the bullet hole. On one end of the frame was “Jarad Sparks” written in what appears to be iron gall ink. Jarad Sparks (1789-1866) was an influential Unitarian minister, historian of the Revolution, as well as the president of Harvard College from 1849 to 1853 and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1855 when the Adams house was being razed. On the clapboard is a printed note which reads “Clapboard from the Old Adams House in West Cambridge [current day Arlington], attacked by the British on their return from Concord, April 19th, 1775. The hole was made by a bullet at that time. The house was taken down in July, 1855.” The clapboard fragment itself measures 5 ¾” x 2 1/16”. The mahogany frame measures 8” x 5” and is 1 ½” thick. The hole is weathered and has had some loss from being out in the elements for about 80 years since it had been struck. The holes measure 1.233-inch on the major axis, and .823-inch on the minor axis.

The auction estimate placed on the framed clapboard was $1,000.00 to $2,000.00. Within a week it jumped to $4,750.00. We knew many of the bidders and on January 4, Doug and I watched the auction as it unfolded. It ended with a hammer price of $25,000.00 plus the buyer’s premium, so the buyer paid around $30,000.00 for the weather-beaten piece of clapboard with a bullet strike!

After the auction we figured that whoever purchased the piece would reach out to us, but there was silence. We made some calls to friends who we knew had been bidding and none of them acquired it. Then in late March we received a message on Instagram from the unknown to us buyer who didn’t have any of the information we had collected. We sent the current owner the information we had so that it will hopefully stay with the bullet-struck clapboard forever.

For more information on the Captain William Adams house and artifacts see Bullet Strikes From the First Day of the American Revolution pages 89-91, and “The Dreadful Trophies of War” article in the Publications section of the site.