bordering the creek that ran through their meadow, or they
made barrel staves and spinning wheels and ciderpresses;
with each generation they put their roots deeper into the
ground.

It was Theodore's grandfather, Captain John Parker,
who most deeply impressed himself upon the history of the
town. He had been a sergeant in the French and Indian
War, and had seen the battle on the Plains of Abraham, and
the fall of Quebec. Fifteen years later, he commanded the
militia on that morning of April Nineteenth when Major
Pitcairn marched his redcoats down the Concord road and
into Lexington village. How often Theodore heard that story;
it was all very real to him, and very personal. In features
and in build he resembled his grandfather, and he liked to
think that he had inherited some of the Captain's courage
and character. The musket that John Parker had used that
day, and another that he had captured at Bunker Hill, hung
always in his grandson's study; and the bold words which
family tradition credited to the Captain came to have for
Theodore a special meaning: "If they mean to have a war, let
it begin here."

Captain Parker's son John was a boy of fourteen when he
watched the skirmish on Lexington Common. That same year
the Captain died, only forty-six, and John took over the
farm and the carpenter's shop. He was a poor farmer, but
a good mechanic, much more skillful at mending pumps
than at clearing land, and the farm ran down -- all but
the orchard, which he tended diligently. When he was
twenty-three he married Hannah Stearns, daughter of Ben-
jamin and Hannah Segur Stearns, whose house was down the
Waltham road. The Segurs came from Newton, but the
Stearnses, like the Parkers, belonged in Lexington. They
too had their Revolutionary tradition, and the story of
Lexington seemed tame to a veteran like Ben Stearns who
had fought at White Plains and at Bennington. He was a
man of property and position, "Sugar Ben" Stearns, but
there were eleven children in the family, and blue-eyed

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