Caesar & John Ferrit: Two of Natick’s Black Patriots
Written by Niki Lefebvre, Executive Director of the Natick Historical Society, May 15, 2025
On April 19, 1775, two Natick men stationed themselves inside a house in Lexington and waited for British soldiers to march past on their retreat from Concord. When they saw the red coats, the men fired and then hid under the cellar stairs. They avoided capture even as British soldiers searched the home.
The two men were Caesar Ferrit and his son, John. Caesar had been born on a Caribbean island in 1720 and was known to have claimed that he had the “blood of four nations in his veins”: Dutch, French, Indigenous Caribbean, and African. John was 22 years old at the time. He was the sixth of Caesar’s seven children and probably the first to have been born in Natick. Caesar’s wife, Naomi, was an English woman who had been raised in Boston. Thomas Ferrit, John’s older brother, also served on April 19, but Caesar and John enlisted for several more months in 1775 and twice more later in the war.
Access the complete article from the Natick Report by following this link.
Black Patriots at the Battle of Lexington from Black Patriots of Lexington YouTube Series