Lakewood Lore

Bunker Hill echoes along old Indian trail

Warren Road, Lakewood's oldest north-south artery and one-time crooked Indian trail, was named for pioneer Isaac Warren.

Isaac, a stock holder in the Connecticut Land Co., journeyed to the Western Reserve from Boston about 1822. He brought with him his talented 23-year-old bride, Amelia Bronson of New Bedford, Conn. Even before her marriage, she had gained a reputation as an accomplished spinner of wool and weaver of homespun cloth.

The couple bought several hundred acres of farmland at what is now Warren and Madison. When Warren Road was opened as a thoroughfare in 1824, they were already settled in a home near the intersection, where they were to rear seven children.

On winter evenings, while seated at the hearth with his family gathered around him, Isaac would tell about the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which his father, Joseph, won acclaim.

Joseph, prominent Boston physician and Revolutionary patriot, was a close associate of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere and other incendiaries who espoused the cause of freedom from British oppression.

As war approached, he gave up his profession and mustered in the army. Just before Bunker Hill, he was named a major general by the Provincial Congress. A few days later, he went to the battleground to observe the fighting before his military commission had actually come through.

Israel Putnam, who was commanding American forces there, offered to take orders from Joseph. Joseph declined, saying he had come as a volunteer and he wanted only to be allowed to fight as an ordinary soldier in a place where he would be most useful.

Putman dispatched him to the redoubt on nearby Breed's Hill, where he was shot dead by a charging Redcoat on June 17, 1775, six days after his 34th birthday.

To our knowledge, there no longer are any Warren family offspring in Lakewood. Curiosity, however, prompted us to call Kenneth A. Warren, current Lakewood Library director, on the off-chance that he might be distantly related.

As it turned out, Kenneth is not. But he did confess to being a descendant, on his mother's side, of James Buchanan, who left the White House at the end of a presidential term in 1861 under a cloud of contention.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post March 29, 1990. Reprinted with permission.

More Lakewood Lore