Paul Revere, the patriot dentist

Our history books have calcified Revere’s story as one of a patriot messenger. While true, it’s far from a complete picture of this Bostonian silversmith. The metallurgy trade he began learning under his father at the age of 13 laid a foundation of transferable skills for the types of dental hardware he would later craft. 

A UF College of Dentistry expert from the division of prosthodontics, Josephine Esquivel-Upshaw, D.M.D., reflected on Revere’s place at the intersection of craftsmanship and dental science as we look back at this unique vignette from early American history. 

“When we do dental forensic analysis now, dentists get to look at the radiographs,” Esquivel-Upshaw said. “So, they get to look at the skull and then the X-rays. They compare it to the X-rays of their patients, and then they make a positive ID.” 

While the methods of record-keeping have since evolved, she said that it was Paul Revere’s ability to identify his own dental handiwork that made identifying his friend’s battlefield remains possible.  

“Revere had acquired his dental knowledge from John Baker- a dentist who emigrated from Europe to America in 1760 and is considered to be the first dentist to practice in North America,” according to Paul Revere-Founding Father and America’s First Forensic Dentist, an ADA published article. “In his dental practice, Revere cleaned teeth and replaced missing teeth by wiring in replacement teeth, usually utilizing various metals and animal bone.” 

His apprenticeship under Baker and his place in the trade are illuminated by a 1768 ad placed in the Boston Newsletter and one that appeared in a 1770 edition of the Boston Gazette. In the first, Baker directs his patients to Revere in his stead. The second, placed by Revere, boasts of his brief but productive experience. 

“Within two years, Revere claimed he had ‘fixt [sic] some Hundreds of Teeth,’ and was confident he could ‘fix them as well as any Surgeon-Dentist who ever came from London.’,” as detailed in Dentures, Corpses, and Privies: Paul Revere’s Medical Careers. “Never one to shy away from promoting his credentials, Revere added that his dentures were of ‘real Use in Speaking and Eating,’ suggesting his competitors’ products were ineffectual.”  

One of Revere’s dental patients was a fellow revolutionary and the very man who would dispatch him on the famous midnight ride to Lexington, Harvard-educated physician Joseph Warren. In 1775, just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Warren sought out his friend to replace two missing upper teeth.  

“It was an ivory cuspid and bicuspid,” Esquivel-Upshaw said, shedding light onto the nature of the prosthesis and the process Revere likely followed to craft it. “Revere would have carved the ivory to make it look like the missing teeth and then placed a silver wire around them. To attach it to the other remaining teeth, he would have wrapped the silver wire around them.” 

She also noted that such a fixed dental prosthetic would have required continued maintenance when it came out of place. 

“So, there's a relationship that gets established with having to maintain that prosthesis,” she said, clarifying that Revere’s continued exposure to the dental work sharpened his memory of it.  

Revere and Warren’s fraternity through membership in Freemasonry was the backdrop of their friendship. It was also the catalyst for their mutual involvement in the Sons of Liberty.  

“Revere and Warren did work in tandem in the lead-up to his Midnight Ride, with Revere functioning as an essential cog in Warren’s growing intelligence network within the town,” according to a Revere House Radio episode, Paul Revere and Dr. Joseph Warren. “For the night itself on April 18, Revere noted that around 10 PM ‘Dr. Warren sent in great haste for me, and begged that I would immediately set off for Lexington, where Misters Hancock & Adams were, and acquaint them of the Movement, and that it was thought they were the objects.’” 

Shortly after, on June 17, 1775, General Warren was killed in action at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He was fatally shot in the face and stripped of clothes or items that would identify him.  

British Captain Walter Sloane Laurie then threw Warren’s body into a shallow mass grave, bragging that he “stuffed the scoundrel with another rebel into one hole,” according to Paul Revere and Forensic Dentistry, a Military Medicine journal article.  

Because the British occupied Boston for nine months following the battle, colonial forces were prevented from retrieving their dead (ADA article). Ten months after the battle, when the British finally evacuated, Revere traveled to the battle site alongside two of Warren’s brothers to find his remains. 

After stumbling upon an unmarked grave, they uncovered a decomposed and completely unrecognizable body, by most standards of the time.  

“Revere, however, was able to identify Warren’s remains by the wiring that he himself had used to fasten Warren’s false teeth. This was the first forensic dental identification of a military service member ever performed in this country,” according to Paul Revere and Joseph Warren: An Early Case of Forensic Identification, an article published by the National Museum of Health and Medicine. 

This type of post-mortem identification would later solidify into the field of forensic odontology. 

“The identification made by Paul Revere made it possible to bury Dr. Warren on April 8th, 1776 with a full military honor,” according to the Journal of Pharmacy and BioAllied Sciences article Evolution of forensic odontology: An overview which details how the field of odontology has evolved over time.  

Just as Revere’s midnight ride has long outlasted him, the legacy of his early dental work underscores the unique power of the human mouth in preserving the record of humanity.