You might know Paul Revere from a famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It begins like this:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Almost no one alive remembered knowing or seeing Paul Revere at the time Mr. Longfellow was writing. And now nobody at all does. But artifacts such as poems—and bells!—help keep the past in mind.

Paul Revere was born and died in Boston, Massachusetts. He lived from 1735 to 1818. Paul’s father taught him to become a silversmith (someone who crafts objects from silver). Paul became one of the greatest silver artists in America. He also learned to make surgical instruments. To support his family, Paul sold glasses and engraved copper plates too.

None of this explains why he gets his own famous poem. But this does: When Paul was born, the United States wasn’t The United States yet. It was a collection of colonies. As an adult, Paul wanted freedom from British rule. He joined the Boston Tea Party. And on his famous “midnight ride,” he alerted other colonists that British troops were coming. His warning readied colonial soldiers for their first battle.

That was probably the noisiest part of Paul’s work. Unless you count the hundreds of bells he made with his sons.

Many Revere bells hung in churches. They often had this engraving: “THE LIVING TO THE CHURCH I CALL AND TO THE GRAVE I SUMMON ALL.”

It is appointed for man to die once. — Hebrews 9:27