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Joseph Bridge / Eli Burdoo House

This short film tells the documented story of Eli Burdoo, a free Black resident of Lexington, Massachusetts, whose life is recorded in church books, town records, probate files, indenture contracts, and Revolutionary War militia rolls. The Burdoo family was established in Lexington by the early eighteenth century. Ann Burdoo was baptized into the Lexington church in 1708, and she and her husband Phillip Burdoo raised their family along Bedford Road near what later became Simonds Tavern. Town records show Phillip Burdoo acting as a landholder subject to local law, including a 1714 fine for enclosing part of a public highway. Members of the family later appeared on Lexington tax rolls, confirming their status as free residents over multiple generations. One of Ann and Phillip’s sons, Moses Burdoo, married Phebe Banister of Concord. Moses was a free Black resident of Lexington who served during the Seven Years’ War. He died around 1759 near Quebec, leaving a probate inventory that included a Bible, books, clothing, tools, and provisions for his young child. Phebe Burdoo had died several years earlier, leaving their son Eli Burdoo orphaned in early childhood. Eli Burdoo was baptized in Lexington in 1755 and was born free into a family long rooted in the town. After the deaths of his parents, he came under the care of Lexington’s Overseers of the Poor and was bound out as an indentured servant to Joseph Bridge Jr. and his wife, Eliot (Reed) Bridge. A surviving indenture contract required that Eli be taught husbandry, reading, and writing, and specified that he would receive two suits of clothes when his service ended on January 1, 1776. During this period, Eli lived and worked within the Bridge household at what is now known as the Joseph Bridge / Eli Burdoo House at 419 Marrett Road. Joseph Bridge III, the Bridges’ son, was nearly the same age as Eli and was raised in the same household. On April 19, 1775, Eli Burdoo’s name appears on the rolls of Captain John Parker’s Lexington militia. Town histories record that he served both in the morning and in the afternoon on the opening day of the American Revolution. Eli continued to serve during the war, appearing in militia records for detachments to Cambridge in 1775 and for Middlesex County units sent north in 1777. A militia payroll receipt from 1778 lists his name again. No pension application or later probate record has been identified, and his later life remains unrecorded. What survives is a documentary record rather than a complete biography: church entries, town governance records, a probate inventory, an indenture contract, militia rolls, and a house that still stands. Preserved today as the Joseph Bridge / Eli Burdoo House, this building remains evidence of a free Black family long rooted in Lexington and of a life lived within the civic and military history of the town at the founding of the United States. Sources (selected): Lexington Church Records; Lexington Town and Tax Records; Probate Records of Moses Burdoo; Town Indenture Contract; Lexington Militia Rolls (Captain John Parker’s Company); Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War; Militia Payroll Records; Lexington History Museums (Slavery Reinterpretation); Lex250 Commission (Witness to 1775 Houses).