[1] Given the usual interpretation of the first stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous poem "Concord Hymn," Buttrick is the man who ordered "the shot heard around the world."
Upon seeing smoke rising from the village square, and seeing only a few companies directly below them, Colonel Barrett decided to march back toward the town from their vantage point on Punkatasset Hill to a lower, closer flat hilltop about 300 yards (274 m) from the North Bridge.
The militia troops approached the bridge in a column of two men abreast, they were led by their officers: Captain Isaac Davis, Major Buttrick of Concord, and Lt. Col. John Robinson of Westford.
The regulars continued to search for and destroy colonial military supplies in the town, ate lunch, reassembled for marching, and left Concord after noon.
This delay in departure gave colonial militiamen from outlying towns additional time to reach the road back to Boston—on which they would inflict upon the British their worst casualties of the day.
Inscribed at the base of the statue called "The Minute Man," placed on the approximate site of Davis's death, is the first stanza of his "Concord Hymn," written in 1836: By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.