1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Minute Men

MINUTE MEN: in the American War of Independence, militiamen who had undertaken to turn out for service at a minute’s notice. In Massachusetts the minute men were enrolled by an act of the provincial congress of the 23rd of November 1774, and in Boston alone they numbered 16,000 prior to the outbreak of the war. The Americans who fought in the opening action of Lexington were “minute men.”