 The statue was the first public work of sculptor Daniel Chester French, best known for his 1920 statue, "Abraham Lincoln", in the Lincoln Memorial.Although commissioned to sculpt a generic provincial soldier, French was inspired by the story of Isaac Davis and modeled the facial features of his statue after photographs of Isaac Davis's descendants.Davis's plow, which is currently on display in Acton's Town Hall, was used as the model for the plow on the statue.