The Man Who Shot Daniel Phelps

The Rev. David Avery identified the fellow provincial soldier who accidentally shot Daniel Phelps as “Mr. —— Yale of Col. [John] Patterson's company.”

In 1854 the Stockbridge chronicler Electa F. Jones referred to the man as  “Mr. Y.” She also wrote:

Mr. Y. became almost distracted, and, it is believed, continued in a gloomy state of mind until his own death many years afterward. He was not suspected of design, but was probably less cautious than he should have been.

We can certainly agree with that last bit.

A little digging reveals that that man was Noah Yale of Lenox. After marching to the siege lines in the town minute company, he enlisted in the Massachusetts army on 5 May through the end of the year. Only three days after enlisting, he shot Phelps while practicing the manual of arms, not realizing his musket was loaded.

This web genealogy for the Yale family says Noah Yale had been born in Wallingford, Connecticut, on 17 Mar 1749, making him twenty-six years old at the start of the war. He (or perhaps his namesake father) had purchased fifty acres in Lenox in 1773. According to state records, Yale served in the Massachusetts and then Continental Army through the end of the year.

This 1850 print genealogy says Yale didn’t live “many years,” as Jones wrote, but “died of a fever, December 28, 1776.” Though that family publication doesn’t mention the death of Phelps, it does implicitly link Yale’s death before age thirty to his experiences near “Boston, whither he had been called to serve his country, in her struggle for independence.” He appears to have come back to Lenox a changed person.

The Death of Daniel Phelps

Yesterday I quoted a nineteenth-century account of how Daniel Phelps of Stockbridge was accidentally shot during a drill by a reckless fellow militiaman on 8 May 1775.

We have a contemporaneous account of what followed from the diary of the Rev. David Avery (1746-1818, shown here) of Gageborough, later renamed Windsor, who had also come to the siege of Boston from western Massachusetts:

8 [May]. Monday. Prayed with R[egimen]t.—About 3 o’cl’k Mr. Phelps of Capt. [Thomas] William’s company was wounded in his Breast and Lungs by an accidental discharge of a musket by Mr. ———— Yale of Col. [John] Patterson’s company as he was exercising.

Dr. [Isaac?] Foster & others attended him but found the wound to be mortal.—Mr. Phelps appeared to be very calm & patient—had a good sense of God’s gov’t & ye Equity of Providence.—

Ys’day Four guns were discharged in ye camp & endangered men’s lives. One out of our window—One at ye Piquit guard. Two others hurt. An awful day!

Mr. Phelps died. I closed his eyes—& gave a word of exhortation to ye spectators.

Our Reg’t attended Mr. Phelps funeral. Capt. Williams’ company under arms reversed. I prayed before ye Regiment marched in procession.

Avery also wrote home on 12 May saying:

Mr. Phelps was wounded on Monday, at 3 P. M. He very quietly fell on sleep at about 6 P. M, Wednesday [10 May]. Thus expired the flower of our army. Yesterday he was interred in the Cambridge burying-yard in a very decent and respectable manner. I had the greatest satisfaction and comfort in his death, for he appeared to die in the triumphs of faith…

The chaplain added that Phelps’s brothers Jacob (probably born 1753, listed in a genealogy as Jabez but in state military records as Jacob) and Hezekiah (born 1756) were with him when he died.

With such a loss, the Rev. Mr. Avery was right to complain about how inexperienced soldiers shooting their guns in camp “endangered men’s lives.” Despite their militia training, those men had limited experience being around loaded guns all the time and were on edge at the start of the war. Accidental shootings continued.

Of the younger Phelps brothers, Jacob was the fifer in Capt. Williams’s company while Hezekiah marched with a company from Great Barrington. Jacob would not survive the war, dying at Skenesborough, New York. Hezekiah served several more short stints in the army or Massachusetts militia, married Ruth Dudley, and reportedly died in 1810.

TOMORROW: The man who shot Daniel Phelps.

“Probably no one supposed it to be loaded”

According to page 1301 of the massive Phelps Family in America and Their English Ancestors, Daniel Phelps was born in Akron, New York, in 1745.

Since Akron is at the western end of that state, and the area wasn’t part of the British Empire at the time, that statement seems unlikely. Phelps’s siblings were all born in Great Barrington or Salisbury and Simsbury, Connecticut, so he was probably a native of the Connecticut River valley as well. (Perhaps Agawam?)

When word of the shooting at Lexington reached western Massachusetts on 22 April 1775, Phelps was part of the militia company from Stockbridge. He and his companions set out for the siege lines around Boston, probably arriving at the end of April.

As of Monday, 8 May, the company was camped in Cambridge. Stockbridge: Past and Present; Or, Records of Old Mission Station, published by the delightfully named Electa Fidelia Jones in 1854, recounts what happened that afternoon:

Daniel Phelps, being an officer, was asked one day by a company of his associates assembled in his room, to give them the manual exercise. Accordingly he took his seat, and, being first armed with guns which were standing by, they arranged themselves before him.

When the order was given to “take aim,” one man pointed his piece directly towards Captain Phelps. He was requested to turn it to one side, which he did, though probably no one supposed it to be loaded. Yet, when Captain Phelps pronounced the word “fire,” Mr. Y. again pointed the gun directly towards him; and its contents, entering the right breast of the officer, took an oblique direction, boring the lungs, and lodging in the back bone. This was inferred, at least, from his appearance, a numbness in all parts below the ball taking place immediately.

As soon as the surgeons had searched the wound, he asked if it was mortal, and was answered “Yes.”

All the records from the time say that Phelps was not “an officer,” much less “Captain Phelps.” His company was commanded by Capt. Thomas Williams. Phelps may have been designated a corporal or sergeant, or his family may just have assumed he had been promoted to a position of authority after hearing about the way he was wounded.

TOMORROW: The mortal wound.