Questions Raised by Lunenburg’s Cannon

Yesterday’s posting, thanks to Eileen O’Brien, quoted from the town records of Lunenburg as its citizens voted to mount a nine-pounder cannon and then offer it to the provincial army.

Of course, the town didn’t make that offer until after 13 June 1775, almost two months after the war began. The gun might not have been fully mounted and equipped until then; the effort didn’t start until March. But the records imply that Lunenburg didn’t even alert the Massachusetts Provincial Congress that it might have a cannon until June.

The man given the most responsibility for managing this cannon was Abijah Stearns (1724-1783). He was put on the committee to collect money to mount the cannon, and he was in charge of the guard that trucked it to Cambridge in the summer of 1775.

That makes sense because Stearns had been one of Lunenburg’s representatives to the first Provincial Congress in October 1774, and he became a colonel in the state militia in 1776. His gravestone, complete with rhyming verse, appears above.

During the months when Lunenburg was discussing the cannon, however, the town’s sole representative to the second and third Provincial Congresses was Dr. John Taylor. He wasn’t linked to the gun directly, but he was the medical mentor of Dr. Abraham Haskell, who was added to the cannon committee on the same day as Stearns. So Taylor probably knew about the gun.

In early June 1775, shortly before the decision to turn over the cannon, Dr. Taylor convinced the Provincial Congress that Lunenburg should be allowed to deliver half a barrel of gunpowder instead of the one or two barrels the congress had asked for. Was that arrangement related to the cannon?

As for Lunenburg’s request to the Massachusetts General Court to pay for the cannon, I haven’t found a record of that payment coming through. (The legislature did compensate the town for some costs from April 1775.) If the Continental Army had taken that nine-pounder down to New York in the spring of 1776, the state probably passed Lunenburg’s bill on to the Continental Congress.

Examined by the Medical Committee

In 1775, James Thacher of Barnstable was a twenty-one-year-old medical trainee eager to work for the provincial army (just as it was officially becoming the Continental Army). Years later, he adapted his journal into a memoir and left this recollection of how he applied for the position of regimental surgeon’s mate:

I proceeded, July the 3d, with alacrity to the seat of [the Massachusetts Provincial] Congress [in Watertown]. I was not disappointed in my interview with Mr. [James] Warren; my letter procured for me a favorable and polite reception. He honored me with his friendship and kind assistance, and introduced me to his lady, whose father’s family and my own have for many years been on terms of friendly intercourse.

The office which I solicit is one in the medical department, in the provincial hospital at Cambridge. A medical board, consisting of Drs. [Samuel] Holton [of Danvers, 1738-1816] and [John] Taylor [of Lunenberg and Fitchburg, born about 1734], are appointed to examine the candidates; and they added my name to the list for examination, on the 10th instant [i.e., of this month]. This state of suspense continuing several days, excites in my mind much anxiety and solicitude, apprehending that my stock of medical knowledge, when scanned by a learned committee, may be deemed inadequate, and all my hopes be blasted. . . .

On the day appointed, the medical candidates, sixteen in number, were summoned before the board for examination. This business occupied about four hours; the subjects were anatomy, physiology, surgery and medicine. It was not long after, that I was happily relieved from suspense, by receiving the sanction and acceptance of the board, with some acceptable instructions relative to the faithful discharge of duty, and the humane treatment of those soldiers who may have the misfortune to require my assistance.

Six of our number were privately rejected as being found unqualified. The examination was in a considerable degree close and severe, which occasioned not a little agitation in our ranks. But it was on another occasion, as I am told, that a candidate under examination was agitated into a state of perspiration, and being required to describe the mode of treatment in rheumatism, among other remedies he would promote a sweat, and being asked how he would effect this with his patient, after some hesitation he replied, “I would have him examined by a medical committee.”

On 15 July Thacher started work under Dr. John Warren, brother of the late Dr. Joseph Warren, at the main army hospital. That building is shown above in photo by Roger Wollstadt, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license. It was still legally owned by Penelope Vassall, a Loyalist widow. (The cars are from a more recent century.) For more on that house, see Historic Buildings of Massachusetts.