Jacob Frost’s Revolutionary War

On 13 Sept 1832, an eighty-year-old man from Norway, Maine, named Jacob Frost signed an affidavit describing his experiences during the Revolutionary War.

Frost’s statement, part of his plea for a federal government pension, said:

on the 19th day of April 1775, on the alarm of the enemys being on their march from Boston to Lexington, at Tewksbury in the State of Massachusetts, his then residence, he then being a minute man, he marched to Concord in the company commanded by Capt. John Trull of the Massachusetts militia and pursued the enemy to Boston and he immediately enlisted at Cambridge near Boston for a term of eight months, in the company commanded by Capt. Benjamin Walker, in the regiment commanded by Col. Ebenezer Bridge,

and was employed on the night previous to the battle of Bunker Hill on the 17th. Day of June 1775, in throwing up breast works—was in the battle and was then severely wounded in the hip, and entirely disabled, and he laid among the wounded until the day after the battle—when he was taken up by the British & carried to Boston & there kept a prisoner until March 1776, at which time the British evacuated Boston—when he was put on board a British man of war ship, called the Centurian—& carried in Irons to Halifax in Nova Scotia—

The Nova Scotia diarist Simeon Perkins wrote on 1 April that “The Centurion man of war is off the harbour.”

and there kept in prison untill the 21st. of June 1776, when he with some others found means to escape from prison, & wandered almost without clothes & entirely without money through the woods, till he finally arrived at his residence in said Tewksbury the last of September 1776, being one year & five months absent from his enlistment aforesaid until his return to his home.

In the month of July 1779 [actually 1780] he again enlisted at Tewksbury aforesaid for the term of three months, as a private in the company commanded by Capt Amos Foster, and was immediately appointed a sergeant, said company was attached to the regiment commanded by Colo. [John] Jacobs, and was marched to Rhode Island where he served said three months—and was there verbally discharged—

He further represents that he is an Invalid Pensioner, as will appear by the certificate hereunto annexed—

That certificate, dated 29 Aug 1788, stated that Frost, then aged thirty-five, had been disabled by “one Musket ball, through his left hip bone.” He was awarded a pension of 15 shillings per month.

In a separate 1832 document, Frost added:

during the period of three months, that I served as orderly sargeant in the Company commanded by Capt. Amos Foster in Col. Jacobs regiment, on Rhode Island in the year A.D. 1779—the orderly Sargeant was appointed to act as a Lieut. in consequence of the absence of one of the Lieuts—and I was thereupon appointed to fill the vacancy and served the term of three months in that capacity—and I further declare that I did not receive a warrant from any officer, but acted without one.

Other veterans attested to Frost’s work as the company’s orderly sergeant.

TOMORROW: The literary version.

(The photograph above, courtesy of Classic New England, shows the Brown Tavern on Main Street in Tewksbury, built in 1740. The prominent porch is a later addition, as is the bank branch inside.)

Remembering Moses Parker

As described yesterday, Lt. Col. Moses Parker of Chelmsford died as a prisoner of war on 4 July 1775 from a leg wound he suffered in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

On 21 July the New-England Chronicle published an unusually long death notice, showing how much esteem people had for Parker. It said:

…through the several Commissions to which his Merit entitled him, he had always the Pleasure to find that he possessed the Esteem and Respect of his Soldiers, and the Applause of his Countrymen. In him Fortitude, Prudence, Humanity and Compassion, all conspired to heighten the Lustre of his military Virtues—

He also, at this important Day, when the Parent is stretching the Iron Hand of Power over her Children, and threatening them and their Posterity with Slavery; being possessed of the most sacred Veneration for the inestimable civil and religious Privileges of his native Country, again “unappalled by Danger,” with equal Firmness and Intrepidity, steps forth to meet her restless Enemies, and thus offers himself a Victim to the Shrine of Freedom.

God grant each Individual that now is, or may be, engaged in the American Army, an equal Magnitude of Soul; so shall their Names, unsullied, be transmitted in the latest Catalogue of Fame; and if any Vestiges of Liberty shall remain, their Praises shall be rehearsed through the Earth “till the Sickle of Time shall crop the Creation.”

But that’s not all. The Gilder Lehrman Institute owns a handwritten poem (or perhaps words to a hymn) by Samuel Richardson of Chelmsford lamenting Parker’s loss:

Col. Moses Parker of Chelmsford, In Newengland Who Died in Bostone on June 1775 of the Wound he Receivd. in the Bloody battle on Bunkers-Hill in Charlestown while he was Gloriously Fighting in the cause of Liberty and his Country,

Come all who have skill and Lament
and let your hearts and eys have vent
While you to memory do call
The Valiant Colonel Parkers fall

He bravely did with courage go
To Charlstown fight to meet his foe
And in his place was Valient found
And with great boldness kept his ground

But fighting for his Countrys goods
What Dangers roled like a flood
A Wound Rea[d]er in his thigh
Of which in Boston he Did die

While he was in Captivity
Before he of his Wound did die
We he[ar] was Com-mended high
By his Relations enmy

He was a Valant offiser
In the last Canadian war
And in this present war Did go
To face his Countrys bloody foe

Brave Parker their must bled and Die
To Save his friends from Slavery
Its with great grief we view they fall
When thee to memory we call

His Townsmen Do Lamet his fate
His nearer friends and Living Mate
With Sorow do condole his loss
And need Support to bear their cross

God grant this Loss may be their gain
May they not murmer nor complain
But with Submission kiss rod
And know that it is the hand of God

As they find creature screams Dry
O may their minds arise more high
To God in whome is perfat peace
And Solid joy that cannot cease

God is th joy of those mourn
That do to him through Christ return
And rest by faith upon his grace
Shall find relief in all Distress

His officers and Soldiers all
Who mourn their Valiant Leaders fall
May God inquire with courage Still
And giv Submission to his will

May Gods protection them Surround
And all their bloody foes confound
May they possess the gates of those
That Do our city now inclose

God Sanctify this Loss at all
Who Saw this noble Hero fall
And while his courage they relate
May they his virtue emitate

May oficers that yet Servive
Who by their God are kept alive
By courage and good conduct Shew
Their hearts to Liberty are true

May they be kept from Sinful way
Least they Should fall with foul Disgrace
And Sink beneath the tyrants rod
And feel the Vengeance of God

May they their Soldiers govern well
And in their places all excel
That Honour on their heads m[a]y ly
Both while, they Liv and when they Die

But British troops Digrace must Share
How can their Valour honour bear
Since they their flesh and blood Do fight
To rob them of their proper right

The greater Victories they gain
The more the Doth their honour Stain
Since God oppressors will pull Down
That the oppressor may wear the crown

Tho for a time they may rise high
And Kings and Nations terrify
Yet time will bring their Shamefull fall
Their crimes Shall be exposd to all

They may think they Shall have peace
And by this war their welth increase
Yet wealth thats got unlawfully
Like chaff Shall from the owner fly

Welth that men Do obtain by blood
Tho it increaseth like a flood
It will against the owner cry
And end in endless misery

The Stone Shall cry out of the wall
And timber from their Buildings call
For wrath from God Which Shall Distress
All Such as do the poore oppress

In 1786, there must have been some legal need to document Parker’s death. The Boston Public Library holds two documents from that effort:

• A surgeon’s certificate signed by Dr. Ezekiel Brown attesting to Parker’s death on 4 July 1775, signed 7 Feb 1786.
• Copy of Col. Ebenezer Bridge’s certification that Parker was captured at the battle, signed 8 Feb.

Finally, John Trumbull included Parker in his painting of “The Death of Warren.” Parker is the figure seated in the dark area on the far left, clutching his knee.

Moses Parker and His Comrades in the Redoubt

As I said yesterday, Col. Ebenezer Bridge’s regiment was one of the New England units ordered onto the Charlestown peninsula on the night of 16 June 1775. Maj. John Brooks and three companies stayed behind at first for other duties, but Bridge, Lt. Col. Moses Parker, and the rest of the regiment crossed the isthmus to Bunker’s Hill.

That meant those men helped to dig the redoubt on Breed’s Hill during the morning of 17 June. The soldier usually said to be first killed in the battle was a member of the regiment: Asa Pollard of Billerica. Men from Bridge’s regiment were presumably those who wanted to give their comrade a religious burial while Col. William Prescott insisted they keep digging.

In the same regiment, Capt. Ebenezer Bancroft’s company used a cannon to widen embrasures in the redoubt, as discussed here. Capt. John Ford and his men fired another of the cannon left behind by members of the Massachusetts artillery regiment.

During the battle Col. Bridge suffered wounds from a sword, indicating close combat at the end of the battle. Nonetheless, some junior officers accused him of “misbehaviour and neglect of duty,” saying he had cowered behind the walls of the redoubt. On 20 August, Gen. George Washington ordered “A Court of enquiry to sit this day, at three in the afternoon, to examine into the Reasons for a complaint exhibited against Col. Ebenezer Bridge.” On that board was Col. Prescott, who knew more than anyone about the conditions in the redoubt.

That board of officers recommended a general court-martial to adjudicate Bridge’s case. On 11 September, Washington’s general orders announced “The Court are of opinion that Indisposition of body, render’d the prisoner incapable of action, and do therefore acquit him.” Ebenezer Bridge remained with the army until December, then held military posts in Massachusetts for many years.

In that battle Bridge’s regiment suffered 16 or 17 men dead and 25 wounded. Lt. Col. Parker was shot in the thigh (or knee, according to one source) and left wounded in the redoubt. As the British troops swept over the fortification and up to Bunker’s Hill, they made Parker and the other wounded provincials into prisoners of war.

Reporting rumors from inside Boston, Abigail Adams wrote on 5 July:

Our prisoners were brought over to the long wharff and there laid all night without any care of their wounds or any resting place but the pavements till the next day, when they exchanged it for the jail, since which we hear they are civily treated. Their living cannot be good, as they can have no fresh provisions.

Later American accounts declared that the conditions inside the Boston jail were terrible, though no jail at that time was healthy. This period was when Boston suffered the worst food shortages since the British government’s supply ships hadn’t yet started to arrive.

Parker’s wound apparently became infected. Surgeons amputated his leg, probably a desperate measure. On 4 July 1775, he died.

TOMORROW: Remembering Moses Parker.

Moses Parker, “the most prominent military character”

Moses Parker was born on 13 May 1731 in Chelmsford. Seven years earlier, his father Joseph had served as a “Lieutenant of a company of snowshoe-men” in what would be called Dummer’s War. Once back home, Joseph Parker served on committees and boards for both his meetinghouse and his town.

In 1738, when Moses was seven years old, Joseph Parker died. According to a Parker family genealogy he “perished, with his whole command, in a terrible battle with the Oneidas.” However, I can’t find any other mention of such an event. And his body was buried in Chelmsford, not a frontier battlefield. Joseph Parker’s gravestone appears here, courtesy of Find a Grave.

As an adult, Moses Parker followed his father into the provincial military service. A Chelmsford company set out for northern New York in March 1755 and stayed until January. Moses Parker went out as a sergeant and evidently came back as an ensign.

Wilkes Allen’s 1820 History of Chelmsford then says of Parker:

In 1758, he was honored with a lieutenant’s commission in a company commanded by Capt. Jona. Butterfield, and raised for the express purpose of a general invasion of Canada. He was promoted to a captain in the succeeding year, and in 1760, commanded a company at Fort Frederick, St. John’s. In this expedition he distinguished himself as a brave soldier, and as an intrepid and dauntless officer, he was endeared to those under his care by his assidiuous [sic] attention to their wants and constant endeavors to render their situation as pleasant as circumstances would permit.

Such was his reputation that when Governour [Francis] Bernard in 1761, was selecting from a multitude of applicants, thirty captains for that year’s service, Capt. Parker stood forth the most prominent military character on the list. Col. [Nathaniel] Thwing [1703-1768] and Col. [William] Arbuthnot [1726-1765] declared, that “they would not go without him, that he was the only Captain they had insisted upon.” So great was his popularity, that his friends assured him, that if he would accept of a captainship, “fifty men might be immediately raised to serve under him.” [Footnote citation: “M.S. Letter of Oliver Fletcher, Esq.”]

According to the Rev. Wilson Waters’s 1917 history of Chelmsford, Parker’s farm was 150 rods south of where “the Middlesex turnpike [now Turnpike Road]…crosses River Meadow brook.”

In May 1774, Moses Parker was named as one of Chelmsford’s committee of correspondence. In April 1775, he commanded a company that responded to the Lexington Alarm. And on 19 May 1775 he accepted a commission from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, with Dr. Joseph Warren presiding and signing the paperwork, as a lieutenant colonel.

Parker was in the regiment of Col. Ebenezer Bridge, a thirty-one-year-old Harvard graduate and son of Chelmsford’s minister. The major was twenty-three-year-old Dr. John Brooks of Reading. At age forty-four, with four military campaigns under his belt, Lt. Col. Parker was the regiment’s veteran officer.

On the night of 16 June 1775, Col. Bridge’s regiment was ordered to march onto the Charlestown peninsula under Col. William Prescott and fortify Bunker’s Hill.

TOMORROW: In the redoubt.

Capt. Ebenezer Bancroft and the Embrasures

With the anniversary of Bunker Hill coming up, I’m going to share some accounts of that battle, said to be from eyewitnesses. And in most cases I’m sure they really are from eyewitnesses.

The first comes from Ebenezer Bancroft (1738-1827) of Dunstable, Massachusetts, who was a captain in the provincial army. It was reportedly “written from dictation in 1826” by Bancroft’s grandson John B. Hill of Mason, New Hampshire, and printed for the first time in The Granite Monthly in 1878.

That magazine said it had taken the text from proofs of Hill’s Sketches of Old Dunstable, which was never published as a stand-alone book. Instead, Hill’s material was appended to a much shorter address that nevertheless gets top bibliographic billing: Bi-Centennial of Old Dunstable, by S. T. Worcester.

Here’s the start of Bancroft’s account:

On the night of the 16th of June, 1775, my company was ordered out with the detachment to take possession of the heights of Charlestown. This detachment consisted of three regiments commanded by Col’s [William] Prescott, [Ebenezer] Bridge and [James] Frye, and amounted in all to between 1000 and 1200 men. These regiments were principally from Middlesex county, Col. Prescott from Pepperell, Col. Bridge from Chelmsford, Col. Frye from Andover. I was that evening on a court-martial and could not get liberty to go with my company, but in the morning of the 17th General [Artemas] Ward granted me permission to join my company, though the court-martial was not through.

Soon after I reached the hill our men left work and piled their intrenching tools in our rear, and waited in expectation of reinforcements and refreshments, but neither reached us, if any were sent. The reinforcements halted at Charlestown Neck. Whilst I was standing by the redoubt before the action began, a ball from the Somerset passed within a few inches of my head, which seriously affected my left eye so that it finally became totally blind.

When the works were planned no calculation was made for the use of cannon, and of course no embrasures were left for them. But on the morning of the 17th two ship cannon were sent up and a platform with them. About ten o’clock the British troops began to make their appearance at the wharves in Boston.

General [Israel] Putnam, who had been incessant in his exertions through the morning to bring reinforcements, now rode up to us at the fort and says: “My lads, these tools must be carried back,” and turned and rode away. An order was never obeyed with more readiness. From every part of the line volunteers ran and some picked up one, some two shovels, mattocks, etc., and hurried over the hill.

When the pile of tools was thus removed I went through the lines to form an estimate of the number of men in the redoubt, at the same time stating that those who had gone with the tools would come back, though I was by no means confident that they would. I estimated the number then left in the redoubt at 150, but was afterward informed by one of the captains of Col. Frye’s regiment that he counted them, and the whole number, including officers, was 163. I was not certain that any reinforcements after this time came into the redoubt; thus the number of our effective force was very materially reduced. General Putnam had given his orders and gone, and nobody seemed to think it belonged to him to stop the men and execute the order in a proper way.

The artillery-men had all gone with the tools, and Col. Prescott came to me and said, “If you can do anything with the cannon I wish you would. I give you the charge of them.” I directed the men to dig down the bank in order to form an embrasure, which they were forced to do with their hands, for the party that had carried off the intrenching tools had not left us a single shovel or mattock. Men never worked with more zeal. Many of them dug till their fingers bled. To loosen the earth I loaded the cannon and fired into the gap, and they dug again, and I fired a second time. Both these balls fell in Boston, one near the meeting-house in Brattle square, the other on Cornhill, as I was afterward informed by Boston gentlemen.

The first time I read a retelling of that anecdote, it sounded like the provincials fired point-blank into the earthen wall to create the embrasures, and I recall at least one author expressing doubt that anyone would ever do that. Bancroft’s (or Hill’s) words suggest that the men started the excavate the openings by hand, and he fired the cannon through the narrow hole they opened in order to make it easier for them to widen. As to whether those shots reached all the way into central Boston, that still seems dubious.

TOMORROW: What effect did those cannon have on the battle?