“Improper to sustain a commission”

On 16 Aug 1775, the Continental Army issued its internal response to the fiery British raid on the Penny Ferry landing in Malden, described back here.

As quoted in Col. William Henshaw’s orderly book:

Captain Eleazer Lindsey of Colonel Gerrish’s regiment, tried by a general court-martial for absenting himself from his post, which was attacked and abandoned to the enemy; the court, on consideration, are of opinion that Captain Lindsey be discharged the service, as a person improper to sustain a commission.

This was one of a series of court-martial proceedings in that week. On 13 August orders had gone out for some men to be confined, and the next day Gen. Nathanael Greene (shown here) assembled a panel of high-ranking officers in the Harvard College chapel.

On 18 August, Greene’s panel tried Col. Samuel Gerrish and unanimously found “That he behaved unworthy an Officer” during the British assault on Sewall’s Point. The court-martial cited “the 49th Article of the Rules and Regulations of the Massachusetts Army,” which was a grab-bag clause:

All Crimes not capital, and all Disorders and Neglects, which Officers and Soldiers may be guilty of, to the Prejudice of good Order and military Discipline, though not mentioned in the Articles of War, are to be taken cognizance of by a general or regimental Court-Martial, according to the Nature and Degree of the Offence, and be punished at their Discretion.

The court recommended that Gerrish “be cashiered, and render’d incapable of any employment in the American Army.” Gen. George Washington approved that sentence the next day.

On 25 August, the commander-in-chief transferred the company formerly under Capt. Lindsey out of the regiment formerly under Col. Gerrish and back into the regiment of Col. Ruggles Woodbridge.

I’ve already quoted what Washington wrote about these actions to his overseer on 20 August. Nine days later he wrote something similar to Richard Henry Lee:

I have made a pretty good Slam among such kind of officers as the Massachusets Government abound in since I came to this Camp, having Broke one Colo. and two Captains for Cowardly beh[aviour in] the action on Bunker’s Hill—Two captains for drawing more provisions and pay than they had men in their Company—and one for being absent from his Post when the Enemy appeared there, and burnt a House just by it.

Besides these, I have at this time one Colo., one Major, one Captn, & two Subalterns under arrest for tryal—

In short I spare none & yet fear it will not all do, as these Peeple seem to be too inattentive to every thing but their Interest.

Washington’s comments don’t line up exactly with the court-martial sentences. Gerrish was formally charged with poor behavior well after Bunker Hill, and both Lindsey and Capt. Christopher Gardner could be described as “being absent from his Post when the Enemy appeared there, and burnt a House just by it.” But the overall trend is clear.

“Brisk Firing” along the Rivers in 1775

When we last peeked in on Malden during the siege of Boston, a British raiding party from Charlestown had crossed the Mystic River and burned the building at the Penny Ferry landing.

The Continental Army officer assigned to that spot, Capt. Eleazer Lindsey, was no help. Reports differ about whether he had gone home or took just that moment to go home in a hurry.

The British floating battery remained in the Mystic River, threatening those parts of the American siege lines.

A week later, on 13 Aug 1775, there was another exchange of fire. It started when some British boats came to resupply the floating battery. Capt. William T. Miller of Rhode Island, stationed on Prospect Hill, told his wife there were “2 Boats that were armed from Bunkers hill.” The historian Richard Frothingham later stated there were “two barges and two sail boats, on their way from Boston.”

Men guarding Malden’s ferry landing opened fire. Capt. Miller wrote that the British boats “were Drove back by the brisk firing of Some field pieces from Malden this day which Caused them in a Very great Hurry to Retreat and Run ashore on Bunkers hill Shore.”

Those small cannon might have been the two that had arrived in April from Newburyport. If so, the men firing them appear to have been a local guard rather than men from Lindsey’s company. In addition, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin’s soldiers at Winnisimmet in Chelsea fired on the British boats.

There were no known casualties on either side. The Continentals were quite pleased with their performance in comparison to the previous week, though presumably the redcoats would have gone back to their lines anyway.

Both Lindsey and Baldwin reported to Col. Samuel Gerrish of Newbury. His regiment was spread out over several spots along the northern wing of the siege lines. When a group of officers from the regiment sent a petition to Gen. George Washington complaining that they hadn’t been paid, they signed from the “Camps at Chelsea, Malden, Medford, and Sewells Point” near what is now the B. U. Bridge.

Gen. William Heath’s memoir records a similar British attack on that Brookline fortification a couple of weeks earlier, on 31 July:

A little before one o’clock, A.M. a British floating-battery came up the river, within 300 yards of Sewall’s Point, and fired a number of shot at the American works, on both sides of the river.

Some of the works on the Cambridge side survive as Fort Washington Park. The picture above, a detail from Henry Pelham’s map of the siege, shows the area in 1775. (Pelham’s map has north on the right.)

That attack might have been the occasion when Col. Gerrish chose not to shoot back at the British but instead told his men to hunker down behind their walls. Reportedly he said, “the rascals can do us no harm, and it would be a mere waste of powder, to fire at them with our 4 pounders.” That was the wrong attitude for an officer already under criticism for how he had behaved at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

COMING UP: Washington’s “pretty good Slam” among the officers.

“Two floating batteries came up Mystic River”

Back in June, we left the town of Malden worrying in mid-1775 about being attacked by British forces out of Charlestown, across the Mystic River.

The town had ended up with two cannon from Newburyport. Locals built earthworks near the landing of the Penny Ferry from Charlestown and strengthened the buildings there. (A comment on that June posting reminds us the ferry landing was near what’s now the Encore Casino in Everett.)

To guard that site, the Massachusetts army assigned a company of Malden men to their home town. Their leader was Capt. Naler Hatch (1731-1804), who had learned to command at sea. Locals remembered him as “a stout built man, rather rash in temper, and fiery in zeal.”

Deloraine Pendre Corey’s history of Malden says that on 23 July Christian Febiger, the Denmark-born adjutant of Col. Samuel Gerrish’s regiment in the Continental Amy, wrote of the situation at Malden:

Capt Hatch of Colo. [Thomas] Gardners Regiment is there with one Company & has to mount 20 men on Guard every Day without Officers, three Relieves is 20 men privates mounting every Day & then they have no Sentries on the River which by the Description and the Situation of the place wants at least 4 Centries every Night.

Gerrish moved Capt. Eleazer Lindsey and his company from Winnisimmet in Chelsea to strengthen that spot in Malden. Lindsey was a 59-year-old veteran of the last war from Lynn. His men had signed up from several Essex County towns.

On Sunday, 6 August, the British finally came. Lt. Benjamin Craft of Manchester, stationed at Winter Hill, wrote in his diary:

Just after [morning] meeting two floating batteries came up Mystic River and fired several shots on Malden side, and landed a number of regulars, which set fire to a house near Peny ferrys which burnt to ashes.

One Capt. Lyndsly who was stationed there, fled with his company, and got before the women and children in his flight.

We were all alarmed, and immediately manned our lines, and our people went down to Temple’s Point with one field piece, and fired several shot, at the regulars, which made them claw off as soon as possible. Gen. Gage, this is like the rest of your Sabbath day enterprises.

“Temple’s Point” was no doubt part of Robert Temple’s farm in what is now Somerville.

Katie Turner Getty described this fight in detail from the perspective of Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin, then stationed in Chelsea, for the Journal of the American Revolution. Baldwin reported directly to Gen. George Washington:

I proceeded to Malding as quick as possable found that Capt. Lindsey was gone home, & his Company dispersd, all but a few with the Lieut. was down at the House that was Burnt[.] I went to him and enquired into the matter who Informd me that the Capt. was gone Home & near one half the Company was fled & where they were gone he could not tell, I ordred him to Rally his Company & Guard his Post which he Seem’d willing & ready to preform as far as Lay in his Power.

It appears that the lieutenant was Daniel Galeucia (also spelled Gallusia and Galushe, 1740-1825). In an odd twist, he was married to Capt. Lindsey’s daughter.

By this time the British were back over in Charlestown, parading on shore in triumph. Inside Boston, though, selectman Timothy Newell noted in his diary “several Soldiers brought over here wounded.”

COMING UP: More fighting and a court-martial or two.