James Hall, American Soldier

Yesterday I shared the first half of an essay by Dan Lacroix about stories told in Westford and Cavendish, Vermont, about a man named James Hall, said to have deserted from the British column on 19 Apr 1775 after being hit by a provincial musket ball and playing dead.

How reliable are those accounts? For example, did Sgt. Hall really try to shoot “Minuteman Wright of Westford” at Concord’s North Bridge? Did John Gray of Westford really steal his “military cap with its ostrich feathers”? And what might those details say about the underlying story, that James Hall wasn’t one of the British dead interred in Concord? Here’s more of Dan’s report:

Prior to Henry B. Atherton’s 1875 newspaper stories, the only Westford men reported to have been at the North Bridge at the time of the skirmish were Lt. Col. John Robinson, Sgt. Joshua Parker, the Rev. Joseph Thaxter, and Oliver Hildreth. The earliest any of the eight documented Wright men who served that day is said to have arrived at the bridge is as the skirmish was ending.

Moreover, even the Lowell Daily Courier article questions the existence of John Gray, a man who continues to elude proper documentation. It’s likely that Atherton gained his knowledge of Westford’s eighteenth-century residents by listening to the stories told by the descendents of the dozens of Westford veterans who emigrated to the Cavendish/Ludlow region of Vermont after the war. But was that oral history reliable?

Further details of James Hall’s life in America after 1775 are supported by vital records, as well as a family document found in a carton of the personal papers belonging to his grandson James Ashton [Under-Lyne] Hall (1816-1845) many years after his premature death. In this more straightforward telling of the story we find that following the grazing of his shoulder James Hall deserted when he found it “convenient.” He then returned to Westford with John Hildreth and spent the next year working for him and his brother Ephraim Hildreth, 3rd. For a time he moved to neighboring Chelmsford and took up the blacksmithing trade with Phineas Chamberlain (1745-1813), whose house still stands today (shown above and in this report).

By 1779 James had grown so fond of his adopted country and its ambitions for independence that he took up the call for nine months’ service in the Continental Army. His time was spent in the Hudson Highlands at West Point with Col. Michael Jackson’s 8th Massachusetts Regiment, part of it during the “winter of the deep snow.” For this service he later received a pension.

One of the many transcribed period documents in Wilson Waters’s History of Chelmsford provides a further example of James Hall’s support for the cause: we find him listed in 1781 along with Chamberlain, his blacksmith mentor, and a class of men who provided financial incentive for another man’s service in the army.

Soon after, the lure of freshly established communities in Vermont drew James and his blacksmithing trade to Cavendish with other Westford veterans. He returned in January of 1784 to marry Thankful Hildreth, and brought her back to Cavendish that same winter. During the 1790s they returned to Massachusetts, residing in Acton and Westford, before settling one final time in Vermont shortly before the turn of the century. In 1822, while living with his son James Whoral Hall in Reading, Vermont, this veteran died at the age of 69.

Like so many of his fellow revolutionary soldiers, James Hall’s weather-worn memorial stone proudly establishes him as “A Soldier of the Revolution.” Not surprisingly, there is no mention of his service to the King, though it very prominently declares his Lancashire birth, as well as the fact that he “Emigrated” from mother England in 1774.

So was Pvt. James Hall of the 4th Regiment one of the three British soldiers killed in the fire at the North Bridge and buried in Concord? Or did his comrades simply think that he was killed, allowing him to take up a new life as a New Englander? If James Hall wasn’t buried in Concord, who was? Or were there two James Halls in the British column, one who died and one who deserted? Very interesting questions. Thanks, Dan!

James Hall, “a British soldier”

Today I’m pleased to share with you the first half of an essay by Dan Lacroix. As a historical researcher, Dan has worked for years with the Westford Museum & Historical Society. As a reenactor with the Westford Colonial Minutemen, he also has a specialty in eighteenth-century house joinery (carpentry). And a while back Dan clued me in on a fascinating mystery from New England’s Revolution, so I asked him to write up some of his findings as a guest blogger.

About eight years ago my research into the lives of Westford’s Revolutionary War soldiers took an unexpected turn. A short passage in Edwin Hodgman’s 1883 History of Westford describes a past resident by the name of James Hall as “a British soldier, born at Ashton-under-line [Lyne], England, who during the retreat of the Regulars from Concord, April 19, 1775, voluntarily surrendered to the Provincials and came to Westford and worked for Ephraim Hildreth, 3rd, whose daughter he married in 1784.”

An interesting story in itself, but wasn’t James Hall also the name of one of the British soldiers from the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment killed at the North Bridge? The precise identities of those three soldiers have been debated for years, and I won’t be delving into that debate here. Though it may not be possible to conclusively prove that two men named James Hall are one in the same, there is considerable evidence supporting the core facts within some engaging nineteenth-century family stories.

One of Hodgman’s sources might have been an article in the Boston Journal from 26 Apr 1875, which was repeated with annotations two weeks later in the Lowell Daily Courier. Written by an accomplished lawyer and Civil War veteran, Capt. Henry B. Atherton (1835-1906, shown above), the article was based on family stories and traditions from his home town of Cavendish, Vermont, where James Hall, born 29 Sept 1753, ultimately settled and established his family.

From Atherton we learn that at about the age of twenty James “awoke with the fatal shilling of the recruiting sergeant in his pocket,” and then was “engaged with the rest of his regiment in laying roads in Scotland.” A six-week passage (with two of them becalmed off of Newfoundland) brought him to Boston Common with his regiment in 1774.

In true Centennial-era detail we learn of his experiences on April 19th of the following year:

At Concord, he was among those stationed at the bridge. As they were about to begin the retreat, Minuteman Wright of Westford called to them “Boys, don’t pull up the planks!” whereupon Hall took deliberate aim at Wright and shot, but failed to hit him.

And further,

On the retreat through Lincoln Woods, a shot from one of the Minutemen grazed his shoulder, and worn out with fatigue, he threw himself on the ground, his comrades exclaiming, “There goes Sergeant Hall; he is dead!”

After they passed, he rose and returned to the Wright Tavern in Concord. There he suffered no indignity, except that John Gray of Westford pulled off his military cap with its ostrich feathers, which he retained and subsequently gave to his daughters.

The colorful nature of the story aside, certain details immediately raise some questions.

TOMORROW: Details and discrepancies in the legend of James Hall.