“They ordered out both their Regiments to fire on Each other”

In his 24 Sept 1775 intelligence report, Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., didn’t just describe dissatisfied enlisted men in the Continental Army.

He also wrote about the disputes among officers in the forces besieging Boston.

One paragraph of Church’s letter described a conflict that I haven’t found mentioned anywhere else:

A Quarrell happened between Col. Bruer and Col. Patterson, at length they got so high, that they ordered out both their Regiments to fire on Each other, but were Quelled by a third that was ordered to fire on them both in case they did not disperce which they did,

“Col. Patterson” was John Paterson (1744–1808, shown here) from Lenox by way of Connecticut. His regiment was assigned to Gen. William Heath’s brigade and thus stationed near the center of the lines.

Identifying “Col. Bruer” is less certain because the Continental Army had two colonels with the surname Brewer: Jonathan of Waltham and David of Palmer. They were in fact brothers, born in Framingham.

Col. Jonathan Brewer’s regiment was part of Gen. Nathanael Greene’s brigade, centered on Cambridge and Charlestown. Col. David Brewer’s regiment was assigned to Gen. John Thomas’s brigade, thus in Roxbury. I don’t know which was closer to Paterson’s position.

I suspect Paterson quarreled with David Brewer, who in October was cashiered for paying his teen-aged son as a lieutenant while the boy was back on the farm and other petty matters. The court-martial record said this Col. Brewer acted “contrary to the repeated remonstrances of the Officers of the regiment,” so it makes sense for another colonel to criticize him as well.

On the other hand, back in the spring Jonathan Brewer got a reputation for arguing with other officers about recruiting. So it’s possible Paterson harbored some hard feelings from that.

Cols. John Paterson and Jonathan Brewer reenlisted in 1776. Brewer, who had been wounded at Bunker Hill, shifted to the Massachusetts regiment of artificers later that year. Paterson (shown above) went on to become a major general.

Another conflict Church was happy to report on:

They begin to try Colonels and Captains for bad behaviour at Bunkers Hill battle, three Colonels have been Cashired and several Captains for their Cowerdice—and could the Army in General have their will General [Artemas] Ward wou’d go for one, for he never so much as gave one Written order that day.

There was indeed a short series of courts-martial in late 1775 removing officers from the army, either for misbehavior at Bunker Hill or for similar failings. (Sometimes, it seems, an officer’s behavior in that battle wasn’t bad enough on its own but left the man with no more chances to screw up.)

Gen. Artemas Ward definitely had his detractors. But he had exercised control during the Bunker Hill battle, sending spoken orders to the commanders on the Charlestown peninsula and to the other sections of the siege lines, which he also had to maintain.

TOMORROW: Dr. Church’s secrets and tales.

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.