The Memory of Peter Brown after Bunker Hill

Coming back to the Battle of Bunker Hill, one of our very best accounts of the event comes from an American soldier from a Westford company named Peter Brown. On 25 June 1775 Brown sent a detailed description of that fight to his mother. That document is now at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which offers a digitized version for everyone.

I quoted from Peter Brown’s letter in 2011, adding (based on the M.H.S.’s page about him) that we have few other details of his life beyond this document.

In February of this year a commenter dubbed lifford gave me a pointer to a history of Lunenburg which has more to say about Peter Brown. So I used that tip, and of course Google Books, to get beyond the common name “Peter Brown” and find more information.

It appears that Brown’s letter first appeared in print in the June 1875 issue of Potter’s American Monthly. A correspondent from Belfast, Maine, named John L. Locke prefaced the document this way:

The original of the following letter, rusty with age and worn by frequent handling, has the following address on its back: Mrs. Sarah Brown, Newport, Rhode-Island. The writer of the letter was Peter Brown, son of Wm. Brown, of Newport, R.I. He was married to Miss Olive Dinsmore, of Boylston, Mass., Oct. 24, 1781. At the close of the Revolution, in 1783, Mr. and Mrs. Brown went to Lunenburg, Mass., and in the locality known as “Flat Hill” commenced house-keeping operations. His grandson, Wm. Lifford Brown, now occupies the place. Of their 8 children, 4 were sons, and 4 were daughters. Mr. Brown died in Lunenburg, July 15, 1829, aged 76 years. He and all his family except one who died in Boston, were buried in the South Cemetery in Lunenburg.

The original letter, of which this is an exact copy, is now in possession of Mrs. Charlotte Lewis, of Lunenburg, who is a lineal descendant of Peter Brown, the writer.

Later that year the New England Historical Genealogical Society reprinted Brown’s letter and Locke’s preface in an appendix to a collection of Centennial Orations Commemorative of the Opening Events of the American Revolution. That publication was mostly a reprint from the society’s Register in 1875, but the Brown letter was added to the appendix late and therefore never got included or indexed with the Register volumes. Only 275 copies of the standalone collection with the letter were printed.

Then we come to lifford’s source, George A. Cunningham’s “History of the Town of Lunenburg.” Cunningham died in 1875, so he must have prepared that genealogical study before the publications above, but his work was never published. Until recently it appears to have existed only as a typescript at the Lunenburg Historical Society.

Then a grant allowed the society to digitize the document, and it’s now available (with a poor O.C.R. transcription) through archive.org. As pages 97-98 show, Brown served in various town and church offices in Lunenburg after the war. He and his wife Olive had eight children (the youngest of which I see was named Lifford).

Finally, Find-a-Grave has catalogued Peter and Olive Brown’s grave, as shown above. Its inscription reads:

In memory of
Mr. Peter Brown,
who died July 15, 1829,
Æt. 76.

In memory of
Mrs. Olive,
wife of Mr. Peter Brown,
who died April 20, 1828,
Æt. 70.

He was a soldier in the revolution,
was one of those who persued
the British in their retreat from
Concord to Boston, was in the
Battle on Bunker’s Hill. He was an
honest man and a devoted Christian.

She was a faithful wife,
an affectionate Mother,
and a sincere Christian.

Their surviving children, William & Mary,
have erected this stone to the memory
of their Parents.

Gen. Putnam Meets an “Officer in the Train”

The provincial plan for the Battle of Bunker Hill called for Capt. Samuel Gridley and Capt. John Callender to take their artillery companies, each with two four-pounder cannon, into the redoubt that infantrymen had built on Breed’s Hill. Gridley was a New Hampshire blacksmith and nephew of the artillery regiment’s commander. Callender was a Boston mechanic trained in that town’s militia artillery company.

In a letter to his mother, a private named Peter Brown described what he saw one of those artillery captains do:

Our Officers sent time after time for Cannon from Cambridge in the Morning & could get but four, the Captn of which fir’d a few times then swung his Hat three times round to the enemy and ceas’d to fire

One problem was that the American guns weren’t powerful enough to answer the Royal Artillery‘s fire from Copp’s Hill in Boston. Another was a problem with supplies: as a committee from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress found a week later:

An officer of rank affirmed to your Committee that he absolutely knew that some of the [gunpowder] cartridges and balls were too large for the cannon, and that it was necessary to break the cartridges before they could be of use.

That committee was formed to investigate “a report which has prevailed in the Army, that there has been treachery in some of the Officers.” The legislators interviewed American commanders and reported back:

General [Israel] Putnam informed us, that in the late action, as he was riding up Bunker’s Hill, he met an officer of the Train drawing his cannon down in great haste; he ordered the officer to stop and go back; he replied he had no cartridges; the General dismounted and examined his boxes, and found a considerable number of cartridges, upon which he ordered him back; he refused, until the General threatened him with immediate death, upon which he returned up the hill again, but soon deserted his post and left the cannon.

Another officer, who had the direction of another cannon, conducted much in the same manner. The relation of this matter from General Putnam was confirmed by several other officers of distinction, as to what is most material relative thereto. . . .

General Putnam declared to your Committee, as his opinion, that the defeat of that day was owing to the ill-behaviour of those that conducted the artillery, and that, one of these officers ought to be punished with death, and that unless some exemplary punishment was inflicted, he would assuredly leave the Army. That upon the defeat of the officers of the Train, the re-enforcements ordered up the hill could not be prevailed upon to go; the plea was, the Artillery was gone, and they stood no chance for their lives in such circumstances…

In his History of Bunker Hill Battle (1827), Samuel Swett cited a letter from Putnam’s son to say that in his encounter with the retreating artillery company the Connecticut general had ”entreated, threatened, and broke his sword over them knocking down a non-commissioned officer.”

But one thing Putnam hadn’t done was get the name of the artillery officer he met. (This story and the consequences of it will be part of my free talk at the Society of Cincinnati museum in Washington, D.C., on 10 July.)

TOMORROW: Capt. Samuel Trevett of Marblehead.

“The enemy fir’d very warm from Boston”

One of the standard sources on the Battle of Bunker Hill is a letter written on 25 June 1775 by Peter Brown of Westford, who served in Col. William Prescott’s regiment. The Massachusetts Historical Society displays the letter in its online exhibit about the battle.

The battle begins:

after tarrying on parade till Nine at Night [on 16 June], we march’d down, on to Charleston Hill against Copts hill in Boston, where we entrench’d & made a Fort, ten Rods long, and eight wide, with a Breastwork of about eight more, we work’d there undiscovered till about five in the Morning, when we saw our danger, being against Ships of the Line, and all Boston fortified against us,

The danger we were in made us think there was treachery and that we were brought there to be all slain, and I must and will say that there was treachery oversight or presumption in the Conduct of our Officers, for about 5 in the morning, we not having more than half our fort done, they began to fire (I suppose as soon as they had orders) pretty briskly for a few minutes, then ceas’d but soon begun again, and fird to the number of twenty minutes, (they killd but one of our Men) then ceas’d to fire till about eleven oClock when they began to fire as brisk as ever, which caus’d many of our young Country people to desert, apprehending the danger in a clearer manner than others who were more diligent in digging, & fortifying ourselves against them.

We began to be almost beat out, being fatigued by our Labour, having no sleep the night before, very little to eat, no drink but rum, but what we hazzarded our lives to get, we grew faint, Thirsty, hungry and weary.—

The enemy fir’d very warm from Boston, and from on board their Ships till about 2 oClock when they began to fire from Ships that lay in Ferry way and from a ship that lay in the river against us, to stop our reinforcement, which they did in some Measure one cannon cut three Men in two on the neck,

Our Officers sent time after time for Cannon from Cambridge in the Morning & could get but four, the Captn of which [Samuel Gridley?] fir’d a few times then swung his Hat three times round to the enemy and ceas’d to fire, then about three o Clock there was a cessation of the Cannons roaring, soon after we espied as many as 40, boats or barges coming over, full of troops it is supposed there were about 3000 of them, and about 700 of us left…

Read the whole letter here.

In the same letter Brown told his mother in Newport, “I do a Clerk or Orderly Sergants business; which requires much care but the Duty is easier, and the pay higher than a private Soldiers.” His ability to write got him that job, and let him record an ordinary soldier’s experience of the battle. Other than this letter, very little is known of Peter Brown.