Simeon Lyman’s Sunday Shirt—and a Crazy Man

In the summer of 1775, Simeon Lyman of Sharon, Connecticut, was part of a company sent to guard the colony’s coast. Here’s his diary entry for Sunday, 20 August:

Sunday morning we got ready for to go to meeting, and the officers came and said that we must not go to meeting without breeches, and it was so hot that I could not bear to wear them, and I did not go meeting in the forenoon. I went to see a crazy man and there was a man that he knew him, and he got mad, and I think I never saw such a sight in my life. He was chained and he would spring at us and hallo at us. There was one stout man that said that he never saw a man that he was afraid of before. In the afternoon I went to meeting.

Presumably Lyman and his friends wanted to attend meeting only in their shirts. Those garments would have been long enough for modesty—as long as there were no wind gusts. Shirts were usually people’s first and only layer of underwear.

Incidentally, Lyman writes about washing his clothes more than any other Continental soldier that I remember. Not that he does it a lot, but it matters to him more than his fellow soldiers. Or maybe, at age twenty-one, he was expecting to share his diary with his mother when he got home.

The Notice on Gen. Lee’s Door

A while back, I quoted Pvt. Simeon Lyman’s account of the Connecticut troops’ dispute with Gen. Charles Lee over when exactly they would leave the Continental Army in December 1775 and how many of them would reenlist.

Lee said the departing soldiers were no better than deserters and threatened to send them up against the British positions on Bunker’s Hill. Finally he posted this notice on the door of his house, saying he was going to send copies to all the taverns southward:

To the Publicans and other Housekeepers residing on the different roads betwixt Cambridge, Newlondon, and Hartford.

Fellow Citizens: It is hoped and expected that as you value the sacred right and liberties of your country, you will show a proper contempt and indignation towards those disaffected miscreants who are at this crisis deserting her cause. Those who for want of zeal or courage, at a time when everything conspires to give us victory over our wicked enemies and tyrants, can so basely abandon their colors, those who by a traitorous desertion in the hour of trial would open a possibility to the enemy of enslaving you, have forfeited all title to be treated not only [as] fellow citizens but as men. You therefore, gentlemen, are most earnestly entreated and conjured to give testimony of your virtue and patriotism by punishing to your utmost those vile refugees.

In short, you are requested not to admit into your houses or furnish with any refreshment those bands of deserters now sneaking homeward to infate [i.e., infect] their relations and neighbors with cowardice and every bad quality, but to consider them as reprobates to virtue, honor, God, and their country, for in these lights they may justly be considered, particularly when it is known that it was only requested of them to remain three weeks longer, which they (oh scorn to the name of Amarica) have most basely refused to comply with.

Thanks however to God Almighty, who has hitherto so manifestly prospered our cause, this vile dastardly spirits is so far from being general that our army will the very day of their desertion be stronger than ever, but the spirit and virtue of the major part serve to render the infamy of those particulars more conspicuous.

As I quoted before, Lyman reported, “the paper was took down as soon as it was dark, and another put up that General Lee was a fool and if he had not come here we should not know it.” Below the text itself he wrote, “Thus much may suffice for General Lee.”

Lyman wrote little in his diary about his own actions during this confrontation. It’s clear that he didn’t volunteer to serve extra days or reenlist, so we know which side he was on. And somehow the text on the notice taken from Lee’s door “as soon as it was dark” ended up in Lyman’s papers.

(The image above shows the door of the house where Lee slept, as discussed here.)

Gen. Charles Lee’s Recruiting Tactics

This is another extract from the diary of Pvt. Simeon Lyman of Connecticut, stationed on the north wing of the Continental siege lines in the fall of 1775. Although it says nothing about the powder horn Lyman carved in October, I think it has a direct connection to the military career of horn-carver Ephraim Moors, as I’ll discuss at the Concord Museum on Thursday.

The Connecticut soldiers’ enlistments were due to run out in early December. Gen. George Washington and his field commanders were worried that the departure of those men would leave the army too weak to contain the British inside Boston. They wanted those men to reenlist for the new year, or at least to stay until the arrival of fill-in militia regiments. And they weren’t above using any tactic to get the men to agree.

Lyman wrote:

December, Friday, 1th. We was ordered to parade before the general’s door, the whole regiment, and General [Charles] Lee and General [John] Solivan came out, and those that would not stay 4 days longer after their enlistments was out they was ordered to turn out, and there was about 3 quarters turned out and we was ordered to form a hollow square, and General Lee came in and the first words was “Men, I do not know what to call you, [you] are the worst of all creatures,” and flung and curst and swore at us, and said if we would not stay he would order us to go on Bunker Hill and if we would not go he would order the riflemen to fire at us, and they talked they would take our guns and take our names down, and our lieutenants begged of us to stay and we went and joined the rest, and they got about 10 of their guns, and the men was marched off and the general said that they should go to the work house and be confined, and they agreed to stay the four days, and they gave them a dram and the colonel told us that he would give us another the next morning, and we was dismissed. There was one that was a mind to have one of his mates turn out with him, and the general see him and he catched his gun out of his hands and struck him on the head and ordered him to be put under guard.

Saturday, 2th. I was on quarter guard in the morning. They was paraded before the colo[nel’s] door and he gave us a dram, and then they read some new orders to us and they said that we must not go out of our brigade without a written pass from our captain, and before night there was a paper set up on the general’s door not to let the soldiers have any victual if they would not stay 3 weeks longer, and they said that they was 50 miles in the country, and some was mad and said they would not stay the 4 days, and the paper was took down as soon as it was dark, and another put up that General Lee was a fool and if he had not come here we should not know it.

When Lee had arrived in Massachusetts in July, he was welcomed as a celebrated military expert. He was still the most respected professional soldier in the army, soon to be detailed to Newport and New York to oversee defenses there. So that message from the Connecticut men was a bold show of disrespect. But of course he was accusing soldiers who had served their promised time of being no better than deserters.

Simeon Lyman Carves a Horn

In the course of researching my talk on Thursday at the Concord Museum about the Ephraim Moors powder horn, I came across this extract from the diary of Pvt. Simeon Lyman of Sharon, Connecticut. He was stationed on the northern wing of the siege lines outside Boston in October 1775.

Friday, 13th. I went to Cambridge to get some walnuts and see the College.

Saturday, 14th. I went to carry victuals to the guard and viewing the forts and the regulars.

Sunday, 15th. Our minister preached 2 sermons. He preached from Dutrinomy 23rd and 9th verse in the forenoon and afternoon, and he preached 2 very good sermons to the soldiers how it was best for us to do and what not to do.

Monday, 16th. We built a chimney to our tent and mended our old trousers.

Tuesday, 17th. I went to tend mason to build chimneys to the barracks, and I listed to tend till the chimneys was done, and I was to be cleared from all duty and have a gill of rum a day.

Wesdnesday, 18th. I went to Mistick [Medford] and got a horn and some apples. I sent a hand to work at the chimneys, and there was some that went to the head of the works and said that we would not stay only a day or 2, so we was dismissed.

Thursday, 19th. It rained, and I worked at my horn the most of the day.

Friday, 20th. It rained, and I finished my horn and went up to Mistick and got some apples.

Lyman’s horn doesn’t survive, as least as far as I know, so I have no idea of how elaborately he carved it. But it was only three days’ work—given that Lyman had apparently gotten off other duty because he had volunteered to build chimneys, but then couldn’t build chimneys because of the rain.

Lyman’s diary is full of the details of daily life like this (especially laundry, for some reason). But he had rather little to say about military actions.

[Image of the Historic Deerfield powder horn collection, on display through the summer and fall, courtesy of The Horn Guild, a guild of contemporary horn workers and collectors.]