The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  November 2001

NEW ENGLAND TRADITION REVIVED — An article in The Boston Globe, on Thanksgiving Day, 2001, reported a puzzling remark by a New England historian. He was quoted as saying that our customary Thanksgiving celebration, in the style of the Pilgrims, was in fact quite alien to most of New England until the late 1800s. According to this historian, the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Bay Colony was soon overshadowed by the much larger Massachusetts Bay Colony of the Puritans. And as a consequence, the history of the Pilgrims was also overshadowed and not resurrected until Victorian times.

Like so many things that get reported in the newspapers these days, this didn’t seem to make much sense. What could this historian mean, that our traditional Thanksgiving had been forgotten and had become alien even in New England?

To be sure, our celebration of Thanksgiving as an annual and national holiday is usually traced to President Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving on October 3, 1863, where he proposed that on November 26th, the great gifts given to the nation “be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.” But Lincoln was himself invoking an earlier history. His great burden was to preserve the Union. And following the sacrifice of lives at Gettysburg in July, he must have remembered President George Washington’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving in 1789, to give thanks for the new United States brought into being that year by the new Constitution. It surely was not simple coincidence that the day Lincoln selected for his own proclamation, and the day he set aside for Thanksgiving, were identical to Washington’s Proclamation in 1789. And the historical thread runs even further to the past. Proclamations of days of Thanksgiving date back at least to 1676, when the governing council of Charlestown set June 29th “as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such His Goodness and Favour,” for having protected the town from the Indians during King Philip’s War.

So given this long historical thread, how could one say that our traditional Thanksgiving had been forgotten, even in New England? Well, it is true. We have become so accustomed to our version of Thanksgiving that when we read over those earlier proclamations, we fail even to see the most obvious thing — they are all solemn days set aside for prayer. Not one mentions a Thanksgiving feast. Indeed, one source speaks of these as fasting days. The Feast — that is what we get from the Pilgrims, and that is the custom that was resurrected in the 1800s. And we owe it all to a brief paragraph composed by one of the Pilgrims in “A Letter Sent from New England to a Friend,” December 1621:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

… These things I thought good to let you understand, … that you might in our behalf give God thanks Who hath dealt so favorably with us.

HONORED BY OUR ENEMIES — Major John Dyke Acland was one of those well-born officers who brought his wife with him when his regiment joined Burgoyne’s army. An aristocrat from an ancient family, Acland was instinctively an unreconstructed Tory. In the last, decisive battle leading to Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga in October, 1777, Major Acland was wounded in both legs and captured by the Americans. His wife was frantic with anxiety and prevailed on Burgoyne for a letter of passage to General Gates, the American commander, so she could join her husband in the American hospital. Burgoyne later remarked: “I was astonished at the proposal. After so long an agitation of the spirits, exhausted not only for want of rest, but absolute want of food, drenched in rain for twelve hours, that a woman should be capable of delivering herself to an enemy, probably in the night and uncertain into what hands she might fall, appeared an effort above human virtue.” That Lady Acland was very young and very pregnant no doubt added to the astonishment. She found her husband in good care and good spirits, and they were both accorded great courtesy by the Americans for three months while he recuperated. Years later, after he had returned to Britain, Major Acland took umbrage at insulting remarks made by another British officer about American soldiers. Acland challenged the officer to a duel — and died of the wound he received on the dueling field. Madame Riedesel, also in Burgoyne’s company, remarked of Acland that he “was a rough fellow who was drunk almost every day, but nevertheless, a brave officer. ” And honorable.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  June 2001

[At the Company’s June muster, one of our cadets, Steve McCarthy, Jr., gave an engaging and informative presentation of the research he has done into one of his ancestors, a Hessian soldier who participated in the campaign by Burgoyne that ended at Saratoga. The essay below, done as a middle-school project, recounts what Steve Jr. discovered.]

In my family there are many stories, stories of hallowed bishops, daring soldiers, inquisitive inventors, and ruminating professors. I would like to share a favorite story of mine. It is taken from the American War For Independence. War had broken out in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and had spread to 12 other crown colonies on the continent. In an effort to stop this insurrection, His Majesty King George III ordered several thousand troops to quell the uprising. In 1776, King George could not spare many troops as there were other military issues to attend to in his vast empire. Consequently, he called upon his cousins in Germany to assist by lending him troops for a frugal price. These troops were to support the British regulars, but they were to become the back-bone of many government operations in the Northern colonies that were attempting to secede. This story is of one such mercenary and his journey.

Christoph Christoph Bayer lived in Rueckingen, three kilometers from the city of Hanau in Germany. He was a Lutheran silk weaver who had lived his whole life in Germany. In 1777, Christoph enlisted in the Hanau Jager company. The company was being sent to the colonies and the ranks needed to be filled. Christoph was only 21 when he enrolled, contrary to the company records which listed his age as 25. As is often the case with recruits, Christoph must have found a reason to add four years to his age. Christoph would soon leave the kingdom of the German prince of Hesse-Cassel as a member of a well organized machine that was the Germany military.

Things did not turn out as planned. One part of the detachment met up with some rebels and was forced to retreat. Another part of the column managed to meet Burgoyne, but then were defeated at Saratoga [several miles away from my grandmother’s house]. Those who escaped capture retreated back to Canada. Those who were captured were sent to Weston, Massachusetts [three miles from my house]. It is unclear in which group Christoph was. He was not captured, so whichever group he was in ended up in Canada with the remainder of his company. There he was billeted in the Montreal region [where I go to camp]. The only exception was the winter of 1780-81 in which the Hessians were scattered all over the Quebec City region. The company to which Christoph belonged stayed in Saint Thomas-de-Montmagny. It was in this town that Christoph’s future wife lived. It is quite possible that he met her during this stay and returned to marry her, or maybe he just liked the area.

AN HONORABLE DEFENSE OF LIBERTY? — In the autumn of 1780, David Freemoyer was 19 years old and a militia soldier stationed at Middle Fort on the Schoharie River, near Albany in New York. The fort was under attack by a combined force of Regulars, Tory militia, and Indians. In a deposition in 1834, Freemoyer told a few tales of this noble defense of American liberty.

“WORLD WAR I SOLDIERS FOUND IN FRANCE” (AP) — An Associated Press story out of France, about the discovery of the remains of twenty-four British soldiers buried in an unmarked grave following the battle of Arras in 1917, would not ordinarily find a place in these pages. The graves were uncovered a few months ago during the construction of (yes) a German automobile factory in northern France. There seems no prospect of identifying the soldiers, except that surviving military emblems indicate that several were members of the Lincolnshire Regiment’s 10th Battalion, “The Chums,” raised in the fishing port of Grimsby in Lincolnshire. They will be reburied with full military honors in France, in graves marked with headstones saying “A soldier of the Great War. Known only to God.”

BRINGING MUSIC TO THESE AMERICAN SHORES — Do you suppose these milestones in colonial music (recounted in Yankee Magazine) have any historical significance?

• 1603: Martin Pring, on a ship off Massachusetts, plays the gittern (an early form of guitar) to the Natives’ delight, and they dance and shower him with gifts.
• 1607: Marc Lescarbot notes the first song heard by Europeans in North America, sung in a sweat lodge in St. John’s, New Brunswick, by Etechemin and Souriquois men.
• 1620: Trumpets aboard The Mayflower are used to accompany songs from the ‘Ainsworth Psalter’ and later became military instruments.
• 1731: The first public concert in the colonies is held in Boston, at the home of Mr. Pelham, played on ‘sundry instruments’ and costing 5 schillings.
• 1767: The Mattatuck Drum Band is formed in Waterbury, Connecticut, becoming the oldest such unit still in existance.
• 1768: America’s first patriotic song, ‘The Liberty Song,’ is put to the music of a British military tune, ‘Heart of Oak,’ by John Mein and John Fleming and published in the Boston Gazette.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  May 2001

We have the following from Mike Ryan, our historian extraordinaire.

“Brown Bess”: Setting History Aright

In the days of lace-ruffles, perukes, and brocade
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise-
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade,
With a habit of looking men straight in the eyes-
At Blenheim and Ramillies, fops would confess
          Brown Bess by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

They were pierced to the heart by the charms of Brown Bess.

By the time Kipling wrote this ode to the British soldier’s flintlock companion, the musket itself had passed into history. Yet the charms of the name Brown Bess live on. Attend an American Revolution re enactment, speak with an historical interpreter, or even consult The Encyclopædia Britannica, and you will be told that the firearm carried on both sides during the War for Independence was known to the soldiers as “the Brown Bess.”

But that is not exactly right. And the source of the error is itself an interesting story that takes us back in history.

In 1722, a British Ordnance Office decree established a standard army musket, known as the Long Land Pattern Service Musket. It was a full 62 inches long, while the minimum height requirement for soldiers was only 67 inches. It was in time discovered that a shorter barrel was just as accurate (or inaccurate), and thus some British regiments adopted a smaller, less cumbersome version. After the French and Indian War, the British army sought to reduce the weight carried by all its soldiers and improve their mobility, so in 1768, it introduced the Short Land Musket (New Pattern), with the barrel reduced by four inches. British soldiers during the American Revolution carried this model. Since under British law, all men in the colonies had to belong to the local militia and own a musket, some colonists would also have carried such muskets, while others would have been armed with a mix of hunting rifles, fowling pieces, or Dutch or French muskets. Once the Revolution began, colonial gunsmiths would produce a simple, less-expensive copy of the Short Land musket, often called a Provincial or Committee of Safety musket.

The names we find for these weapons in historical documents, British and American military records, personal diaries, and other writings at the time vary: firelocks, flintlocks, the King’s Arms, Long Land muskets, Short Land muskets, muskets, or simply guns. Rarely, if ever, is the term “Brown Bess” found. From where, then, comes the contemporary use of this name for 18th century firearms?

Although the origin of the term is obscure, there is no shortage of conjecture or myth. The phrase “brown musket” appeared as early as 1708. It may have referred to the color of the walnut wood from which gun stocks were made. It may have derived from a chemical treatment of gun barrels dating to the 1630s, which helped prevent rust and inhibited corrosion. Known as russeting, this process made the barrel a rich brown. However, at the time of the Revolution, the British Army preferred a bright metal appearance to its weapons, so chemical browning was not used, and some sources suggest that the gunstocks may also have been painted various colors.

Speculation on the origins of “Bess” are equally varied. Some believe it to be associated with Queen Elizabeth, who reigned from 1558 to 1603. Such is not likely, as she had been dead for over a hundred years before the Long Land musket entered service, and soldiers would have had no obvious reason to honor her. Soldiers might, however, have used artful alliteration to coin a name, since Brown Bess flows easily in speech, in a way that Brown Lydia or Peg does not. One folk tale attributes the name to a notorious (but popular) highwayman of the time whose house was named “Black Bess.” Further speculation focuses on the possible corruption of two foreign words: the Dutch “buss” for gun barrel (as in blunderbuss), and the German “Büchse” for gun.

Whatever the origin of the term, the more important point is that there is no solid documentation to support the modern habit of referring to the musket carried by British soldiers as The Brown Bess. This does not appear to be the way British or American soldiers ever used the term. Yet if we listen with a sharper ear to Kipling’s poem, we can understand how the modern confusion and error arose.

One of the earliest references to Brown Bess can be found in The Connecticut Courant of April 1771, which carried a story with the line, “… but if you are afraid of the sea, take Brown Bess on your shoulder and march.” And in 1785, the Dictionary of Vulgar Tongue, which listed vernacular terms of the period, contained this entry: “Brown Bess: A soldier’s firelock. To hug Brown Bess; to carry a firelock, or serve as a private soldier.” A generation later, a character in Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon would echo an English drinking song in which “married to Brown Bess” was the soldiers’ phrase for being in the King’s army. So in its original use, Brown Bess was slang and a term of poetic endearment, much in the way people today give names of endearment to their boats or cars. And just as we would find it strange if a historian a hundred years from now were to point at an automobile from our time and tell an audience that we called all such objects “The Old Betsy,” so too a soldier from the Revolution would find strange the modern reference to all muskets as The Brown Bess.

So how did modern confusion in the use of the term Brown Bess arise? According to the National Army Museum in London, when flintlocks finally were taken out of service in the British military, the term became popular among gun collectors in the mid-1800s as a generic name for the wide variety of firelocks that included the Long Land, the Short Land, and the even-shorter India Pattern models. The collectors’ misuse of the term carried into the 1960s when fledgling re-enactors, who were recreating colonial minute and militia companies and British regiments for the American Bicentennial, adopted the term. While looking for authentic period weapons, they found collectors and others referring to firelocks as “Brown Besses,” and the name was soon attached to all muskets and attributed to soldiers of the Revolution.

The difference between the authentic use of Brown Bess by soldiers and our modern, confused use may seem rather subtle, perhaps even trivial. Yet getting the details exactly right is an important matter for historical re enactors and interpreters. As the poet A.E. Housman remarked, accuracy is a duty, not a virtue.  Brown Bess, with all her charms, remains an authentic figure in the American Revolution.  But she needs to be treated with historical respect.  Today, just as it was back then, when the soldier’s duty calls and his musket is his closest companion, then well he may “shoulder Brown Bess and march”!

D. Michael Ryan is Historian with the Lincoln Minute Men, and he is also an 18th Century volunteer history interpreter with the National Park Service and Associate Dean of Students at Boston College.

Sources:
Anthony Darling, Red Coats and Brown Bess, 1971.
Howard Blackmore, British Military Firearms 1650-1850, 1961.
D. F. Harding, Small Arms of the East India Company 1600-1856.
British Brigade, Brigade Dispatch, XXVIII No. 2, Summer 1998.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  April 2001

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander Time; for that’s the stuff Life is Made of.”

Poor Richard’s Almanack, June 1746

The measurement of time did not need to be exact in the countryside. The daily movement of the sun, monthly passage of the moon, the shifting of tides. Farmers’ cows and roosters announced the hour to rise, and darkness set the time to rest. But in towns where shops outside the home became common, punctuality and time discipline in the work place called for more reliable measures.

At the turn of the 19th century, when the colonies had become the new Republic, rising industrialization made clocks more affordable and more necessary. In Concord, a clock-making industry developed on the Mill Dam in the center of town, involving seven makers, some 30 tradesmen, and 20 buildings. And the way people thought of time became more secular. Time once was God’s time; now time was money. Yet we are from whence we came, and such is reflected in what we say of time. Poor Richard still speaks to us across the centuries: “He that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night.”  The more truisms and times change, the more they stay the same. It is time to say adieu.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  March 2001

PRESIDENTIAL TEMPERAMENT — Great leaders are often alleged to have volcanic tempers. Perhaps it is a way of relieving the pressures of heavy responsibility. Perhaps it is a path to greatness by terrifying subordinates into giving their best performance. Perhaps it is just plain arrogance. George Washington was a man who seems to have kept such passions in check — most of the time. What seems to have exasperated his patience were criticisms in the partisan press.

“As some of the gazettes of the United States have teemed with all the invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts and malicious falsehoods could invent, to misrepresent my politics and affections; to wound my reputation and feelings; and to weaken, if not entirely destroy the confidence you have been pleased to repose in me; it might be expected at the parting scene of my public life that I should take some notice of such virulent abuse. But, as heretofore, I shall pass them over in utter silence.”

Alexander Hamilton, who helped Washington with the drafting, excised the passage. Washington, apparently having vented his spleen, felt the better about it and agreed to leave the bitter words out.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  February 2001

CLARITY OF PURPOSE — Some sixty-seven years after he participated in the events of April 19, 1775, ninety-one year old Captain Levi Preston of Danvers was asked by a young Harvard Divinity student why he fought the British that day. “Were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?”

Preston responded, “I never saw one of those stamps, and always understood that Governor Bernard put them all in Castle William. I am certain I never paid a penny for one of them.”

“Well, what then about the tea-tax?”

Preston replied, “Tea-tax! I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard.”

“But, I suppose you have been reading Harrington, Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principle of liberty?”

Preston said, “I never heard of these men. The only books we had were the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ psalms and hymns, and the almanacs.”

“Well then, what was the matter? And what did you mean in going to the fight?”

Preston made it clear. “Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”

RUSSETTING IN THE RANKS — Mike Ryan, with his Eagle-eye for the precise historical detail, offers a welcome correction to the discussion in last month’s newsletter about the Brown Bess. The Dispatch noted a belief by some experts that Brown Bess comes from the technique of russeting, which gives steel gun barrels a brown, rust-resistant coating, and The Dispatch also noted the opinion of others that russeting was not developed as a technique until after the Revolution.

Well, Mike says it ain’t so, and he seems to be correct. If you want to russet your musket, M.L. Brown’s Firearms in Colonial America describes a technique apparently used widely among colonial gunmakers. Mix one quart rain water, half ounce nitric acid, half ounce Spirits of niter, one dram Spirits of wine, one dram tincture of steel, and 2 drams Bluestone. Seal in a jar and allow to cure for at least one week. Scour the metal gun parts with emery powder to remove all oil, grease, or fingerprints. Apply a coating of chalk or whiting to absorb any remaining oils. Wipe clean with a rag, taking care never to touch the metal. Apply the russeting solution in even strokes, and stand the metal parts in a warm location for at least 12 hours. As a rust and blue-green scale develops, ‘scratch’ the metal with a fine steel brush in long strokes, at least thrice daily, to darken and smooth out the brown color. Finish by flushing with boiling water and a coat of boiled linseed oil.

If that mixture of russeting solution sounds foul, just remember the cow-dung poultice that Mike Ryan proposed last year for soothing blackpowder burns on the face. Come to think of it, a colonial source for Spirits of niter was the urine-soaked earth from barns where cows were sheltered. We gotta get Mike some new hobbies.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch: November 2000

WAS LINCOLN THE FIRST TO ARRIVE? —  No myth should lie beyond scrutiny. It has long been part of the lore and pride of the Lincoln Minute Men that the Lincoln companies were the first to arrive in Concord on April 19, 1775, to aid in the defense of liberty. John C. MacLean, whose book A Rich Harvest is a comprehensive and thoroughly engaging history of Lincoln, says it was so: “Continuing on, Lincoln’s Militia Company and the Minute Man Company under Captain Smith were both in Concord village early in the morning. The Lincoln Companies were the first to reach Concord from another town.”

And back through generations of historians, we find the same. David Hackett Fischer says it was so, in Paul Revere’s Ride (1994): “The British drums were coming closer, but still the [Concord] townsmen continued their debate [about what action to take]. The men of Lincoln arrived, and joined in. One gestured toward the oncoming Regulars and said, ‘Let us go and meet them.’ Eleazer Brooks of Lincoln answered, ‘No, it will not do for us to begin the war.’”

Allen French says it was so, in The Day of Lexington and Concord (1925): “There were then at the [Concord] square less than two hundred men ... including the men from Lincoln. These arrived in a body, under their two captains, Abijah Pierce and William Smith, bringing the rumor that men had been killed at Lexington. The Lincoln men, then, with the two Concord minute companies (some members being probably absent saving the stores) marched down the Lexington Road.”

Lemuel Shattuck says it was so, in A History of the Town of Concord (1835): “Soon afterward the minute-men and militia [of Concord] who had assembled, paraded on the common; and after furnishing themselves with ammunition at the court house, marched down below the village in view of the Lexington Road. About the same time a part of the minute company from Lincoln, who had been alarmed by Dr. Prescott, came into town and paraded in a like manner.”

But was it so?

We can imagine the difficulties of confirming such lore. As one historian wisely reminds us, when we read history, we know the ending before we know the beginning, and we forget what it was like to know the beginning only. You and I know the ending, that April 19th became a watershed date in American history. But the men standing in idle anxiety in Concord before that cold April dawn knew the beginning only. And even as the day’s decisive importance became apparent to them, they were more likely to remember those few moments of battle, when their lives were endangered and their neighbors were slain — not who arrived first that morning.

Yet if we trace through all these histories, we find they all rest at the end on two eye-witness accounts. One was The Rev. William Emerson, whose Manse overlooks the North Bridge and who recorded in his diary what he observed that day: “This morning between 1 & 2 o’clock we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell ... [Samuel Prescott] by help of a very fleet horse crossing several walls and fences arrived at Concord ... When severalposts were immediately despatched, that returning confirmed the account of the Regulars arrived at Lexington, & that they were on their way to Concord. Upon this a number of our Minute Men belonging to the Town & Acton and Lincoln, with several others that were in readiness, marched out to meet them.” The other account comes from Thaddeus Blood, a 20-year-old member of the Concord militia. When published in The Boston Advertiserin 1886, it was identified merely as “written at a later period and found among his papers”: “About 4 o’clock the several companys of Concord were joined by two companies from Lincoln. The malitia commanded by Capt. Perce (afterwards Col.) & the minute comy by Capt. Wm Smith, the venl & honl Saml Hoar of Lincoln was one of his Leuit. — we were then formed, the minute on the right, & Capt. Barrett’s on the left. & marched in order to the end of Meriam’s hill then so called. & saw the British troops a coming down Brook’s hill.” Such is the surviving record of the greatest day in American history. Is it good enough for Lincoln to claim it was first to arrive? If the honor were in contention, surely some other town would have stepped forward by now to argue its case. None has ever done so.

Lincoln must have been first.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch: October 2000

AND WHEN AT LAST THE DAY IS DONE ... — For years, the Rev. Harold Bend Sedgewick brought dignity and grace to the Gravesite Ceremony of the Lincoln Minute Men. So it is with the sadness of great loss that we report The Rev. Sedgewick died Sunday, August 27th, of a heart attack. He was 92 years old.

The resonant and accented voice with which Rev. Sedgewick performed the burial rite over the graves of the five British soldiers in Lincoln was always stirring. It was a voice and a ceremony, one could imagine, that the soldiers themselves would have recognized and found comforting. The voice was in fact from St. Paul, Minnesota. Rev. Sedgewick attended Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard College, Class of 1930. He studied for the ministry at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge — - on the River Charles, not the Cam. He was ordained in 1935. Harvard football remained an enduring passion of his, and with satisfaction, he wrote in his 50th anniversary Harvard class report: “I am amused to recall the foolish prank in our junior year when some of us tore down the goal posts in the Yale Bowl, and felt for the first time the honor and loyalty of being Harvard men. I have no regrets, and would like to do it again.”

Rev. Sedgewick was canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in downtown Boston from 1962 to 1975, when he retired 40 years after being ordained. He had previously been rector of All Saints’ Church in Brookline, an assistant minister of Christ Church in Cambridge, and rector at Emmanuel Church in the Back Bay. The Rev. Sedgewick was also chaplain general of the Descendants of Signers of the Declaration of Independence, chaplain of the Massachusetts Society of Founders and Patriots, and a member of the Boston Athenaeum. About retirement, he once wrote, “A minister, one who deals with the human equation, like a doctor or lawyer, is never really permitted to retire.” And so he remained active, lecturing, writing, and preaching during the summers at an Episcopal church on Lake Sunapee that he helped establish in the 1950s.

The annual Gravesite Ceremony by the Lincoln Minutemen was established by Henry Rugo in 1968. Originally, it was only an event to commemorate the British soldiers buried in Lincoln. Later the ceremony was extended to honor the Patriots buried nearby. From the very beginning, Rev. Sedgewick was a participant. He thought this Lincoln event was an important ritual, and until recently when his health began to fail, he never missed the occasion across the span of 30 years. It was his inspiration to add a reading of Rupert Brooke’s poem, The Soldier, to the ceremony. April in New England is a capricious month. Yet rain or sun, warm or chill, with unwavering timelessness, Rev. Sedgewick’s steady voice could be heard.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

For The Reverend Harold Bent Sedgewick, his corner of a field shall be in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His life touched us all.

THE CAPTAIN AT AMESBURY — On September 17, 2000, a delegation of Capt. Steve Humphrey, Alan Budreau, and Donald Hafner returned John Mason Pettingell’s historic Spanish-American War drum to the Town of Amesbury, to be displayed in their Bartlett Museum. At the ceremony, Capt. Humphrey made the following remarks:

“This historic drum is perhaps not distinguished in appearance, now worn by the ravages of time and more than a century after it was last played. It is certainly far less impressive than the life of John Mason Pettingell, the man to whom this drum was given as a token of honor by the soldiers he commanded in the Spanish-American War.

”Yet you should know that a drum has a hallowed place in the life of a soldier — and this is something Capt. Pettingell would have understood, when he accepted this treasured gift from the troops he commanded in Cuba. It is said that for a soldier, the voice of the drum was like the voice of his mother — it was the first sound he heard at dawn, the last he heard at nightfall. The soldier learned from the subtle inflections of the drum’s voice when he would be fed, or bathed, or summoned for orders, or chastised, or assembled for entertainment — or endangered in battle. And when the carnage of battle carried a soldier’s comrades away, it was the muffled voice of the drum that comforted and soothed him on the long march to the burying ground. You and I might hear the beat of the drum as a discordant and irritating noise — but for the soldier, it was the pulse of his life.

“And now, ‘the war drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are furled.’ John Mason Pettingell’s drum returned with him from Cuba, and back to Amesbury, in 1899. When Capt. Pettingell died in 1901, the drum passed to his son, also named John, and from his son to his granddaughter, Anne Pettingell Satterfield, who has lived for many decades in Lincoln. And by this chain of succession, the drum came as a gift to the Lincoln Minute Men. When Capt. Pettingell’s drum passed into the hands of the Lincoln Minute Men, we took up the obligation to place it once again into the care of those for whom it would have special meaning, as a token of loyalty, and service, and sacrifice.

”We are pleased today to fulfill that obligation. Capt. Pettingell’s drum has once again come home to Amesbury.“

NO LEFT & RIGHT? NO RIGHT & WRONG? — Pairs of shoes at the time of the American Revolution were made to a common pattern, with no distinction between left foot and right. A farming family in need of shoes might save leather from its own animals and wait for a traveling shoemaker to arrive. Especially if he was Scottish, the shoemaker might still call himself by the old term of cordwainer (cordwain was a corruption of Cordovan, a fine leather used for elegant shoes), or more colloquially as a ”cat whipper“ (stitching leather with waxed thread was called ”whipping the cat“). Whatever he called himself, the traveling shoemaker would not have wanted to carry two different wooden forms (lasts) for each sized pair. A double set of lasts would have been an inconvenience, even if the shoemaker worked in his own shop, or in one of the great shoe ”manufactories“ in Boston or Lynn that together produced more than 80,000 pairs of shoes annually by the time of the Revolution. (Edwin Tunis, Colonial Craftsmen, has details about many such trades, if you’d like to learn more.)

The practice of making a left and a right shoe was adopted in Britain around 1785 and found its way to America soon after. First, remove the boot of British oppression, then get new shoes. Clever, these Americans.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? — Pieces of history, small and large, often find their way into the names parents give to their children. Consider the name Peleg. Had you wandered the dirt paths of colonial villages in New England around 1630, you might have met several men with this first name, especially among the families who founded Rhode Island. Yet by the 1700s, it was mostly old men and not children who carried the name. The 17th century version of the Jennifer/Jason fad? Perhaps not.

In the 5th century, a British monk got into trouble with the Pope for heretical ideas, for which he was condemned and excommunicated. His latinized name was Pelagius (after the biblical Peleg, great-great grandson of Noah), and his motive was to encourage greater moral behavior among Christians by affirming the essential goodness of human nature and the ability to achieve salvation by deliberate choice between good and evil. These teachings, however, called into question the Vatican’s doctrine of original sin and the necessity of infant baptism.

The theological details perhaps mattered less than that Pelagius was a Briton and had defied Rome. (Even among Protestants, these doctrinal points were very contentious.) By the 1630s, the policies of King Charles I favoring Catholicism were inducing English Protestants to flee to America. Peleg as a child’s name was no doubt an appealing form of Protestant defiance — Britons defying Rome. Britain soon collapsed into religious war and then the Protestant dictatorship of Cromwell. When the monarchy was finally restored in 1688 and Protestantism secured, the name Peleg lost its defiant significance. The Book of Genesis says the original Peleg lived 239 years, but his name did not. It echoed for a while longer, as sons received the first name of their fathers. Then it died away, and with it a reminder of the history that forged America.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch: September 2000

VINEGAR? TO FERMENT A REVOLUTION? — Those who have read Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir of his eight years in the Continental Army will know how much the task of finding food consumed Martin’s attention.

The image of the ever-hungry soldier in Washington’s army was true. Odd to the modern taste is the prominence of vinegar in the diet of those Revolutionary soldiers — or sour complaints about its absence. Seems hard to believe soldiers would complain so acidly about not having vinegar, if it was just something added for flavor. Perhaps it helps to know that around 1700, new ideas about nutrition arose in Europe. Foods were classified into three groups — labeled Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury — and good nutrition was believed to require all three in each meal. The soldier’s bread fell into the Salt category, his butter and lard into the Sulfur group, and to make this nutritionally complete, vinegar or wine could fill the Mercury category.So perhaps soldiers thought of their vinegar not like ketchup, but in the way we think of vitamins? Was this the cause of their acetic complaints?

An annotated edition of Martin’s memoir has been published by James Kirby Martin, Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (Brandywine Press, 1999).

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  July 2000

AND WHAT DO THE CHILDREN SAY? — Often after our school programs, the children write us letters of thanks, with comments about what impressed them during our visits. The historic lessons are what proves most vivid for the kids, but we also apparently make some impressions we don’t anticipate. We quote here a few choice remarks from the Hanscom 3rd graders we visited last April.

“ Dear Minute Men, I hope you get your orders right before the next big war.” Ryan.
“ Dear Minute Men, The minute men wore dull clothes.” John C.
“ Dear Lincoln Minute Men, You were lucky to have us as an audience.” Katlyn.

AND WHAT ABOUT HIM? — The following item appeared in The Boston Newsletter on August 16, 1759 (edited here for family viewing):

At the Superior Court held last week in Cambridge, one Hannah Dudley of Lincoln was convicted of repeatedly committing Ad-----y and For-------n with her own mother’s husband, an old Man of 76 years of age. She was sentenced to be set upon the Gallows for the space of one Hour, with a Rope about her Neck, and the other end cast over the Gallows, and in the way from thence to the Common Gaol, that she be severely whipped 30 stripes, and that she for ever after wear a Capital I of two inches long and proportionate bigness cut out in Cloth of a different Colour to her Cloaths, and sewed upon her upper Garment on the outside of her arm, or on her Back, in Open View.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  June 2000

“HE IS STYLED ... ‘A MAN OF COLOR’.” — Some years ago, a member of the Company stopped at the old Lincoln cemetery and found there Margaret and Warren Flint, placing flowers at the graves of remembered ancestors. Conversation turned to Sippio Brister, the slave and soldier of the American Revolution who is buried in the cemetery. Margaret Flint began a story. A woman of Lincoln, the wife of John Hoar, was traveling to Boston by carriage to do her shopping. Near the city, she encountered a black woman beside the road who offered to give away her infant son, to be raised by the Lincoln woman. The Lincoln woman replied that if the mother were still at the side of the road at the end of the day when she had completed her shopping, she would take the infant. And she did. The boy was given the name Brister Hoar and was held as a slave — he named himself Sippio Brister only after he gained his freedom.

Told in a country cemetery filled with the sun and cheer of Spring, this seemed a cruel tale of an inhuman bargain between two women. But not long after, our member of the Company found this in Carol Berkin’s book about women in colonial America:

Urban slave women [in the North] had little hope of creating a family that could remain intact. Slaveholdings [by urban whites] were too small for a woman to choose a husband from within the household, and few urban colonists were willing to shoulder the costs of raising a slave child in their midst. Rural slaveholders could set a slave’s child to work in the garden or field, but in the cities, youngsters were simply a drain on resources and living space. At least one master preferred to sell his pregnant slave rather than suffer having her child underfoot. Other masters solved the problem of an extra mouth to feed by selling infants — or, in one case,giving his slave’s baby away. . In Boston, a pregnant slave woman and her husband chose to commit suicide rather than endure the dissolution of their family. Urban slave women who were allowed to keep their children often lost them quickly. Communicable diseases and cramped quarters combined in deadly fashion in every household in 18th century colonial cities, but black infant mortality rates were two to three times higher than white.    (Carol Berkin, First Generations, 1996)

Massachusetts courts ended slavery in 1783 by declaring that it was incompatible with the Constitution of the Commonwealth.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch:  April 2000

PUNGENT REMEDY FOR POWDER BURNS? — Hey, this remedy could be useful to know! Remember that on that historical day in April, 1775, the Red Coats vented their anger on civilians who they found with black powder grime on their faces and hands — a telltale sign of having recently fired a musket (at you know who).

Mike Ryan passes along this bit of authentic advice, courtesy of our worthy adversaries in the Tenth Regiment of Foote, who located this in Robert Boyle’s Medicinal Experiments: ”To take out the marks of gunpowder shot into the skin of the face: Take fresh cow dung and, having warmed it a little, apply it as a thin poultice to the part affected, renewing it from time to time as occasion shall require. “We understand the Captain is ordering the Quartermaster to lay in a large and fresh supply of the raw material, and each musket soldier will be issued a ration to be stored in the haversack. We’ll need suggestions on how to ”warm it a little“ prior to use.

BURIAL SITE OF A THIRD BRITISH SOLDIER: — We reprint the following story by Mike Ryan, who has solved the puzzle of a missing British soldier from the battle at Concord’s North Bridge, April 19, 1775.

These men were brave enough,
and true to the hired soldier’s bull-dog creed;
What brought them here they never knew.
They fought as suits the English breed.
                                      ”Lines,“ by James Russell Lowell.

Throughout the years, historians and authors have made passing mention of the third soldier’s fate, all agreeing he was buried in the middle of town after being carried there either by his comrades or the Colonials. These include Arthur B. Tourtellot (William Diamond’s Drum, 1959), Harold Murdock (The Nineteenth of April 1775, 1925), and Rev. Ezra Ripley (History of the Fight at Concord, 1827). So, too, did well known Concord historians Allen French (Day of Concord and Lexington, 1925) and Ruth Wheeler (Concord: Climate for Freedom, 1967). Perhaps through diaries, personal papers, and oral accounts, Shattuck, a Concord resident from 1823-34, could identify the third soldier’s burial site and that in 1835 a house owned by well-known John Keyes was situated on the same spot. What then must follow from the established body of knowledge is the finding of some supportive material substantiating a conclusion as to the soldier’s final resting place.

Near and northeast of the new Court House erected in 1784 was built a home later leased by John Keyes in 1815. He would buy the structure and with his family, live his life there while working in the nearby Court House. His son Judge John S. Keyes, was born in the family home and resided in same until it was destroyed in the 1849 Court House fire. By1850, a new Court House (used later as an Insurance Building; now an office building at 30 Monument Square) would be built closer to Monument Street and on the former Keyes property.

On 4 July 1876, Judge John S. Keyes presented an oration which included “the hill extended beyond where we meet tonight [the 1850 Town House] to the road leading to the north bridge. In the ragged curb where that road wound around the side of the hill was buried one of the British soldiers who died of wounds received in the fight at the bridge.” In 1885, as part of the Town’s 250th Celebration of Incorporation, Keyes compiled a list of locations to be honored by recreated minutemen and Regulars. The list included “Burial place of ... a British soldier wounded at the North Bridge.”

The location was stated to be on the northeast side of the Court House on Monument Street where once stood the Keyes family home. There, most probably disturbed by centuries of construction, lies the remains of one of three private soldiers (Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, James Hall) of the 4th Regiment Light Infantry Company, who died as a consequence of the Bridge fight. Who is buried where (Town or Bridge)will probably never be known. Now the third British soldier will rest in peace and honor with his comrades “who came three thousand miles and died to keep the past upon the throne” (J.R. Lowell).

Soon, the burial site will be appropriately marked, honored, and visited. Trained to discipline, charactered to determination, this soldier exhibited heroic endurance, fortitude and courage under dire circumstances. Death freed him from allegiances and politics — right or wrong — and once again reflected the cost which civilization pays as it stumbles ahead even in a new Century, in search of a better world.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch: February 2000

THAT EXECRETION’S GONNA COST YOU 25¢. — Mike Ryan tells us that the article about “finger sticking” in the last newsletter reminded him of another solemn and important Revolutionary event:  The Massachusetts Provincial Congress meeting in Concord in March 1775 penned 52 Articles of War for the forming of an army.  Article II prohibits all oaths and execrations, with penalties being 4 shillings per cuss for commissioned officers and a sliding scale downward for sergeants and smaller fry!   So... watch those execrations!

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch: January 2000

THEY DID THAT BACK THEN? — Alice Morse Earle (1853-1911) was a historian whose books on everyday life in colonial America were quite popular in the 1880s.  In Child Life in Colonial Days, she notes that the offenses for which citizens could be fined and punished in colonial courts included “the calling of degrading nicknames, making of wry faces, jeering, and ‘finger-sticking’.”  (p. 213)  Doesn’t it warm your heart to know that some quaint Colonial customs are still practiced in Boston during morning rush-hour?  Even finger-sticking?

THINK THE MILLENIUM IS CONFUSING? — We celebrate George Washington’s Birthday on February 22nd each year,and yet the birth records at the time say he was born on February 11,1732.  Trouble was, when Washington was born, the Colonies still used the Julian calendar, devised by Julius Caesar in 46 BC.  The Julian calendar fixed the year at 365 days and 6 hours, even though the Earth’s annual orbit around the Sun is about 12 minutes shorter than that. 

As a consequence, January 1st in the Julian calendar kept creeping 12 minutes further into the New Year each year.  By the time George was born, it had crept about 11 days into the next solar year.  So in 1752, when Great Britain finally adopted the “new” Gregorian calendar devised by Pope Gregory in 1582 (the British never rush into things, do they?), the extra 11 days were simply discarded.  In effect, the Colonies went promptly from December 31st to January 11th — and at the age of 20, George discovered that his birthday was now February 22nd.  Rumor has it that he celebrated by going out and buying a new car, but that’s probably just rumor.

The Lincoln Minute Man Dispatch: December 1999

AND TURKEY AS THE NATIONAL BIRD? — The man was a bundle of ideas, wasn’t he?   In a letter to Gen. Charles Lee in 1776, Benjamin Franklin urged arming the Continental Army with bows and arrows:  “These were good weapons, not wisely laid aside.  1st. Because a man may shoot as truly with a bow as with a common musket.  2ndly.  He can discharge four arrows in the time of charging and discharging one bullet. 3rdly. His object is not taken from his view by the smoke of his own side.  4thly. A flight of arrows, seen coming upon them, terrifies and disturbs the enemies’ attention to their business.  5thly. An arrow striking any part of a man puts him hors du combat till it is extracted. 6thly. Bows and arrows are more easily provided every where than muskets and ammunition.”   [Works of Benjamin Franklin, by Jared Sparks (Boston 1839), vol. 8, p. 171]

Turns out, it wasn’t any easier during the Revolution to find people able to mass produce arrows and bows than it was to find gunsmiths.