Worcester County, Massachusetts - Chapter 105, 1889

The French Wars, The Revolution, The War Of

Ok the two wars between England and France for possession of Canada (1744-63) the first was called by our fathers the Old War and the second the Last War. Only very meagre materials exist for showing the part taken by the people of Shrewsbury in these wars. That Artemas Ward, as lieutenant-colonel, Marshall Newton, as lieutenant, Nathan Howe, as ensign, and Dr. Edward Flint, as surgeon, all of .Shrew.sbury, served in expeditions to Canada in the last war is well known, but this implies much more. If there were officers to command there were soldiers to follow and obey. Doubtless from Shrewsbury there accompanied these officers the number of non-commissioned officers and privates appropriate to their rank. Colonel William Williams, whose diary and letters are quoted by Parkman, was commander of the regiment in which Lieutenant-Colonel Ward and Lieutenant Newton served. This regiment was in the disastrous campaign of the incompetent Abercrombie against Ticonderoga. Published extracts of a journal kept by Lieutenant-Colonel Ward fully bear out all that has ever been said or written of the disorder of the march, the lack of discipline of the army, the confusion of the battle and the folly of the retreat.

Dr, Edward Flint was chief chirurgeon of the regiment of Colonel Timothy Ruggles, which served in the expedition of 1758 against Crown Point. Ensign Nathan Howe, who was a brother-in-law of Dr. Flint, served in the campaign of 1756 at Lake George, and with bis regiment a.'sisted in building the ill-fated Fort William Henry, which the brave Lieutenant- Colonel Jlonro, a Scotch veteran, was forced to surrender to the French, who, after the surrender, abandoned their prisoners to be pillaged, tortured, murdered and eaten by their Indian allies. John Wheeler, of Shrewsbury, who was one of the prisoners, survived the massacre and returned home. Ensign Howe had been sent home before the siege and capture with a detachment of sick and wounded men. The town records of Shrewsbury show that the town granted him £5 16«. 9^'/. on account of his sickness. At the same time, and for like cause, to William Howe, brother of Ensign Nathan, an allowance was made by the town of £6 6d.; also to Ephraim Smith, on account of the sickness of liis son Aaron, £3 -is. -id., and to widow Sarah Smith for medical attendance of her late husband, Joshua Smith, upon sundry sick soldiers, £1 14s. 8(/. Caleb Parker, a youthful soldier from this town, of only sixteen years, was killed in this campaign.

romantic expedition in the old war against the Fortress of Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island, built by the grand monarch of France to commemorate his grandeur in America, as well as to guard one of the avenues to New France, besieged and taken in fortynine days by raw levies of New England fishermen and farmers, under command of General William Pepperell, a Piscataqua trader, who had never had before the least experience in war - one of the most amazing exploits in all the annals of time. From the volunteering of the soldiers to surrender of the fortress the campaign has all " the cloud and glamour of romance,'' and was called a crusade. While CTOvernor Shirley was mustering his battalions like another Peter the Hermit, the eloquent Whitefield went up and down the land preaching the Holy War.

The heart of New England took fire and sent the flower of its youth, only sons not excepted, to assault the Dunkirk of America, garrisoned by the veterans of France. Away with the crusaders went Jonah Taylor, of Shrewsbury, only son of his father, William, and his mother, Elizabeth, only brother of nine sisters, and fell mortally wounded in the first assault upon the King's Bastion. He died on Cape Breton September 23, 1745.

The first overt act of Shrewsbury in the Revolutionary War was to send delegates to the first Provincial Congress, holden at Concord October 11, 1774. Artemas Ward had been chosen Representative from Shrewsbury to the General Court, which Governor Gage had ordered to meet at Salem October 5th. The Governor countermanded his order, but the Representatives met at Salem all the same and adjourned to Concord. Phineas Hey wood was chosen by Shrewsbury as a delegate to go with the Representative-elect to the Congress at Concord. The recommendations of this Congress to the towns were forthwith carried into effect by the inhabitants of Shrewsbury. 1. They organized three companies of militia, one in the North Parish, Captain Asa Beaman, and two in the South Parish, Captain Job Gushing and Captain Asa Brigham. 2. They voted not to pay taxes to Mr. Treasurer Harrison Gray, but to Henry Gardner, of Stow, whom Congress had de.-ignated as its new Receiver-General. 3. They adopted the nonconsumption agreement as to India teas and appointtd an inspection committee of fifteen, five to be a quorum, whose duty it was to be to find out all such persons as sell or consume so extravagant and unnecessary an article of luxury and post their names in some public place. The town also chose a committee of five to examine Rev. Ebenezer Morse, minister of the Second Parish, William Crawford and three others, all members of that parish, "as being suspected of Toryism." At an adjourned meeting the committee reported favorably as to the three others, but as to Rev. Ebenezer Morse, they said it appeared to them that he was not so friendly to the common cause as they could wish, and as to William Crawford, it appeared to the committee that he was wholly unfriendly and inclined rather to take up arnn for the King. Mr. Morse came before the town to answer fur himself. He had prayed with much fervor in his pulpit for the King and royal family, and this was well known before to all the town. He now, in open town-meeting, declared himself a loyalist and reproved his fellowtownsmen for disloyalty. The town thereupon directed the committee to take away the arms, ammunition and warlike implements of both Mr. Morse and Crawford, and voted that said Morse do not pass over the lines of the Second Parish on any occasion whatever without a permit, and that said Crawford remain within the bounds of his own land except on Sabbath-days, and then not go out of his parish without a permit. There is nothing in the town records, nor has anything come down to our time by tradition to indicate that any other inhabitants of Shrewsbury were ever " suspected of Toryism," and it was doubtless due to Rev. Ebenezer Morse, of the Second Parish, who was a strong man and had previously posiessed the entire confidence of his people, that there was any opposition in any part of the town to the prevailing spirit of resistance to the British Crown.

In the time of the Revolution, regiments in Massachusetts were territorial - so many towns to a regiment. The county of Worcester was divided into seven regiments, and Shrewsbury, Grafton, Northborough, Westborough and Southborough were the Sixth Worcester Regiment, Jonathan Ward, of Southborough, colonel. Artemas Ward, of Shrewsbury, formerly colonel of this regiment, was elected by the first Provincial Congress, of which he was a member, with two others, to organize and command the militia, and the next Congress issued to him a commission as commander-in-chief of all the forces of Massachusetts and the other colonies, and shortly afterwards he was appointed by the Continental Congress majorgeneral and commander-in-chief. Meantime the war had begun, and Captain Job Cushing, of Shrewsbury, had marched with his company to Lexington. About ten o'clock in the forenoon of April 19, 1775, passed like a flash through Shrewsbury a white horse, bloody with spurring and dripping with sweat, bearing a post-rider shouting as he rode : " To arms ! to arms ! the war has begun ! '" I have often heard my grandfather, Nathan Howe, the younger of that name, tell the story. He was then a boy fourteen years old, at work in the field with his father plowing, the team being a pair of oxen and a horse. His fiither, Ensign Howe, of the last war, now lieutenant of Captain Cushing's company, immediately detached from the team and mounted his horse and set off to rally the company.

There was hurrying to and fro and mounting in hot haste. The younger Nathan wanted dreadfully to go, too, and cried because his father would not let him.

Of course the company, like many others as remote, did not arrive in time to take part in the fight. Immediately after the Lexington alarm the principal occupation of able-bodied men in the province of Massachusetts Bay was organizing and drilling, and belbre the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, a large body of troops was at Cambridge, under command of General Artemas Ward, of Shrewsbury. Captain Ezra Beaman and Captain Job Cushing, with three companies from Shrewsbury, were both there.

Who commanded at Bunker Hill ? There was General Artemas Ward over at Cambridge, commander-in-chief - such was his sonorous title-^but this was before his commission by the Continental Congress, and all his authority was subordinate to that of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, nine in number, who occupied the same headquarters with him,' and " planned the battle." And there was Putnam, and Prescott, and Warren, and Pomeroy and Stark, each fighting the British on his own hook, and with very little regard to what others were doing. Plainly there was nobody in command - in the sense of giving direction to the battle as a whole - that is, to compare small things with large, as Meade and Lee commanded their respective forces at Gettysburg. If only there had been somebody in command - some competent body - wbo had ordered over from Cambridge Captain Beaman and Captain Cushing, with their companies, and put them where they could do the most good, the author of this history might have had something to say about the men of Shrewsbury at Bunker Hill. The reason why re-enforcements were not sent over from Cambridge is not far to seek. The Committee of Safety made a mistake in supposing the attack of the British at Charlestown was a mere feint, and held fast where they were, expecting that the real attack would be directly made at Cambridge. In his " History of Shrewsbury" Mr. Andrew H. Ward - evidently in defence of his ancestor from criticism - gives a prolix and not very satisfactory explanation, of which the substance seems to be that General Ward's order-book shows that Colonel Jonathan Wai'd, with his regiment, was sent over by way of Lechmere's Point to Charlestown during the battle. For some reason it never reached its destination. Captain Aaron Smith, of Shrewsbury, whom we met in the last war returning home sick from Crown Point, whom also we shall shortly meet again, and who, on the 17th of June, 1775, was a private in Captain Cushing's company, and ran away without orders from Cambridge over to Charlestown, and alone, of all the Shrewsbury men, actually fought at Bunker Hill, fighting on his own hook, as every body else did, is given as authority for the statement that Colonel Ward, on his march, was met and halted by Dr. Benjamin Church, a member of the Committee of Safety, who afterwards turned out to be a traitor.

General Washington arrived at Cambridge July 2, 1775, having been promoted over General Ward, and took command of the American army - about twenty thousand men. General Ward continued in the service as a subaltern under Washington till the evacuation of Boston by the British, May 17, 1776, when he resigned. The position of the British in Boston had become untenable by Washington's occupation of Dorchester Heights. Here Nathan Howe, of Shrewsbury, commanding a company, performed a service of great value, of great hardship also, working nights and in the cold rains of the spring months of 1776, throwing up fortifications on the heights, and contracted a severe cold that gradually developed into pulmonary disease and finally resulted in his death. In the latter part of the year 1777 he came home to die, but directly sent his son and namesake, then sixteen years old, to serve as a private in his regiment.

The cause of General Artemas Ward's resignation was a painful disorder,' which rendered all active exercise, particularly horseback-riding, an excruciating torture. At the request of Washington, who, after ihe evacuation of Boston by the British, went with the greater part of the army to New York, General Ward remained in command of the Eastern Department till DecemberSl, 1777, when his resignation was accepted by Congress. Notwithstanding the superhuman pinnacle now occupied by Washington in public esteem, certain it is that in his life-time he was quite human and not at all reticent in his correspondence of unworthy reflections upon the personal courage of the officer over whom, for reasons of public policy, he had been promoted, and between whom and himself he was obviously conscious of popular comparison. Some time afterwards, when Washington was President and Ward was a member of Congress, then sitting in New York, the latter having obtained one of Washington's letters containing offensive allusions to him, proceeded to the President's house and asked him if he was the author of the letter. Washington looked at it for Bome time without making any reply. While he was still looking at it. Ward impatiently said, " I should think the man that was base enough to write that would be base enough to deny it," and abruptly turning on his heel, left the house.^

Job Gushing, of Shrewsbury, was promoted from rank to rank in the Sixth Regiment till he became its colonel. This regiment was from time to time recruited partly from the towns where it was originally formed and partly elsewhere. I think most of the Shrewsbury soldiers served in this regiment. After the success of Burgoyne at Ticonderoga public alarm was at the highest pitch, and Colonel Gushing went with his regiment to reinforce General Schuyler and took part in the battles of Bennington, August 16th, and Saratoga, October 16, 1777, when Burgoyne surrendered to General Gates, who had superseded General Schuyler in command. Ezra Beaman, of Shrewsbury, was also present at Burgoyne's surrender (but in what rank I am unable to say), and probably also at Bennington. Colonel Job Gushing, of Shrewsbury, and his regiment were a part of the body of troops that General Benedict Arnold undertook to betray to Sir Henry Clinton at West Point. The materials for giving details of the service of Shrewsbury men in the Revolutionary War are as meagre as for the French Wars. Before the Government gave pensions, besides the many who had died or been killed in the service, many more had doubtless died in the course of nature. A list of pensioners, prepared by Nathan Howe, who for many years acted as agent for his comrades in the army in obtaining jjensions, contains exactly forty names. Of course, it is a mere remnant of the whole number who were in the Continental service from Shrewsbury.

In the time of President Madison, when occurred the War of 1812, a large majority of the people of Shrewsbury were of the Federal party, and wholly disapproved of the war, and I cannot find that the town or any citizen thereof in any manner participated therein.

And the Mexican War was generally considered morally wrong by the people of the town, always very radical in their opposition to slavery. Not a single citizen of Shrewsbury volunteered to go to Mexico, and I think the views of Mr. Hosea Biglow as to the Mexican War and its recruiting service, then newly l^riuted for him in the Boston Courier, were exactly coincident with those of the whole town.

2 Thisstory, having been preserved only by tradition, and having passed for now fonr generations of men from one to another, has come to have slightly differing versions. The one above given is taken from "Keminiscences of Uev. George Allen, by F. P. Bice, 1883." Another, differing in some details, may be seen in " Drake's Historic Mansions and Fields of Middlesex," page 260.