Harold Titus's Blog, page 34

Thomas Nelson -- Independence

A stout man of 38 years sat waiting to affix his signature to a copy of the newly formed and approved Declaration of Independence. Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had moved on June 7, 1776, that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States …” The Second Continental Congress’s Committee of the Whole had discussed Lee’s motion the following day and Monday, June 10, before deciding to postpone final consideration until July 1. The middle colonies and South Carolina had not been ready to sanction the final break; but -- the Committee had believed -- given time, they could be persuaded. A committee, which included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams, had consequently been formed to write a declaration of independence. On July 2 a resolution for independence had been adopted. On July 4 twelve colonies had approved Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The New York delegation had chosen not to vote. On July 15 New York had accepted the Declaration and Congress had ordered that it be engrossed on parchment and signed by the members.

Thomas Nelson was one of the famous Virginia delegation that had won so much praise from the pen of John Adams of Massachusetts. Washington, Henry, Pendleton, and Bland were all missing from that first group of delegates who had come north in the spring of 1775. Nelson was one of four new men who had taken their places. Adams described him “as a fat men … He is a speaker, and alert and lively for his weight.” Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Rush provided more information. Rush wrote that Nelson is “a respectable country gentleman, with excellent dispositions in public and private. He was educated in England. He informed me that he was the only person out of nine or ten Virginians that were sent with him to England for education that had taken part in the American Revolution. The rest were all Tories” (McGee 224, 226).

Before affixing his signature Nelson very likely recalled his position on independence during the previous twelve months.

He had decided early that hostilities had progressed too far and that a final stand would have to be taken. There remained, however, opposition to independence in Congress, especially from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. “But events were pushing the colonies in the direction of independence whether all of them liked it or not. In Virginia the militia commanded by William Woodford defeated a British force under [former Governor] Dunmore at Great Bridge, forcing the noble lord to abandon Norfolk; in Canada the combined American forces under Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery were repulsed before Quebec on December 31 [1775]. These occurrences, coupled with a royal proclamation of December 23 closing the colonies to all commerce as of March 1, 1776, made the breach between England and the colonies almost irreparable” (Evans 54). On January 22 Nelson had written his friend in Virginia, John Page, how he wished he knew “the sentiments of our people upon the grand points of confederation and foreign alliance, or, in other words, of independence … We cannot expect to form a connexxion with any foreign power, as long as we have a womanish hankering after Great Britain; and to be sure, there is not in nature a greater absurdity, than to suppose we can have any affection for a people who are carrying on the most savage war against us” (Sanderson 51).

Soon afterward, Thomas Paine’s famous Common Sense had been published. Nelson had sent a copy home to his friend, Thomas Jefferson, at Monticello. Here was a stirring piece of work that Nelson must have embraced heartily. No doubt he had hoped it would convince many in the states of the folly of striving for peaceful conciliation with Great Britain. There were still many men in the Congress who needed to alter their thinking. In February Nelson had written Page an intense letter that expressed his frustration.

“Independence, confederation, and foreign alliance are as formidable to some of the Congress, I fear a majority, as an apparition to a weak, enervated woman. Would you think that we have some among us, who still expect honourable proposals from the administration? By heavens, I am an infidel in politics, for I do not believe, were you to bet a thousand pounds per scruple for honour at the court of Britain, that you would get as many as would amount to an ounce. If terms should be proposed, they will savour so much of despotism, that America cannot accept them. We are now carrying on a war and no war. They seize our property wherever they find it, either by land or sea; and we hesitate to retaliate, because we have a few friends in England who have hips. Away with such squeamishness, say I” (Sanderson 52-53).

Upon returning to Virginia in March to spend time with his family and to attend to business matters, he had discovered that a majority of the colony’s population favored independence. The Virginia Gazette had “expressed the sentiment of many when, soon after his arrival, it declared: 'If we cannot enjoy the privileges of Englishmen when connected with them, let us instantly break off to them'” (Evans 55).

On May 6, one hundred twenty-eight delegates had convened in Williamsburg to conduct the final business of the soon to be replaced House of Burgesses. The Convention had elected Edmund Pendleton to be its president. Nelson had been appointed to the important Committee on Privileges and Elections. Jefferson had urged Nelson to raise in committee the issue of independence. He had done so in his numerous communications with other delegates. To one delegate (not identified) he had written “having weighed the arguments on both sides, I am clearly of the opinion that we must, as we value the liberties of America, or even her existence, without a moment’s delay, declare independence.” There was no need to determine the opinions of France and Spain. France would benefit from the separation. Fear in the minds of some that England would give territory to either country on the condition that it not support the colonies was “chimerical.” Nelson declared that the military “would abandon the colors if independence were not declared. … the spirit of the people (except a very few in these lower parts, whose little blood has been sucked out by mosquitoes), cry out for this declaration” (Evans 56).

Quite surprisingly, Patrick Henry had been hesitant. He had feared precisely what Nelson had dismissed – “that England would call on some European ally with the promise of a part of the colonies as a reward for helping to subdue them.” Henry had believed that an alliance with France or Spain had to be affected before separation could be declared. When he had recognized that “he would lose much of his support unless he lead the movement [for immediate independence], he took the initiative, allies or no allies” (Evans 57). Consequently, he had devised a plan. He would persuade Nelson to introduce a motion for independence and Henry would then work for its acceptance. The plan had been effected.

Edmund Randolph had written later that Nelson “affected nothing of oratory, except what ardent feelings might inspire, and characteristic of himself he had no fears of his own with which to temporize …” (McGee 226-227). “He passed over the probabilities of foreign aid, stepped lightly on the difficulties of procuring military stores and the inexperience of officers and soldiers, but pressed a declaration of independence upon what, with him, were incontrovertible grounds; that we were oppressed; had humbly supplicated a redress of grievances, which had been refused with insult; and to return from battle against the sovereign with the cordiality of subjects was absurd” (Evans 57).

On May 17 Nelson had left for Philadelphia with the Virginia delegation carrying the resolutions that the Virginia convention had agreed upon., to wit that Congress “‘declare the United colonies free and independence states, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the crown or parliament of Great Britain’” (Evans 58).

Now, August 2, Thomas Nelson affixed his signature to the official document.

Nelson had much to lose financially. He had written to a Virginia colleague three months earlier that “no man on the continent will sacrifice more than myself by separation” (Evans 56). Yet quite early he had stood forcefully for independence. He, like every delegate to the Continental Congress, also knew the personal danger of this position. What real chance did a band of disjointed states, challenging the immense power of Great Britain, have of prevailing? It behooved Nelson to work assiduously to achieve that outcome.


Works cited:

Evans, Emory G. Thomas Nelson of Yorktown: Revolutionary Virginian. The University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1975. Print.

McGee, Dorothy Horton. Famous Signers of the Declaration. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1955. Print.

John Sanderson, Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, Second edition. Philadelphia: William Brown and Charles Peters, 1828. V. Print.

Thomas Nelson -- Point of No Return

The First Continental Congress, meeting in September 1774, adopted a non-intercourse agreement similar to that passed by Virginia’s Burgesses. It called for the establishment of association enforcement committees in the counties of the respective colonies. The Congress adjourned in October. It would reconvene in the spring of 1775 because of Britain’s failure to redress their grievances. Delegates from the counties of Virginia met in Richmond March 20, 1775, to decide upon what policy Virginia should now take in its relations with Great Britain.

At the convention Patrick Henry introduced a resolution that called for the immediate raising of a “well regulated militia” to defend the colony. The proposed resolution caused a stormy debate. Many of the moderate members considered the measure premature and dangerous. Friends in London had sent favorable reports about British intentions. Henry’s supporters argued that the hope of a favorable change in British policy was delusive. Virginia must defend herself against whatever dangers might arise.

Richard Henry Lee delivered an eloquent speech in defense of the resolution. Thomas Nelson then rose, for the first time as a burgess to take an active part in a serious debate. Edmund Randolph later wrote that Nelson “convulsed the moderate by an ardent exclamation, in which he called God to witness, that if any British troops should be landed within” his county, “he would wait no orders, and would obey none, which should forbid him to summon his militia and repel the invaders at the water edge.” Randolph recalled that Nelson’s temper, “though it was sanguine, and had been manifested in less scenes of opposition, seemed to be more than ordinarily excited. His example told those, who were happy in ease and wealth, that to shrink was to be dishonoured” (Sanderson 287-288). Soon afterward Patrick Henry delivered his famous “give me liberty, or give me death” speech, and the Convention adopted the resolution with a majority of five votes.

The business of the Convention turned to the election of delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The delegates to the First Congress were reelected. Falling short, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Nelson were eighth and ninth in the balloting with 18 and 16 votes respectively.

Governor Dunmore had been watching the activities of these leading men of the colony with great concern. Now the Richmond Convention delegates had voted to defend the colony. “Between three and four o’clock on the morning of April 21, Captain Collins of the armed British schooner Magdalene carried out the governor’s order to remove the entire powder supply of the colony from Williamsburg and place it on board his vessel anchored at Burwell’s Ferry on the James River” (Evans 46). The seizure caused an immediate and violent reaction throughout the counties. “One thousand men poured into Fredericksburg, six hundred of them ‘good riflemen’ attired in hunting shirts with tomahawks in their belts. … In Hanover County Patrick Henry was also raising an independent company. Several patriotic leaders, including Peyton Randolph and George Washington, prevailed upon the Fredericksburg and Albemarle companies to disperse; but Henry, after haranguing his volunteers at Newcastle on May 2, began a march on Williamsburg” (Evans 46).

Dunmore “sent his wife and children on board an English-bound schooner in the York River, placed cannon in the Palace yard, armed his servants, and asked for a detachment of marines from the man-of-war Fowey, anchored at Yorktown” (Evans 46). Before daybreak May 4, the Fowey’s Captain Montague and a party of marines roused Thomas Nelson’s aged uncle, Secretary Nelson, from his bed. Montague warned that if they were molested by any of the townspeople the ship would fire upon the town. The ultimatum enraged the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside. Not only was the threat of bombarding the town considered barbaric. The person who would suffer most from such a bombardment would be Thomas Nelson, who had assumed the responsibility of meeting Henry and his troops (fifteen miles outside Williamsburg) to prevent harm to Dunmore from occurring.

Although most of the colonists did not know it then, the time for peaceful conciliation with Great Britain had passed. Anger and the desire for reprisal had dislodged reason. The contentious events of the past ten years had pushed many colonists to a willingness to bear arms against the soldiers of their mother country. On April 26, Virginia had received the news that Massachusetts militiamen had fired upon British soldiers in route to Boston from Concord. Massachusetts’s military governor General Thomas Gage had sent an army of 700 redcoats to Concord to seize stored munitions and gunpowder. America had reached a point of no return. She would take a little while yet to realize it.

The crisis of the confiscated powder was settled soon after Montague’s ultimatum. Several Virginia patriots – Nelson included -- bought the seized gunpowder for 320 pounds. The ship Fowey remained off Yorktown. On June 6, Dunmore and his family went aboard, never to set foot in the colony again.

On June 17 British soldiers and Massachusetts militiamen clashed in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

On July 17, the representatives of the counties of Virginia met for the third time during the course of a year. They passed an ordinance that called for the raising of three regiments of regular troops, to be commanded by a colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major appointed by the general convention. Patrick Henry, Thomas Nelson, Hugh Mercer, and William Woodford were looked upon as candidates for commander-in-chief of the regiments and colonel of the first regiment. Henry openly solicited the appointment. Mercer, born in Scotland, had some degree of military experience. Nelson acknowledged Mercer’s abilities, said he would not oppose Mercer’s appointment, and declared that he hoped he would not be voted for. Woodford also supported Mercer.

Seeing that Mercer would be his chief adversary, Henry sought to undermine his qualifications, instilling in the minds of many the thought that Virginia had to be sure loyal patriots commanded her forces. On the first ballot Mercer received 41 votes, Henry 40, Nelson 8 and Woodford 1. Henry won a run-off election by a small majority. Nelson was appointed lieutenant colonel of the second regiment. Woodford was appointed the major of the third regiment.

The Convention then turned its attention to the election of delegates to the next session of the Second Continental Congress. Of the seven delegates who had been previously elected, Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard Bland were considered eligible for another term. George Washington had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. Patrick Henry, as head of Virginia’s forces, was also considered ineligible. Pendleton asked to be excused from serving due to ill health. Three positions were open for new delegates. They were filled by Thomas Jefferson, Nelson, and George Wythe. Bland later declined his appointment because of infirmities of age and was replaced by Francis Lightfoot Lee. After Nelson had been appointed, he declined the command of the second Virginia regiment. Woodford was appointed his replacement.

One of the most dramatic periods in American history was rapidly approaching. Thomas Nelson, wealthy merchant and country gentleman, steadfast opponent of British economic and political authoritarianism from its inception, would be an active participant in Virginia’s struggle to attain independence. “Yet the course he chose to follow was not an easy one. He felt close to the mother country for many reasons. He had spent eight years of his life there, and he had many friends and several relatives who still lived in England. Furthermore, the patriotic cause by no means had the full support of all Americans … Nelson’s wife’s brother, John Randolph Grymes, left Virginia because of his sympathy for the British position. Both Thomas and Lucy Nelson were related to the Randolphs, and they saw that family torn apart when John Randolph, the attorney general, left Virginia with Dunmore, while his son, Edmund, remained a firm patriot” (Evans 49, 50). For Nelson, the loss of natural and constitutional rights mattered above all else!


Works Cited:

Evans, Emory G. Thomas Nelson of Yorktown: Revolutionary Virginian. Williamsburg, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1975. Print.

Sanderson, John. Biography of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence. Second Edition. Philadelphia, William Brown and Charles Peters, 1828. V. Print.

Thomas Nelson -- "Necessity Demands"

Parliament’s passage of the Tea Act in the spring of 1773 was the catalyst of a series of contentious events that culminated in colonial America’s war with Great Britain that began two years later and its declaration of independence in 1776.

The Tea Act granted the foundering British East India Company the right to import 18,000,000 pounds of surplus tea that it had stored in its London warehouses directly into the colonies without payment of any export tax. The Company would use co-signees appointed by royal governors in Massachusetts, New York, and South Carolina and the proprietors in Pennsylvania rather than local merchants to sell its tea. The American tea merchant was legislated out of business. Even though consumers would still have to pay the tax on tea imposed by the 1767 Townshend Acts, they would be paying a price lower than that charged previously by American merchants and tea smugglers. With the Tea Act, Prime Minister Lord North hoped to accomplish two purposes: provide motivation for colonialists to accept the Townshend Acts tax on tea and reinforce Parliament’s authority to impose taxes of any sort on the colonies. In both particulars he failed. Colonial merchants of every kind recognized that they, too, could be legislated out of business. Colonial representatives objected to any tax imposed on the colonies by Parliament without their consent, regardless of whether the public benefited as to cost of product taxed. In Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, they, fearful merchants, and disgruntled consumers deprived of choice of purchase were determined to prevent the off-loading of new East India Company tea onto their docks.

Resisters in New York and Philadelphia caused appointed co-signees to resign and ship captains to return their vessels to England with their unloaded cargo. In Charleston co-signees were also forced to resign and the cargo was left to rot on the unloaded ships. Boston had a very different outcome.

The tea ship Dartmouth arrived in the Boston Harbor in late November. British law required the Dartmouth to unload and pay import duties to customs officials within twenty days of its arrival. Massachusetts’s governor Thomas Hutchinson persuaded his co-signees, two of whom were his sons, not to resign. A mass meeting led by Sam Adams passed a resolution that urged the captain of the Dartmouth to send the ship back to England without paying the import duty. Governor Hutchinson refused to grant permission for the Dartmouth to leave without paying the duty. Two additional tea ships, the Eleanor and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor. Hutchinson also refused to allow these ships to leave. On December 16 (one day before the twenty day deadline was reached) at a meeting attended by about 7,000 people at the Old South Meeting House, Sam Adams declared: "This meeting can do nothing further to save the country" (Boston Tea Party 1). That evening a crowd of what later was roughly estimated to be 30 to 130 “Sons of Liberty” boarded the three East India Company tea ships. The entire cargo -- 342 chests of tea – were dumped into the water. This flagrant act of defiance impelled Parliament to pass several punitive measures that the colonists came to call the “intolerable acts.” The first measure, the Boston Port Bill, closed the port of Boston until the destroyed tea was paid for. The other three measures sought to cripple the political rights of the colony, transfer the trial of capital offenses to England, and renew the quartering of British troops in Boston. Massachusetts would be made the example of what British authority could do to rebellious colonies. Instead of being cowed, the twelve witnessing colonies, especially Virginia, made Massachusetts’s cause their own.

Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and other members of Virginia’s House of Burgesses saw the necessity of arousing the Virginia people “from the lethargy into which they had fallen” (Henry 176) the past three years following Parliament’s repeal of all but the one that taxed tea of the Townshend Acts. The group decided to have the House declare “a day of general fasting and prayer” to be observed June 1, 1774, the day the Boston Port Bill would go into effect. The House passed the resolution. Two days later Governor Dunmore dissolved the legislative body.

Eighty-nine burgesses, Thomas Nelson among them, assembled the following day (May 27) at “The Raleigh” Tavern, formed a non-importation association, and called for a meeting to take place at a later date at which time all House members could determine what else they could do to aid Massachusetts. Days later that meeting was scheduled for August 1 in Williamsburg. Meanwhile, Burgesses would meet with their constituents to formulate resolutions to be presented at the general meeting.

Thomas Nelson was moderator of the meeting of free holders in his county, York. He opened the meeting July 18 with a lengthy address that called for careful consideration of the resolutions about to be formed.

“You will know what it is to be FREE Men. You know the blessed privilege of doing what you will with your own, and you can guess at the misery of those who are deprived of this right. Which of these will be your case depends upon your present conduct. We have found already that petitions and remonstrances are ineffectual, and it is now time that we try other expedients. We must have those who are endeavouring to oppress us feel the effects of their mistakes of their arbitrary policy; for not till then can we expect justice from them” (Virginia Gazette July 21, 1774).

Nelson doubted that the colony could stop her exports without serious harm, “but that imports ought to be prohibited necessity demands, and no virtue forbids. It is not supposed that we can do this without subjecting ourselves to many inconveniences; but inconveniences, when opposed to the loss of freedom, are surely to be disregarded” (Ibid.).

Then, Nelson the merchant spoke: “It is true, we must resign the hope of making fortunes; but to what end should we make fortunes, when they may be taken from us at the pleasure of others” (Ibid.)?

Following the address, the county of York formed its resolves. They first defined the rights of the American colonies, coming to the ultimate conclusion that although British America was under voluntary subjection to the crown, every British parliamentary edict of taxation, custom, duty, or impost on the American colonies without their consent was illegal. The resolves declared the Tea Act illegal and the Boston Port Act unconstitutional, the latter due to the fact that Boston was only defending “their liberties and properties” the night the tea was thrown overboard. All imports would be stopped “with as few exceptions as possible.” The question of stopping exports would be settled at the August convention. Lastly, a subscription would be “immediately opened for the relief of the inhabitants of Boston” (Ibid.), under the direction of Thomas Nelson and his fellow burgess, Dudley Digges.

Nelson ultimately obtained 49 subscribers who pledged bushels of wheat and corn, barrels of flour, and shillings. In a not altogether trustworthy record kept by Massachusetts authorities, ten subscribers’ contributions were specifically noted as not having been delivered. This was due to no fault of Nelson. He had the contributions of twenty subscribers shipped to Boston at his own expense. The subscribers’ contributions averaged 4.8 bushels in wheat and 5.4 bushels in corn per person. Nelson sent 100 bushels of wheat.

Thomas Nelson and the delegates of the various other counties met in Williamsburg August 1. They agreed to cut off all British imports to the colony after November 1. They would also cut off their own exports to Britain if the mother country did not redress “American Grievances” before August 10, 1775. The Convention ended its business by electing seven of its leaders to represent Virginia at the First Continental Congress, which had been called to meet in September in Philadelphia. They were Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison and Edmund Pendleton. Nelson returned to York to spend what would be his last few months of peaceful living for the next four years.


Works Cited:

“Boston Tea Party.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_T.... Net.

Henry, William Wirtz. Patrick Henry’s Life, Correspondence and Speeches. Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribners and Sons, 1891. Print.

Virginia Gazette (Rind) July 21, 1774. Microfilm.

Thomas Nelson -- Observing, Learning

This is the second of a series of posts about Thomas Nelson, Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence, militia general, and third governor of Virginia.

Less than a year after his return from England, Thomas Nelson married Miss Lucy Grymes, a daughter of Philip Grymes of Brandom, in the neighboring county of Middlesex. They settled permanently in a commodious house built for them by Nelson’s father, the new house nearly opposite his own. In between his yearly trips to Williamsburg as a burgess representing his county, York, Thomas lived in a style of great elegance and hospitality. Upon Thomas’s marriage his father had given him an independent fortune and taken him into the family business. From his long resident in England, Thomas had acquired some of the manners and pursuits of its country gentlemen. He would ride out daily to his plantation, a few miles from York, with his fowling piece and an attending servant. He kept a pack of hounds at a small farm near the village, and in the winter his friends and neighbors would join him once or twice a week to participate in a fox hunt. Young Nelson’s home became the center of genteel hospitality. It was said that no gentleman ever stopped an hour in York without receiving an invitation to it.

Nelson found time during his residence in Williamsburg as a burgess to further his education. For a short time he attended William and Mary College. It was here that he met a young law student from Albemarle County, Thomas Jefferson. In 1763 Thomas’s father took under his care his orphaned niece, Rebecca Burwell. The twenty-year-old Jefferson, four years older than Rebecca, fell in love with the girl, and during their rather sporadic courtship became quite intimate with the Nelson family. This relationship was to be maintained through the Revolutionary War.

As a burgess, Thomas Nelson served his country from 1761 to his appointment to the Continental Congress in 1775. He did not take an active part in the debates of the Assembly during the stormy years prior to the American Revolution. There were many gentlemen in the Assembly who were older than he and who possessed greater political experience. Better that he receive his training and acquire political wisdom by observing others and working quietly in various committees of the Assembly.

At the end of May 1765, following the passage of the Stamp Act, Patrick Henry managed to push through the Assembly several resolutions that, in essence, denied the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies. There is no record of how Nelson voted on the resolutions; but, considering his political feeling and actions following the Stamp Act, we can assume that he supported them. Following the repeal of the Stamp Act in March 1766 the British Parliament passed the Townshend Acts. The new measures were designed to raise a revenue by taxing common articles used by the colonies: glass, lead, paper, and tea. The House of Burgesses rose again in opposition, sending to the king in 1768 a petition and to Parliament a memorial and remonstrance. In 1769 it passed resolutions claiming the sole right to tax the colony's inhabitants. The governor dissolved the Assembly following each action taken. In 1769, the members met in The Apollo Tavern, where they signed a non-importation association written by George Mason and presented by George Washington. They pledged not to import or have imported any of the Townshend goods until the duties were repealed. A merchant, standing to lose more in material gain than most of the Burgesses, Nelson signed the agreement.

Following the repeal of all of the Townshend duties (except that on tea) in April 1770, the colonies and the British government enjoyed a brief period of relative peace. However, the winter of 1772-1773 was not a good time for Nelson. His father died November 19. Thomas’s religious upbringing is reflected in a letter he wrote soon afterward to his father's friend, Samuel Martin. “It falls to my lot to acquaint you with the death of my father … His death was such as became a true Christian, hoping through the mediation of our blessed Savior to meet with the reward promised to the righteous” (Meade 210). The funeral sermon delivered by a Mr. Camm, the president of William and Mary College and minister of York, summarized the qualities of the elder Nelson. “… his own gain by trade was not more sweet to him than the help which he hereby received toward becoming a general benefactor. He is an instance of what abundance of good may be done by a prudent and conscientious man without impoverishing himself or his connections, nay, while his fortunes are improving” (Meade 209).

President Nelson left to each of his five sons – Thomas, Hugh, William, Nat, and Robert – landed estates and servants. But to his eldest son, Thomas, he left 40,000 pounds, equivalent to $133,000 at that time.


Work Cited:

Meade, Bishop (William). Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1891). I. Print.

Thomas Nelson -- Early Life

In Capital Square in Richmond today stands an equestrian statue of George Washington. A tourist would notice six figures mounted at the base of the statue. Chances are he would recognize instantly the importance of three of the figures: Patrick Henry, the orator of the Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and John Marshall, the famous Supreme Court Justice. But the other three figures about the statue – George Mason, Thomas Nelson, and Andrew Lewis – might mean nothing to him. Seconds later he would probably walk away, intent upon seeing another historic monument in historic Richmond.

Mason, Nelson, and Lewis were important leaders. To the general public, however, they are anonymous patriots, their significance overlooked or underemphasized by the biographers of the giants of American history.

Thomas Nelson is the subject of this new series of posts. He can be taken as a test case of the importance of obscure Revolutionary War leaders. If he had not died relatively early, he would probably have been an important national political figure. Even so, his life was full and his contributions substantial.

***

In describing the seaport town of York to Sir Henry Clinton shortly before the beginning of the American Revolution, a British officer wrote: “The people in and about it, influenced by the family of Nelson, are all Rebellious” (Riley 22). If the officer had remained in the town longer and inquired about the Nelson family, he might have left contemplating just how far beyond the boundaries of foolishness this rebellious family might go. They were merchants, the first in York, one of the wealthiest families in the colony. If the existing breach between the political and economic interests of Great Britain and her colonies should expand to the point where neither antagonist could reverse course, if the ultimate solution to this clash of interests could be none other than a clash of arms, the Nelsons stood to lose economically far more than most Americans. Yet, from the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, the family’s history is one of consistent loyalty to colonial principles. The British officer might have explained all of this with the thought that many men lose their senses in times of strife, but a crisis can also inspire the employment of rare qualities of character, one being courage.

Thomas Nelson, the founder of the wealthy Virginia family and the grandfather of the subject of this post, came to the colonies from Penriff, near the border of Scotland, shortly after the turn of the Seventeenth Century. He established himself in York as a merchant, married a Miss Reid of the neighboring county, and had two sons and one daughter.

Thomas Nelson’s two sons, William and Thomas, upon reaching their adulthood, also settled in York. Both men took an active role in Virginia politics. Thomas -- Thomas Nelson Jr.’s uncle -- was secretary of the governor’s council for over twenty years. William became a member of the House of Burgesses from York County in 1742. In 1744 he joined his brother in the council and later became its president. Due to the length of time both men held these positions in the council, they came to be called Secretary and President Nelson.

Importing goods from the merchants of Philadelphia and Baltimore, then in their commercial beginnings, William Nelson acquired a large fortune. After the death of Governor Botetourt, Nelson was acting governor of the colony from October 1770 to August 1771. While he was “the right hand of George III,” he remained loyal to colonial ideals. His letters to merchants at this time reveal his indignant opposition to onerous acts passed by the British Parliament, unwarranted impositions, he believed, legislated upon colonial rights and privileges. Bishop Meade wrote that he left “none to doubt where he would have been when the trumpet sounded to arms” (Meade 209).

William Nelson married a Miss Burnwell, a pious and conscientious woman. All of their daughters died before they reached the age of twelve. Of their six sons, one burned to death and another damaged his brain in a fall from an upper story of the Nelson house. These tragedies turned Mrs. Nelson ever closer to her religion.

She was particularly attentive to the religious training of her children. She taught them to be punctual and conscientious in their daily prayers, set for them an exemplary example, and prayed for them often. Equally concerned with their children’s religious upbringing, William took the lead in affairs of the local parish. On Sundays, generous as well as pious, he had a large dinner prepared to which both rich and poor were invited.

Thomas Nelson, Jr., the eldest son, born December 26, 1738, had the qualities of courage, generosity, honesty, and leadership – so apparent during the Revolution – instilled in him in the Nelson home.

***

At the age of fourteen Thomas Nelson, Jr., was a rather high spirited boy, energetic enough to give his father uneasy moments. The boy had become old enough for President Nelson to consider sending to England for a formal education. It was the custom of many wealthy seaboard Virginia families to send their eldest sons to London for that purpose. In a year, or perhaps two, Thomas would be ready. Then, one Sunday morning while strolling about the outskirts of York, father Nelson’s aristocratic soul was rudely shaken. He had come upon his son playing in the streets with several of the little Negro boys of the village. Realizing the delicacy of such an association and the difficulty of preventing future ones, Nelson decided quickly that it was time for Thomas to begin his English education. A vessel stood anchored in the harbor ready to sail. Thomas found himself aboard it the next day. He would not return for nine years.

President Nelson placed Thomas under the care of two friends: a Mr. Hunt of London, and Neilby Porteus, then fellow of Cambridge University, later to become a bishop. Nelson needed six years of preparation before he entered Christ’s College at Cambridge in 1758. He was then placed under the care of a Dr. Newcome at the Hackney School, in the village of the same name near the outskirts of London. He then entered Cambridge under the private tutorship of Mr. Porteus. In letters to Hunt and Porteus, President Nelson shows his pious concern for the improvement of his son – “in all things, but especially in morals and religion.” Thomas’s spirited nature yet troubled him. He had exhibited behavior unbecoming a gentleman of his station by associating with Negroes. What form might his behavior take now that he was older? Nelson requested of his friends that during the vacation seasons Thomas be placed under the supervision of an eminent scientific agriculturalist, so that “the temptations incident to young men during the vacation” resulting from “a disposition to idleness and pleasure” be avoided. Additionally, when Thomas returned to America, he would be able to make adequate use of the soils of Virginia (Meade 206).

Regardless of what President Nelson may have wished, Thomas’s activities were not devoted exclusively to the studying of books and soils. Nelson saved a man from drowning. Ironically, the man was a kinsman of Lord North, Prime Minister just prior to and during most of the Revolutionary War. In appreciation of Nelson’s heroic deed, the Lord presented the young man a gold snuff box containing a fine miniature of himself (Davis III 119).

After three years of tutorship by Mr. Porteus, Thomas was ready to return to York. However, due to his father’s great concern for his spiritual upbringing, Thomas’s departure was delayed several months. The elder Nelson had learned that two young Virginians, whose habits he feared, though they were sons of the first families of the colony, would be aboard the ship that Thomas was scheduled to take. Thomas, therefore, was ordered to remain in England until another ship sailed for Virginia.

A blue-eyed, light-haired youth of twenty-two, exhibiting a ruddy complexion, finally returned to Virginia at the close of 1761. His father was happy to find a general improvement in his son, but regretted that he had adopted the bad practice of smoking tobacco – “filthy tobacco,” he wrote his friends in England. The elder Nelson also complained that Thomas ate and drank “more than was conducive to health and long life, though not to inebriety” (Meade 217). If the reunion of father and son had given the President some cause for feeling a bit surprised, it gave Thomas far greater cause. While Thomas was still on his voyage home, his name had been entered, undoubtedly by his father, as a candidate to the House of Burgesses from York County. Thomas was greeted at the dock with the news that he had been elected a burgess.


Sources Cited:

Davis III, Edward Morris. “Historical Silver in the Commonwealth of Virginia.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (April 1941) XLIX. Print.

Meade, Bishop. Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1891)Vol. I. Print.

Riley, Edward M. “Yorktown/During the Revolution.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (January 1949), Vol. 57. Print.

Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Ancestor

Only if we conduct genealogical research of our family lineages are we apt to discover stories about ordinary Americans who in two-centuries old wars volunteered to fight for their ideals. I am proud of my father’s ancestry. It begins in 1635 with a man of compassion and extends through my father, who, when I was probably 12, refused to sign a petition that advocated efforts to keep African-Americans out of our Pasadena, California, neighborhood. This post is about the most unique ancestor of my line, John Titus of Moriah, New York. Before I tell his story, however, I need to write about that first Titus immigrant in America.

Robert Titus was born in 1600, probably in St. Catherine’s Parish, near Abbots, Hertfordshire, some 30 miles north of London, England. He married Hannah Carter, the daughter of Robert Carter and Petronilla Curle, June 24, 1624, in Watford Parish. Robert, Hannah, and their two children left England for America on the Hopewell April 3, 1635. Robert was described on the Hopwell's passenger list as being a husbandman (farmer). He was 35 years old, Hannah was 31, and their two sons John and Edmund were 8 and 5. Robert was granted a plot of land in the present town of Brookline, Massachusetts. He and his family lived in Brookline for two or three years and then moved to the town of Weymouth. They belonged to the Church of Weymouth where Rev. Samuel Newman was pastor from 1639 to 1643. In 1643 Rev. Newman and most of his parishioners, including the Tituses, left Weymouth, moved south, and founded Rehoboth in Plymouth Colony, not far from present-day Providence, Rhode Island. Each founder was required to provide the value of his estate. The value of a man’s estate determined the size of land he would be granted. Robert Titus reported his estate to be worth 156 pounds and 10 shillings. He was granted 8 acres. Each land owner had until April 20th of the following year to fence his lot or he would have to forfeit his land and leave the settlement.

Robert was a fairly important man in early Rehoboth. In 1645 he was chosen by the town along with three others to inspect the quality of the fences of each lot and to levy fines on those whose fences did not meet town standards. That same year a levy was made on each estate to be paid in butter or wampum and Robert was chosen to be a collector of the revenue. In 1649 and 1650 Robert was chosen to be a Deputy of the Court along with a Stephen Paine. In 1654, he fell out of favor with the town authorities. “According to the town records Robert was called into court on June 6, 1654. At that meeting he was told to move his family out of the Plymouth Colony for allowing Abner Ordway and a woman with children, ‘persons of evil fame’ to live in his home” (Titus 6). Genealogists believe that Ordway and the woman were Quakers. Robert took his family to Long Island, where his younger son, Edmund, became a Quaker. Robert died in Huntington, Long Island, probably in 1679. His older son John, a land holder, remained in Rehoboth. It is through John that most New England Tituses today trace their ancestry to Robert.

Robert’s Male Descendants leading to John Titus V:

John Titus, born 1627, St. Catherine’s Parish, England; died April 16, 1689, Rehoboth, Massachusetts Colony. 8 children by 2 wives. Lived 61 years. Fought in King Philip’s War

John Titus II, born December 18, 1650, Rehoboth; died December 2, 1697, Rehoboth. 9 children by 2 wives. Lived 46 years. Fought in King Philip’s War

John Titus III, born March 12, 1678, Rehoboth; died April 16, 1758, Rehoboth. 8 children by 3 wives. Lived 80 years

Ebenezer Titus, born March 29, 1714, Rehoboth; died in 1794, probably in Voluntown, Connecticut. 6 children. Lived 79 or 80 years

John Titus IV, born August 23, 1739, Rehoboth; died at an unknown date. Perhaps 12 children. He moved to Voluntown, Connecticut, in 1763 and to Rockingham, Vermont, in 1775. He was living in Pittsford, Vermont, in 1790, according to the U.S. Census.

John Titus V, born October 28, 1763, Rehoboth; died March 4, 1858, Moriah, New York. 8 children. Fought in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Lived 94 years

The National Archives in Washington, D.C., in response to an inquiry made by Mrs. Erma Titus of Salt Lake City Feb. 11, 1932, stated that John V and his family moved from Rehoboth to Voluntown, Windham County, Connecticut, when he was approximately a year old. He remained there until the late spring of 1775 when he and his parents and siblings moved to Rockingham, Vermont.

According to the supplemental statement that he made many years later to obtain a Revolutionary War pension, John fixed the date of 1775 “from the fact that he well remembers that on the way to Vermont he heard the battle at Bunker Hill had taken place. … he resided with his father in Rockingham until the seventeenth year of age when in 1780” he joined Captain Jesse Safford’s Vermont company under Major Ebenezer Allen and served for perhaps nine months a part of which was at and about Bethel, where he helped build a small fort called Fort Fortitude.

On October 16, 1780, nearby Royalton, Vermont, was raided. “The Raid was conducted by a war party of 265 Mohawks and Abenakis, commanded by a British officer, Lieutenant Richard Houghton, who was operating under orders from the British high command in Canada, Lieutenant General Frederick Haldemand. It was all part of the British War effort.

"Royalton at that time was a collection of a couple dozen log cabins scattered along the Second Branch of the White River. The Raid would provide valuable captives, and would spread fear and disorder along the northern frontier - all desirable benefits for the British military - which by 1780 was all too certain it was losing the war.

"And so, early on October 16th, the British-led Indians attacked, burning cabins, capturing hostages [24 of them], and killing four residents of the White River Valley” (Slyton 1). The raid was carried out in conjunction with other raids conducted along the shores of Lake Champlain and Lake George and in the Mohawk River Valley. John Titus’s company arrived at Royalton too late to be of assistance. Houghton’s attackers and their captives were on their way back to Canada. John’s company stayed at Royalton 2 weeks.

A year later John joined Captain Nehemiah Lovell’s company in Colonel Benjamin Wait’s Vermont regiment and served another 9 months, part of it about Bernard, also near Royalton. During his stay at both Bethel and Barnard, each of his companies was divided into several scouting parties. In his original statement made years later to obtain a pension he remembered “several incidents of skirmishes and hair-breath escapes and of fire and murder and pillage by the Indians.” (I wish I knew the details)

In the spring of 1782 John visited his grandfather, Ebenezer Titus, in Voluntown, Connecticut, with the intention of remaining there for a time and then going to sea. On the advice of his friends he was induced to enlist for a year in Captain Daniel Allen’s Company, Colonel Samuel Canfield’s Connecticut Regiment. He received a small bounty for enlisting. He served most of his 12 months in the Long Island Sound and about Horse Neck (Grennwich), Connecticut). He was discharged in 1783 after his regiment had learned that peace between England and the United States had been declared.

John returned to Voluntown, Connecticut. He signed up as a crew member on the whaling ship Rising Sun out of Providence, Rhode Island, Paul Giles of Nantucket commanding. The ship worked along the coastline of South America and, later, about the West Indies. John returned to Rehoboth, Massachusetts, during the winter of 1785 and married there on June 15 of the following year Mehitable Fuller. For the next 6 or 7 years he rode the seas, principally as a whaler, returning to Voluntown long enough periodically to sire three children, born in 1787, 1789, and 1791. Later in life he often remarked that he had eaten bread on the four quarters of the globe.

John and his growing family moved about considerably after he quit the sea. His fourth child was born in Voluntown in 1793. Thereafter, he lived in several towns in Vermont. His obituary, printed by the Burlington, Vermont, Weekly Sentinel, mentioned Pitfall, Cornwall, Orwell, Hinesburg, and Addison. A shoemaker by trade, he stayed for awhile in Shoreham. His fifth child, Russell Lloyd Titus, was born in 1800 in Elizabethtown, New York. His last child, Alanson Titus, was born in Hinesburg, Vermont, in 1810.

Living in Hinesburg in 1813, he enlisted as a private in Captain J. B. Murdock’s Company, Colonel George McFeeley’s 25th Regiment U.S. Infantry. He was 50 years old. His son Russell Titus commented years later that his father’s age “was such as would exclude him and his manly vigor was such that he was accepted. When asked his age, he answered, ‘I am old enough to be a good soldier.’” John’s oldest son, John Jr. – called Jack – also enlisted. John was stationed in northern New York. He was wounded in the right arm and was ruptured in the groin near Ogdensburgh, New York, along the St. Lawrence River during the Battle of Cryslers Farm November 11, 1813. The battle marked the end of American’s ambition to capture Montreal. Major General James Wilkinson’s defeated forces withdrew from the St. Lawrence area to spend the winter at Plattsburg, New York. 102 Americans had been killed and 237 had been wounded. 120 had been taken prisoners. John’s son Jack was killed July 5, 1814, in the Battle of Chippawa, along the Niagara River in Ontario, Canada. 60 Americans were killed; 249 were wounded; 19 were reported missing. John was discharged September 19, 1814. His discharge paper described him as being 40 years old, the color of his hair light, his eyes blue, his complexion light, and his height 5 feet 7 inches. Until his death in 1858 he received a disability pension, annually.

John lived for several years in Addison County (perhaps in the town of Addison) before moving across Lake Champlain to settle in Moriah, New York. He may have been living in Moriah as early as 1825 because his daughter Mehitable died and was buried there that same year. The 1830 U.S. Census confirmed Moriah to be his place of residence. He and his wife were living there with their blind son, Russell. “On moving to Moriah,” his obituary stated, “he found a wide region where he could indulge in his favorite sport of hunting, it then being an almost unbroken wilderness from the Adirondack mountains to the St. Lawrence River and abounding in game of various kinds. Through all this region he pursued his game until he was familiar with every path of it.”

I have a copy of a statement Russell dictated to his daughter-in-law, Lucy Maria Eaton Titus, many years later. In it Russell explained that due to his brother Jack’s service in the War of 1812, their father was entitled to the land warrant that Jack would have received had he lived. John signed the warrant over to Russell “to Illinois in 1821 where I took an inflammation in my eyes which ended in total blindness in the year of 1824, since which time I have had no more vision from either eye than from my hand. I returned from the west to Ohio with a team and from there to Vermont on horseback having just enough sense of vision to guide me, and went immediately to New York eye infirmary and there learned that I must live in blackness the rest of my days, my sight gone, my parents poor, and my pocket empty. I commenced peddling with $9.00 worth of tinware. I followed peddling six years and had made enough money and with my father’s pension (as I had a home with him) I bought a small stock of Yankee notions and tinware and settled in Moriah Centre where I got together enough to build me a house and buy land. Afterwards I built a store and two other dwellings and have so prospered as to make a good deal of money and to lose a good deal with others in business.” Russell married Mary Parmenter, daughter of Oliver Parmenter and Nancy McIntire, in Moriah probably in 1830 because their first child, Amanda, was born there in August 1831.

After Congress had passed the June 7, 1832, act that authorized Revolutionary War soldiers still alive to received annual pension payments, John inquired if he were eligible, given that he was receiving a disability pension for service in the War of 1812. He was told erroneously by a cashier of the Bank of Vergennes (in Vermont), where he drew his disability pension, that he could not draw two pensions at the same time. He made no further inquiries for several years. Eventually, he consulted in Moriah a young lawyer who told him that for other reasons – inaccuracies of records of his dates of service – that he could not receive a Revolutionary War pension. It wasn’t until nearly 1850 that he was told he might be eligible. His subsequent efforts to convince federal authorities of his actual years of service were ultimately successful. On June 7, 1854, he was authorized to receive $69.66 annually and be paid in arrears from March 4, 1831.

John Titus died in Moriah March 4, 1858, at the age of 94. His obituary stated: “At the last presidential election [1856] Mr. Titus came to the poll and after depositing his vote [for John C. Fremont], remarked that he voted for George Washington, the first President of the United States, that he had voted for president and for freedom and was now ready for the ‘Call of Roll,’ meaning thereby that his mission on earth was finished and that he was ready to leave this world.”

I am proud that John Titus is one of my ancestors. He and Deliverance and Oliver Parmenter (read my December 1, 2014, post)) have much to do with my particular interest in the Revolutionary War.

For what it is worth, here is how John’s line of descent reaches me.

Russell L. Titus, born February 16, 1800, Elizabethtown, New York; died October 23, 1884, Moriah, New York. 6 children. Lived 84 years

Edwin Bristol Titus, born October 21, 1832, Moriah; died March 11, 1876, Moriah. 5 children. Lived 43 years

Joel Columbus Titus, born January 31, 1869, Moriah; died April 29, 1943, Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. 3 children. Lived 74 years

Homer Eaton Titus, born November 23, 1898, Mt. Vernon, New York; died December 20, 1963, Los Angeles, California. 2 children. Lived 65 years

Harold Wesley Titus (me), born August 17, 1934, Mt. Kisco, New York. 3 children

Works Cited:

Slayton, Tom. “Slayton: The Royalton Raid.” VPR.net Home Commentary Series. Vermont Public Radio. December 2, 2010, 7:55 a.m. http://www.vpr.net/episode/50008/slay.... December 5, 2014. Web.

Titus, Leo J., Jr. Titus: A North American Family History. Baltimore, Gateway Press, Inc., 2004. Print.

Two Revolutionary War Ancestors

Two ancestors of mine – father and son Deliverance and Oliver Parmenter – appear in a scene of my Revolutionary War novel “Crossing the River.” Hearing the toll of the Sudbury, Massachusetts Colony, meeting house bell in the mid-morning of April 19, 1775, 30-year-old Deliverance Parmenter unyoked his oxen in his farthest field, drove them into his yard, grabbed his musket, powder bag, shot bag, and powder horn, and hurried to the town common. He and his company of militiamen hastened to Brooks Hill, several miles east of Concord, to intercept Colonel Francis Smith’s 700 redcoat army on its return march from Concord to Boston. It was early afternoon when the long column of soldiers began its descent of the hill. From both sides of the road Deliverance and his company burned powder.

I utilized my two ancestors in the fictitious scene below to serve several purposes. I wanted to dramatize the concern and love that fathers and sons had to have felt reciprocally prior to engaging in mortal combat. I wanted to demonstrate the fear that they must have experienced. I wanted to communicate what compelled them to risk not only their lives but the welfare of their families. I wanted to depict how difficult it must have been for Christian men to square with their consciences the taking of lives of actual, wholly visible human beings.

###

A half-mile east of Meriam’s Corner, where the road reached the top of Brooks Hill, Sudbury militiamen waited. The column would draw fire initially from Captain Cudworth's company. Captain Wheeler’s militiamen would pursue the column’s rear guard down the hill toward Tanner’s Brook.

The two companies had begun their thirteen-mile trek to Brooks Hill shortly after 9 a.m. Upon hearing the muster call thirty minutes earlier, Deliverance Parmenter had left his oxen and plow in his back field and gone directly to the Common, his older son Oliver accompanying him. After Parmenter had been told that Lexington militiamen had been killed and that his company would retaliate, Oliver had wanted to take part.

“No, son, you’ll be going home!”

Seated beneath a large beech tree one hundred feet from the Brooks house and another hundred feet from the family tavern, Parmenter flexed first his left and then his right knee. He drew the back of his right hand roughly across his mouth. Their leave-taking had been difficult, nearly as difficult as was this waiting.

Their conversation had been contentious. What Oliver had said near the close of it, though, had gratified him. Needing to savor his boy’s words, Parmenter recalled their exchange.

Ordered home, Oliver, nearly thirteen, the oldest of Parmenter’s four children, had refused to budge.

“Should the Lord see fit t’take me,” Parmenter had said, ignoring Oliver’s petulance, “you’ll be obliged t’take my place. You’re close t’being old enough. Your uncles will help, but being they have families, they won’t be wanting to and having that much time.”

“I want t’go with you!”

“Oliver.”

“I want t’go! Thaddeus can do it!”

“Thaddeus is seven. Your mother is five months forward with child. You’re being foolish! I need you at home!”

Regretting his harsh tone, Parmenter had tried to put a hand on the boy's shoulder. Oliver had stepped away.

Angered, Parmenter had declared, “What do you think happens in battle?! Men get killed! Without meaning to! Without expecting to! Who am I t’declare who the Lord might protect?! Keeping you at home keeps you safe!”

Oliver had then looked at him directly, briefly, his stubborn expression gone.

“Say the worst happens. Your mother’d be blaming me. Hating me! I’d be hating myself!”

Head down, Oliver had kicked at an embedded stone.

“I must depend on you.”

“I want t’fight the redcoats!”

“Have my words been wasted on you?!”

“No sir.” Rolling the stone with the sole of his shoe, he had murmured, “I just ... want t’be with you.”

His son’s declaration of love had moved him. For several seconds he had been unable to speak. Embarrassed, hiding his affection, he had eventually said, “I’m that certain I’ll take care of myself.”

By then Captain Wheeler had come out of the Meeting House. The men in the road had begun forming evenly spaced ranks.

“As for your fighting the British,” Parmenter had said to placate Oliver, “the time may come.” Seeing the Captain engaged in conversation, he had said more. “I fear what is happening today will be war. I’ve never known a quick war. The war with the French -- near the end of it you were just a baby -- lasted seven years.” Studying his son, approving of him, he had concluded, “About this fighting today, what it’s going t’mean. I’m hoping for your sake, and for a lot more reasons, I’m wrong!”

Sustained by the camaraderie of his friends and neighbors, his conversation with Oliver, and the conviction that fighting the King’s army was necessary and just, Parmenter had managed initially to control his fear. Subsequent talk within the company that redcoat flankers were clearing all fields and woods had brought it hurtling back. The Captain’s consequent deployment of a dozen men to protect the company’s rear and left flank had not helped him.

There was no way he could control what was about to happen!

Other weighty concerns were afflicting him.

Could he square with his conscience his killing of a man? Despite his reasoned justification, despite the hostility he felt toward these foreign invaders, he could not be certain. Taking a life was the gravest of sins.

There was also the Lord’s purpose to construe. Parmenter did not subscribe to the belief that because Massachusetts’s cause was just that God would intercede. The Lord intervened only to administer His will! How could he be sure about anything?

For Parmenter, for each Sudbury man in the woods at the top of Brooks Hill, time had neither hurried nor hesitated. When Cudworth's company fired its first volley, Parmenter, a meticulous person, noted the minute. 1:02 p.m. What will be the exact time when I, too, sight on a man? he thought.

On the road from Sudbury he had called upon his respect of ancestry to justify his participation. He, his seven brothers, and his three sisters were the fifth generation of his immediate family to have lived in Sudbury, the immigrant ancestor John having settled in 1639. Like his forebearers, a man of principle, Deliverance Parmenter adhered to immutable beliefs.

Foremost was his conviction that the land he possessed was his, his alone! At great sacrifice the immigrant progenitor, John Parmenter, had earned the land, in perpetuity. That sacrifice and that which subsequent generations had contributed neither an avaricious cabinet nor an autocratic king could abrogate! Ownership of land was the foundation of a man’s essence. Recent encroachments by the Crown and Parliament -- the denial of self-representation, the curtailment of individual livelihood -- had been an attack on the inherent components of ownership. With moral certainty Deliverance Parmenter would defend his ancestors’ legacy and his family’s providence to the furthest extremity!

Firing repeatedly from behind his tree trunk, Parmenter fulfilled his obligation. For a good two minutes, having pursued the column’s rear guard halfway down the hill, he marveled at the denouement of his defense of ancestral entitlement.

Holding to his convictions, he had surely killed a man!

Notwithstanding, the Lord had shielded him!

At home, in the presence of his wife and children, he would extol his Heavenly Protector; privately, he would seek His absolution. Thereafter, he would strive to embody each day, as he had most of his years past, each of his Savior’s teachings (Titus 289-292).

###

Who were Deliverance and Oliver Parmenter, who were their (and my) ancestors in America, and what became of them? Genealogical study frequently reveals interesting information.

The oldest Parmenter to settle in Massachusetts Colony was John Parmenter, born in the parish of Little Yeldham, Essex County, England, a short distance from the Suffolk parish of Sudbury, probably in 1588. He, his wife Bridget, his daughter Mary, and his son John emigrated to New England in 1639. They were among the first settlers of the town of Sudbury in Massachusetts Bay Colony (the town’s name derived from the fact that a few of its settlers – John Parmenter included – had lived in or near Sudbury Parish in England). John was a member of the committee appointed to lay out property lands of the new community. He was a proprietor and a selectman, a commissioner to settle minor conflicts, and a deacon of the Sudbury church. After his wife Bridget died April 6, 1660, he moved to Roxbury, where he marred twice-widowed Annis (Bayford) (Chandler) Dane. John died in Roxbury May 1, 1671, at the age of 83. His son John remained in Sudbury. John II died April 12, 1666, five years before his father. Here is the direct line of descendents from John II to Deliverance and Oliver Parmenter.

John Parmenter II, born Dec. 15, 1612, Little Yeldam, Suffolk, England; died April 12, 1666, Sudbury, Massachusetts Colony. 6 children. Lived 53 years

George Parmenter I, born Feb. 14, 1646/47, Sudbury; died October 26, 1727, Sudbury. 8 children. Lived 80 years

George Parmenter II, born May 5, 1679, Sudbury; died October 27, 1727, Sudbury, one day after his father’s death. 6 children. Lived 48 years

Deliverance Parmenter I, born Dec. 15, 1709, Sudbury; died 1785, Sudbury. 6 children. Lived 75 years

Deliverance Parmenter II, born May 6, 1744, Sudbury; died 1780, probably Sudbury. 7 children. Lived 36 years

Oliver Parmenter, born October 12, 1762, Sudbury; died June 14, 1841, Moriah, New York. 4 children. Lived 78 years

Epidemics of smallpox and other European diseases, carried by European explorers, fur traders, and fishermen in the 1500s and early 1600s, had decimated Native American populations throughout New England. Indian population, consequently, was sparse near Sudbury when it was founded. Sudbury became the third permanent inland (above the flow of tidewater from the Atlantic Ocean) settlement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (The first inland settlement was Concord and the second Dedham) Even though relations with local tribes remained quiescent for several decades, three reasons explain why Sudbury was believed by many settlers to be at risk. There was no possibility of escape by ship if evacuation was necessary; emergency resources were about 10 hours away in the Boston area; and wilderness predominated beyond the southern and western borders of the town. The first occupants of Sudbury settled intentionally in what would become the eastern part of the town. The Sudbury River flowed through it from south to north, providing the eastern section some measure of protection from potential Indian attack.

King Philip’s War raged throughout New England from June 1665 to August 1666. Over half of nearly 100 towns were damaged or destroyed. The loss of life and property was greatest in the frontier settlements. This was particularly true of towns west of Sudbury, including its neighbor town Marlborough. Sudbury was attacked April 21, 1666, by substantial forces. Many attackers and defenders were killed. A majority of the defenders were soldiers sent to Sudbury from other settlements. Loss of life and destruction of property was greatest west of the Sudbury River, although most of the residents there were able to escape to fortified houses stocked with food, water, weapons, ammunition, and gunpowder. These houses were defended for many hours. East of the Sudbury River, the town militia and soldiers from other towns were able to drive off the attackers. Late in the day, Indian warriors west of the River withdrew to their base camp northwest of Marlborough. The battle at Sudbury proved to be a turning point of King Philip’s War. Thereafter, elsewhere Indian forces consistently lost battles. Deprived of food, weapons, ammunition, and gunpowder -- which they had attempted to seize in their attacks – their leaders killed or captured, King Philip’s warriors eventually stopped their assaults

Sudbury’s population in 1775 was 2,160. Nearly all of the male adult population (about 500) volunteered to fight at some point in time during the Revolutionary War. More than 350 of them were experienced soldiers, having served at least once during the French and Indian War.

Charles A. Bemis wrote the following about Deliverance Parmenter in his book “History of the Town of Marlborough,” published in 1881. “Deliverance, Jr. was a zealous patriot. On the memorable 19th of April, 1775, he was ploughing in the field near his house when the news reached him of the battle of Lexington and Concord. He immediately unyoked his oxen, drove them into his yard, and with gun in hand started on the run to meet the British. He was at the battle of Bunker Hill and remained in the service until October, when he returned home. The following spring he again enlisted, and remained in the army three years” (Bemis 597).

My great grandfather, Edwin B. Titus, wrote this entry, dated July 22, 1874, in his journal.

"Charles A. Bemis
P.O. Box 85
Marlborough
Cheshire Co. N.H.

A cousin of my mothers side. A new cousin just heard from. He writes to learn about the Parmenter family as he wishes to make a record of all he can learn of them. His mother is cousin of my mother. [Edwin’s mother was Mary Parmenter, daughter of Oliver Parmenter] Glad to hear from them as I have never known many of my Mothers relatives.”

At the back of his journal Edwin listed Oliver Parmenter’s children and the children of Oliver’s brother Noah Parmenter.

Bemis’s book is full of names and accounts of former citizens of Marlborough, New Hampshire. We can assume that his information about Deliverance Parmenter was obtained from Parmenter’s descendent relatives and is probably accurate. However, I must tell you the following.

Maybe 15 years ago I requested information about Deliverance and Oliver Parmenter from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. I received information about Oliver and a copy of a letter written by Mr. Ralph M. Stoughton of Turners Falls, Massachusetts, dated December 17, 1935. Mr. Stoughton had requested “the record of Deliverance Parmenter, Junior, of Sudbury, Massachusetts, whose widow, Mary Osborne Parmenter, lived in Marlboro, New Hampshire, and drew a pension on account of the services of her husband in the Revolutionary War …” The archive official who responded stated that no record had been found that a claim for a pension or bounty had been made. Such claims for pensions had been authorized by an act of Congress June 7, 1832. As I previously stated, Deliverance died in 1780. The date of Deliverance Parmenter’s widow’s death is unknown. Because she was born in 1742, she would have had to live past the age of 90 to have been able to file a claim. It is logical to assume that no record of Deliverance’s service in the Revolutionary War exists in the National Archives because no claim for a pension could have been made.

Mr. Stoughton did receive information about Deliverance’s son, Oliver. Seventy-one years old, he was living in Moriah [near Lake Champlain], Essex County, New York, when his claim for a pension was granted June 21, 1834. He received thereafter $22.42 annually. He died in Moriah June 14, 1841.

I obtained the following information about Oliver Parmenter from the National Archives response to Mr. Stoughton’s letter, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, and Charles A. Bemis’s book.

Not yet 18, Oliver volunteered August 1, 1780, to serve three months in Captain Brintnal’s company of Colonel Howe’s Massachusetts regiment. He was marched to Rhode Island where on Butts Hill he helped build a fort. He enlisted in Captain Daniel Bowker’s company of Colonel Webb’s Massachusetts regiment August 27, 1781. He served in New York for several days at Verplank’s Point before being moved to Gallows Hill. His regiment remained there several weeks before being marched to the Highlands. Thereafter, Oliver was detached with other privates to Fish Kiln to cut wood. At about the ninth day of December he was dismissed, having served his three months term, and traveled 200 miles home. There is no indication in his records of his having experienced combat.

In 1783 Oliver moved to Bernardston (in western Massachusetts five miles south of the New Hampshire border) to live near his father’s brother, Jason Parmenter. He stayed there 7 years. Probably a year or two before he left Bernardston Oliver married Jason’s daughter, Cynthia Parmenter. On April 14, 1790, Oliver made this public declaration: “Whereas Cynthia, the wife of me the Subscriber, has in violation of her marriage covenant, withdrawn herself from my bed and board and unjustly and without cause refuses to live with me and whereas by her unfaithful behavior I have reason to fear she will endeavor to injure my interests by contracting debts on my account I hereby notify and warn all persons against harboring or giving her any credit for any matter whatever on my account, as I will not pay any demands made against me on her account” (Messer 1). Oliver and Cynthia were first cousins. No divorce proceedings were advertised. Later, both had other spouses.

Oliver moved to Marlborough, New Hampshire, (approximately 50 miles by road from Bernardston) where he worked for a short while for his oldest brother Thaddeus. He purchased a lot of wild land in the north part of town and located his house on a knoll. He lived there 3 years. On April 4, 1793, he married Vianna Fay of Athol, Massachusetts, who soon afterward died. Having made little improvement on his land, he disposed of it and moved approximately another 50 miles to Springfield, Vermont, where a second brother, Noah Parmenter, resided. Oliver married Nancy McIntire (I have not been able to find any information about her) probably in 1795. Living in the Parker Hill section of Springfield 34 years, they produced four children. Oliver and Nancy moved to Moriah in upstate New York shortly after 1830. Nancy died there July 3, 1831. Their daughter Mary married my great great grandfather, Russell L. Titus, a resident of Moriah, probably that same year. Oliver died June 14, 1841.

Living close to his son and daughter-in-law was the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 soldier, John Titus. I will tell you about him in my next post.


Works cited:

Bemis, Charles A. History of the Town of Marlborough: Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Press of Geo. H. Ellis, Boston, 1881. Print.

Messer, Don. “Re:PARMENTER, Jason, Deliverance MA.” Geneology.com. March 2, 1999. http://genforum.genealogy.com/parment.... November 29, 2014. Web.

Titus, Harold. Crossing the River. BookLocker.com, Inc., 2011. Print.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh, Earl Percy -- "Contumacious Arrogance"

At the Great Bridge in Cambridge rebel forces, mostly from villages north and south of Boston, waited. Hugh, Earl Percy, having that morning encountered the removal of the bridge’s planks, recognized that they had set a trap. He would pretend to enter it. He would send his flanker units through Cambridge ahead of the column as if to clear its way to the bridge. The column would turn left onto a country lane and then onto a secondary road. It would turn left again onto the Cambridge-Charlestown road northeast of Cambridge and march toward Charlestown. The flanker companies would reverse direction, reach the Charlestown road, and hurry toward the rear of the retreating column.

Percy executed his feint; his flanker companies drew fire; his column reached the Cambridge-Charlestown road. "This sudden change of direction, and the brilliant use of an obscure and unexpected road, took the New England men by surprise. It broke the circle of fire around Percy's brigade” (Fischer 259). Staring down the empty road toward the distant bridge, an aide to Lieutenant Frederick MacKenzie, Percy’s Adjutant-General, exclaimed, “We threw them!”

Several miles out of Cambridge the column ascended Prospect Hill, the last location where militia units were assembled. "Percy advanced his cannon to the front of his column, and cleared the hill with a few well-placed rounds. It was the last of his ammunition for the artillery” (Fischer 260). The exhausted column resumed its march. It reached the safety of Breeds and Bunker Hills, outside Charlestown, in near darkness. Gage’s men were ferried across the Charles River to Boston. Safe in their barracks, they had considerable cause to reflect on their misuse and survival and to give credit and place blame where they believed it to be due. As must have Hugh, Earl Percy. From “Crossing the River”:



In the hearts and minds of his officers, arthritic Lieutenant Colonel Hugh, Earl Percy, exhibiting extraordinary wisdom and courage, deserved full credit for the army’s deliverance.

To the exhausted soldiers in the darkness of Charlestown Square Percy was but one more horse-hauled Merry-Andrew who had placed everybody at death’s door. That night, secure in their barracks, jack-coves of every type would praise themselves for their survival. Some would thank Lord God the Protector. A few, not the least intelligent, would credit Lady Luck.

Percy’s criticism -- analytical, evidential -- was inwardly directed.

It vexed him that he, less condescending, less biased than his peers in his judgment of the English commoner, had, like his peers, disdained the militia.

Their shared hubris had come within a hair’s width of costing General Gage a third of his garrison!

Beginning with Colonel Smith’s retreat the provincials had fought independently from behind stone walls, trees, and boulders. They had fired their weapons from the windows and doorways of countless houses. Using their numerical strength on Menotomy’s broad plain, they had just about overwhelmed him. When he had turned his army away from their strength at the Great Bridge, outlying militiamen at Prospect Hill had conducted a gallant assault. Because they had demonstrated provocatively their willingness to fight without protective cover, he had had to presume their willingness to attack him similarly here.

How narrowly he had evaded disaster! He had used the last of his cannon balls to fight his way beyond Prospect Hill. Prior to his departure from Boston he had issued but twenty-four cartridges per soldier. He had eschewed taking the ammunition wagon. His unconscionable bias had imperiled all.

Had the provincials massed their companies along the Charlestown road instead of at the Great Bridge, they would have vanquished him. That they had not done so he attributed to diffused leadership. He doubted that any one rebel officer had had the authority to enforce such a decision. That failing would be rectified.

How blatantly shortsighted had been his appraisal. In one day he had been taught a lesson that officialdom in London and officers of general rank might never comprehend. The King’s policy, which Parliament had enacted and he had opposed, had abjectly failed. He and all loyal countrymen could not rectify its disastrous consequence if they did not first quell their leadership’s contumacious arrogance.

The clattering of hooves on the Square’s cobblestone ended Percy’s introspection. Having prefatorily saluted, the courier offered the sealed envelope. Percy hastily read General Gage’s message.

“My Lord, Gen. Pigot will pass over with a reinforcement and fresh ammunition. The boats which carry him may return with the grenadiers and light infantry who must be most fatigued, and the wounded. I propose sending over Capt. Montresor immediately with intrenching tools to throw up a sort of redoubt on the hill, and to leave 200 men and guns on it, and if it's advisable during the course of the night, to bring your Lordship's men over. The fresh brigade may carry on the works. Fresh ammunition has been ordered long ago.”

The message raised the gate. A torrent of needs issued forth. He wanted to sit for awhile in a comfortable chair. He wanted delivered to his hands his favorite wine. He wanted hot food prepared by his Boston chef. He wanted to luxuriate in a warm tub. He wanted to rest his exhausted body between freshly laundered sheets (Titus 388-389).



Percy’s regiment fought June 17, 1775, in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Recognizing the stupidity of General Gage subordinate William Howe’s planned frontal assault on the rebel fortifications on Breeds Hill, Percy refused to participate. He would write to a friend that his brigade had “almost entirely been cut to pieces.” In October General Gage was recalled to London. Much to Percy’s dismay, General Howe replaced him.

On March 5, 1776, despite his expressed opposition, Percy was given the command of two thousand four hundred men to attack rebel cannon that George Washington had positioned on Dorchester Heights hours earlier in the dark of night. Unbeknownst to the British, the cannon had been transported by sleds to Boston from Fort Ticonderoga, New York. Informed tardily of their arrival, General Howe had not immediately acted, believing that one night’s fortification by the enemy could do little to forestall his assault the following day. “When morning light revealed the strength and extent of their defenses, a British army engineer expressed his astonishment. Such works, in his opinion, could not have been built by less than 15,000 or 20,000 men.” Howe’s reaction had been to “attack at once before the defenses became impregnable and Boston, in consequence, too exposed to hold” (Smith 651). The soldiers assigned to carry the works, anticipating a second Breed’s Hill, were loaded into boats at dusk, but a violent storm that evening prevented them from being rowed across the river. The next day, taking the advice of his senior officers, General Howe canceled the attack order, deciding instead to leave the city.

Promoted thereafter a division commander, Percy participated in Washington’s expulsion from New York City in July 1776. On November 16, 1776, Percy directed the capture of Fort Washington, at the northern tip of Manhattan Island. Weeks later, serving under General Henry Clinton, Percy took part in the uncontested occupation of Newport, Rhode Island. He remained in Newport for five months.

The antipathy that Howe and Percy felt for each other climaxed over a dispute about how much hay Howe’s horses in New Jersey were to be allotted. Howe’s logistics major and Percy disagreed about the necessary amount. Taking the major’s estimation, Howe reprimanded Percy. (The major’s estimate would prove to be incorrect) Percy was furious that Howe had chosen to accept the judgment of a mere major, not that of a higher ranking officer, a peer, and the heir to a dukedom. Percy requested leave to sail to England. Howe granted it. Having inherited his mother’s barony in December and thereafter elevated to the House of Lords, he never returned.

An exceptionally generous person, Percy had been esteemed by his regiment. Unlike most officers of his time, he had opposed corporal punishment. He had involved himself directly in the provisioning and victualing of his men. He had sent home at his own expense the widows of his soldiers killed at Breed’s Hill. Later, he had provided them financial assistance. Succeeding his father in 1786 as the Duke of Northumberland, he earned notoriety for his generosity as a landlord. Twice each week he invited his tenants and local tradespeople to his social gatherings at Alnwick Castle, his place of residence. When corn prices fell in 1815, he reduced his tenants’ rent by 25 percent.

Two years after his return to England, Parliament permitted Percy to divorce his wife, Lady Anne Crichton-Stuart, on grounds of adultery. On May 23 of the same year, 1779, he married Frances Julia Burrell, with whom he parented six daughters and three sons. Despite his family connections, he never succeeded in politics. Initially, he supported Prime Minister William Pitt, but, complaining that he had not been properly rewarded for his services in America, he sided eventually with the opposition. In May 1801, he became a knight of the Order of the Garter. Suffering during his final years from frequent and excessive gout, he died July 10, 1817. He was buried in the Northumberland vault within Westminster Abbey.

How might have the course of the Revolutionary War been changed had Percy, not William Howe, been General Thomas Gage’s replacement?

Works Cited:

Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print.

Smith, Page. A New Age Now Begins. Vol. One. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1976. Print.

Titus, Harold. Crossing the River. BookLocker.com, Inc., 2011. Print.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh, Earl Percy -- "We Are Indeed Fortunate"

It was in the early morning hours of April 19 that General Gage received a message from Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith that reinforcements were necessary. Smith and Major John Pitcairn had heard distant meeting house bells tolled as their force of 700 soldiers advanced toward Lexington. Clearly, militia companies were being summoned. Smith’s request for assistance was the one wise decision he would make that day.

Gage had placed Earl Percy in command of a reinforcement army of 1,000 men. Percy had not received Gage’s first order -- written at 3 a.m. -- to muster his men and depart. Customarily, orders sent from Gage to Percy went first to the quarters of Percy’s Brigade Major, who thereupon sent them to Percy and his four field commanders. Because the Brigade Major had not yet returned from a late night revel, Gage’s order had been left in the care of the Major’s servant. The man had forgotten about it when the Major returned. Realizing that Percy’s army had not assembled, Gage rewrote his order at 5 a.m., an hour after he had wanted Percy to march. This message was delivered directly to Percy. Two hours later, Percy waited impatiently on his horse in the middle of Scollay Square.

He had ordered his brigade, the Royal Marine Battalion, two supply wagons, and two artillery pieces to muster at 6 a.m. At 6:30, save for the Marine Battalion, all had been present and prepared to leave. It was now 7 a.m., three hours past the time General Gage had originally wanted Percy to march. Here is an excerpt from my novel “Crossing the River.”


The young nobleman had controlled his temper. To an uninformed observer he was a sanguine commander awaiting the return of his adjutant, enjoying during the while the crisp morning air. When the captain appeared at 7:05, Percy was close to exploding.

“Your Lordship. The Marine Battalion is now being assembled and equipped,” the adjutant stated.

“Now?! Do you mean they have just now begun their preparation?!”

“Yes sir. That is correct.” He licked his lips. “The marine duty officer insisted, rather vehemently, that he had received no order to assemble.”

Stunned, Percy refused to speak. Finally, incredulously, “I received my order an hour ago! That cannot be!”

The adjutant shook his head, made no attempt to answer.

Percy's face contorted. “By God, we shall know why!”

“Yes sir!”

“Go to the Province House! Report this to the General! Now!”

Hammering the front of his saddle, Percy released a torrent of obscenities. Bored soldiers turned to stare. He was making a spectacle of himself! Bugger that! Twice incompetence had undercut him, and he had not yet progressed one yard (Titus 230)!


Percy would learn from his adjutant that the Royal Marines’ orders had been placed unopened on the desk of their commander, John Pitcairn. Not one subordinate had been informed of Pitcairn’s absence. The marine detachment hurriedly assembled. At 8:45 a.m., Percy’s army marched across Boston Neck.

To reach Cambridge and the road to Lexington and Concord, the column had to march across the Great Bridge, which spanned the Charles River. Rebel provincials had removed the bridge’s planks.

Excerpt follows

Percy raised his spyglass. There, stacked beside a shed close by the north end of the bridge -- in plain sight to provoke him -- were the missing planks. Moving his glass, Percy examined the bridge’s string-pieces. Several men, wrapping their arms and legs around the pieces, could cross the river. They would need an hour to replank the bridge.

It was another impediment not of his making. The day seemed already half-spent. Not having received any intelligence of Colonel Smith’s situation, he was bedeviled by two contradictory thoughts. His assistance would not be required. Too much time had elapsed for him to prevent the Colonel’s destruction (Titus 280).


Earl Percy’s next difficulty was ascertaining which of several roads exiting Cambridge was the one he needed to take. No subordinate offered a confident opinion. There was nobody outdoors for him to question. Suddenly, a young man left a nearby tavern. Percy’s had the man brought to him.

Excerpt follows

“Your name, sir.”

“Isaac Smith.” The provincial looked past Percy’s horse.

“You are a resident of Cambridge, are you not?”

“I am a tutor at the College.” The man rubbed together the heels of his hands.

“Mr. Smith. I need your assistance. Which is the road to Concord?”

The young tutor stared, looked away, slid his hands down the sides of his trousers.

“I believe you know. As one gentleman to another, I request this simple direction.”

“I … cannot tell you that information.” Smith’s face crumpled. He looked miserably at Percy’s stirrups.

This man is not rancorous, Percy thought. Neither is he deceitful. He is patriotic. Most importantly, he is afraid. He is, I conceive, malleable.

“You need not be apprehensive. Whatever you choose to tell me, I shall release you.” Percy smiled gratuitously.

The young man made eye contact.

“I call upon your honor, sir. Which is the way to Concord?”

About to speak, the tutor hesitated, grimaced. Five seconds later he pointed.

“You are certain that is the road?” Percy sat very straight and still.

Isaac Smith again met Percy's scrutiny. “I am a man of honor, Colonel,” he rasped. “I do not lie.”

Right palm raised, Percy answered. “Men of honor are a scarce commodity. We are indeed fortunate” (Titus 281).


Hearing distant, concerted musket fire, notified that Smith’s army was retreating under great duress, Percy deployed his forces in a large rectangle on high ground just east of Lexington. Into the rectangle staggered the survivors of Colonel Smith’s 700 men force. Percy provided them an hour’s rest. Meanwhile, his artillery pieces bombarded concentrations of militia units assembled in Lexington. Taking command of Smith’s men, Percy determined the marching order of the vastly enlarged column. Smith’s men would lead, the provincials having inflicted most of their punishment on the middle and rear of the original column. Flanker squads would deploy off each side of the road to kill as many militiamen as they could. Where heavy concentrations of the enemy waited, he would utilize his artillery pieces.

At Menotomy (Arlington today) there was fierce combat. Initially, his men marched through a narrow gauntlet: a row of houses to his left and a 75 to 100 foot cliff to his right. Beyond the gauntlet lay flatter land and the town proper. Here, segments of militia companies, without protective cover, challenged Percy’s swarming flankers. Something heavy thumped Percy’s stomach.

Excerpt follows


Looking at the front of his coat, he saw several threads protruding through an empty buttonhole.

Percy issued his instructions. Afterward, he marveled.

Had God just spared him? Had he been sent a divine message? Was his survival an essential part of a grand design? Christ’s blood, how could he, or any man, know?!

All that he had experienced argued that man determined his own fate, that God was ever the impartial observer.

Engaging in pointless conundrums, especially now, was wasted contemplation. If he were to make anything of this event, it would be: his coat button had, as his opinion of these rebels, been shot to pieces.

How he had underestimated these provincials. They had fought -- they continued to fight -- with savage determination. The past fifteen minutes a half dozen or so had advanced to within twenty yards of his person. Contrary to every senior officer’s expectation, these commoners, directed -- he had to believe -- by veterans of the late war, had withstood His Majesty’s finest!

But the King’s Foot, his soldiers, warranted greater acclaim. Outnumbered, at times encircled, they had fought valiantly! Their inexorable ferocity, their unparalleled resiliency portended their survival.

How much longer, how much farther could they persist? At what point does the body negate what the spirit charges? Having witnessed the utter debilitation of Colonel Smith’s forces at Lexington, he feared quite soon. His field pieces, shattering stone walls, tree limbs, sides of houses, sheds, and barns, had scattered lethal concentrations of militia. Following each cannonade Percy had restarted the column’s retreat. Once more, he believed, his six-pounders would extricate him. Leaving the village of Menotomy, recuperating while they marched, his soldiers would journey to Cambridge, where, he presumed, the rebels waited at the Great Bridge, where by feigning a return to the Bridge he might save his command (Titus 368-369).


Work Cited:

Titus, Harold. Crossing the River. BookLocker.com, Inc., 2011. Print.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh, Earl Percy -- An Anomaly

It was Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh, Earl Percy who saved General Thomas Gage’s 700 men expeditionary force from capitulation or annihilation during its retreat from Concord, Massachusetts Colony, April 19, 1775. It is a wonder that Percy thereafter played such a brief, insignificant role in Great Britain’s subsequent attempts to vanquish its rebellious colonies. For that reason, perhaps, Percy has received scant attention in general history books. His accomplishments and his character deserve our notice.

When he disembarked with his regiment in Boston July 5, 1774, Percy, already a lieutenant-colonel, was a month short of being thirty-two years of age. An aristocrat with close ties to King George III, he, like his father, the Earl of Northumberland, was a member of Parliament. His history and that of his father prior to 1774, although complicated, need to be presented.

Born Hugh Smithson August 14, 1742, Percy was the son of Sir Hugh Smithson and Lady Elizabeth Seymour, heiress of the House of Percy. The last Earl of Northumberland had died in 1670, leaving his daughter, Lady Elizabeth Percy, heiress to the title. Upon her death in 1722, her son, Algernon Seymour, had been created Baron Percy in recognition of her inheritance. Algernon died in 1750. His title, Baron Percy, and much of his estate were bestowed on his daughter, Lady Elizabeth Seymour. Lady Elizabeth had married ten years earlier Sir Hugh Smithson. Sir Hugh wanted the heritage of his wife’s grandmother -- the Percy name and Northumberland title -- bestowed on him and, eventually, his son. A special act of Parliament changed Sir Hugh’s family name from Smithson to Percy. He became a knight of the Garter in 1757, the Order of the Garter the most senior of all British orders of knighthood, its membership limited to the monarch and 25 knights. In October 1766 the government awarded him the title Earl Percy and the Duke of Northumberland.

When Hugh the father became the duke of Northumberland in 1766, Hugh the son was addressed as Earl Percy. He would become the Earl of Northumberland upon his father’s death.

Percy was educated at Eton from 1753 to 1758. He volunteered for military service in 1759 and purchased the rank of Captain of the 85th Regiment of Foot at the age of 17. He participated in several battles in Europe during the Seven Years War. He purchased the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the 11th Foot in April 1762. In 1763 he was elected to represent Westminster in the House of Commons. He married July 2, 1764, Lady Anne Crichton-Stuart, daughter of the influential Lord Bute, the King’s mentor. He was immediately appointed the rank of colonel and the aide-de-camp to the King. He was all of 22. He was given the command of the 5th Regiment of Foot in 1768, the regiment he would lead April 19, 1775.

Percy was a physically unattractive man, very slight in physique with a large nose. He had poor eyesight. He suffered from chronic gout. But he “was honorable and brave, candid and decent, impeccably mannered, and immensely generous with his wealth” (Fischer 259). By 1768, both he and his father had distanced themselves from the King’s policy of governance of the American colonies. Both men voted against the Stamp Act and voted for its repeal.

Despite his opposition to his government’s administrative colonial policies, Percy chose to accompany his regiment to America. Being of high nobility and military rank, he had the option to decline. The Earl of Effington had done so. The Earl of Chatham had ordered his son to leave the army rather than go to America. Because he had chosen the military as his career, Percy believed he was duty bound to serve wherever he was sent.

Like Major John Pitcairn, he despised corporal punishment. “At a time when other commanders were resorting to floggings and firing squads on Boston Common, he led his regiment by precept and example” (Fischer 259). His regiment became devoted to him.

Initially, Percy sympathized with the colonialists. Although he socialized openly with individual Bostonians, he became contemptuous of them as a group. General Gage bypassed him in selecting Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith and Major John Pitcairn to lead the 700 men expeditionary force to Concord. The following scene from my novel “Crossing the River” portrays Percy’s qualities of character and state of mind prior to General Gage’s selection.

***

A heavy mist lay upon Boston Common. Hugh, Earl Percy had been watching his soldiers perform their daily, except for Sunday, early morning close-order drills. Once the refuse of the streets of London and the ports of the Channel, rigorously disciplined, provided continuity, they had become good soldiers, many, he believed, good men.

He was cognizant of the acute discontent rampant in other brigades, evidenced by the recent spate in attempted desertions. His own men were likewise weary of the banality of barracks life, of the repetition of incessant drill. They, too, had suffered the provocative insults of the town’s populace. Their generalized discontent notwithstanding, they had maintained their allegiance to him. Long ago, looking after their collective needs, he had won their fidelity.

Months before they had come to Boston, Percy had given each man a new blanket and a golden guinea. Laying out 700 pounds, he had chartered a ship to transport to Boston their wives and children. Before coming to Boston and here as recently as three weeks ago, to inculcate fortitude Percy, a thin, bony man suffering from hereditary gout, had on long training exercises disdained the use of his horse.

Percy’s officers revered him. He had honored their allegiance with frequent invitations to his table, at the mansion at the corner of Tremont and Winter Streets, formerly the residence of the royal governor, a fine wooden house surrounded by wide lawns.

Without connivance, without deliberate forethought, he had fashioned a loyalty that other brigade commanders envied. An intelligent, attentive, generous aristocrat in His Majesty’s service, Hugh, Earl Percy was an anomaly.

A member of Parliament, a young nobleman who one day would become the Duke of Northumberland, Percy, like his father, had opposed Parliament's tax measures that had led ultimately to the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor. Lord North's Tory government knew well Percy's liberal, Whig viewpoint; but they knew as well his soldierly allegiance to English law and king.

He had arrived off Boston July 5 of the previous year, a month and three days after the closure of the Port. He had initially approved of General Gage's restrained enforcement of Parliament's punitive expectation that Boston recant its destructive act. The General’s policy had approximated Percy's accustomed mode of social interaction: respect people as human beings, mollify discontent, seek reasoned compromise, in specific instances help the indigent.

The immediate assistance he had given the Boston family made homeless by a fire had been done without calculation. The compliments he had sent to a merchant's wife on the excellence of her landscape drawings had been sincere. He very much enjoyed the respectable people of Boston. He had entertained many of the town's gentlemen. Often, after the early morning drills had been completed, he had walked across the Common to the house of John Hancock to have breakfast with the acknowledged rebel leader, his Aunt Lydia, and, occasionally, Hancock's rumored fiancée, the spirited Dolly Quincy, who, if gossip was truth, “fancied” him.

In matters great and small the nobleman was percipient.

He had entertained the thought that the king's ministers had sent him to Boston to serve by example. If his presence reduced somewhat the hostility that much of the citizenry directed toward British officers, perhaps in time, with other officers emulating his conduct, reasonable Bostonians might modify their adversarial judgments. Like rainwater percolating to the roots of parched trees, their altered perception of British superintendence might, then, permeate the minds of the less rational.

Thus, initially, his superiors may have hypothesized. If he had mollified to any extent the hostility of even a handful of righteous provincials, recent events had rendered moot that accomplishment.

…

During the past six months Percy had written letters criticizing the General’s high-mindedness. “The general’s great lenity and moderation serve only to make them more daring and insolent,” he had written his friend, Henry Reveley, in England, after 400 New Hampshire militiamen had seized royal powder and cannon from Portsmouth’s dilapidated fortress.

Charitable as he had been to individual inhabitants, his opinion of them as a group, upon immediate exposure to them, had swiftly hardened. He had been appalled at the nastiness of the Boston mob. They and the people that incited them were bullies, cowards. “Like all other cowards, they are cruel and tyrannical,” he had informed Reveley. The Congregational clergy’s practice of denying Loyalists admittance to their churches was abhorrent. These rebels are “the most designing artful villains in the world,” he had written to his father. Selfish and strident in the pursuit of their objectives, they were incapable of disciplined, cooperative accomplishment. Town meetings were never-ending debates. Their town militias -- independent, jealous, wrangling entities -- talked much but accomplished little. The best he had to say about his nine months amongst the people of Boston was that his tenure had been instructive.

The morning mist emblematic of attitudes contrary to his nature, he stared a good half minute at the drab river.

Questions.

Which day this week would General
Gage order the seizure of Concord’s stores?

What measures would the General take to forestall armed resistance?

What exigencies should the commander of the expedition strive to anticipate?

Would he, Percy, be that commander (Titus 86-89)?

Work Cited:

Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print.

Titus. Harold. Crossing the River. BookLocker.com, Inc., 2011. Print.