previous next

[77]

Capt. Samuel was a large, athletic man, of a strong constitution, and recovered. He lived till Feb. 2, 1793, carrying to his grave fourteen wounds. He was not at the Concord fight, as has been stated. Before the Revolution he was a Captain of the Royal Dragoons, but as soon as an opportunity offered, he joined the patriot party and performed his share of duty in the army.

Capt. Samuel was father to William Whittemore, who graduated at Harvard College in 1755. He was born July 27, 1696, and his tombstone, now in the burying-ground in West Cambridge, has the following inscription, viz.: ‘In memory of Capt. Samuel Whittemore, who departed this life Feb. 2, 1793. Aged 98 years.’

His children urged the old man to go over to ‘Hill's’ (where all fled for safety from the enemy, who were soon expected to return from Lexington); but he sat knocking his flint and said he should not go— ‘he was going to get a shot at them when they came back!’ His daughter said, ‘Father, they will take you.’ Still rapping his flint, and not raising his head, he said: ‘They'll find it hard work to do it.’ After some weeks he so far recovered as to recognize his family, and one of his daughters asked him ‘if he was not sorry that he went out?’—‘No,’ said he, ‘I should do just so again.’

Samuel Whittemore was grandson of Thomas Whittemore, who came to this country about 1643, and settled at Mystic side (Malden); he was descended from William, of Hitchen, co. of Herts, in England, who was born about 1540, and had brothers Thomas and Rowland.

Cambridge, April 19, 1859.

Samuel Frost and Seth Russell were the two men reported missing from Menotomy after the battle of the 19th. They were made prisoners by the British, and were confined on board one of the men of war at Boston, until exchanged, June 6, 1775, at Charlestown.—See Frothingham's Siege of Boston, 111-113. Sketches of both these men are given in the Genealogies. E. Russell's Salem Gazette, under date of May 5, 1775, reports them ‘missing—supposed to be on board one of the men of war.’ ‘A Journal kept during the Time that Boston was Shut up in 1775-6, by Timothy Newell, Esq., one of the Selectmen of the Town’ (see Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i., fourth series, p. 262), contains the following, under date of June 6, 1775: ‘Mr. John Peck, Mr. Frost, Mr. Brewer, and sundry others, discharged from on board the Admiral, in exchange of prisoners, viz. Major Dunbar, Capt. Gould, and a number of wounded soldiers.’

Smith's Address contains very full particulars of the doings in Menotomy during the retreat of the British. Two incidents

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Menotomy (Massachusetts, United States) (2)
Medford (Massachusetts, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: