What were they fighting for?

As we look back to April 1775, we are tempted to oversimplify our conflict with our colonial masters. From our vantage point, the outbreak of war seemed inevitable, and our independence from Great Britain an act of Providence. In reality, however, things weren’t that clear, and the outcome was never certain.

This was certainly true for the farmers and tradesmen of Stoneham in the 1770s. How do you go from being a loyal subject of the King to a rebel shouldering a musket to defend your rights?

We find a clue to the emerging conflict of our Stoneham ancestors in a resolution passed at Town Meeting in January 1773 and sent to Boston. Historian William B. Stevens writes that the wording may have come from the Congregational minister, Rev. John Searle. A passage reads:

We fully join in sentiment with you, that the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, unless justly forfeited by some injurious abuse of it. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift.

Three years before the Declaration of Independence, this resolution laid out the fundamental right of humans to be free from abuse by a foreign power. For the dozen or so enslaved men and women in Stoneham, it would have also been heard as affirming their right to be free.

A year later in 1774 we find the men of Stoneham signing a Covenant that, while restating their loyalty to the Crown, expresses their intention to boycott all British goods, including tea, until the colonists’ grievances are addressed.

At the same time, we see the mustering of a militia in Stoneham. Their role was to protect their town, but also to join, if needed, in the colony’s defense.

It wasn’t the first time Stoneham men had taken up arms. During the French and Indian War, approximately 30 men (in a town of 300) had enlisted. Then, however, they had fought on behalf of the English, some marching as far as Canada.

In the early months of 1775, led by Capt. Samuel Sprague, Stoneham men were gathering for drills beside the church. But what must have gone through their minds, as tensions escalated between the British and the residents?

All we know is that in the wee hours of the morning on April 19, word came to Captain Sprague that British forces were marching to Concord to capture munitions. The alarm was given and the Stoneham “minutemen” set off for Lexington. On the way they separated into small groups, arriving in time to engage the redcoats as they returned from Concord.

From town clerk and deacon Silas Dean, writing in 1843, we learn of three Stoneham men who fought in the battle, barely escaping with their lives. Their names are Edward Bucknam, Timothy Matthews and James Willay. Bucknam was grazed by a bullet, which passed between his skull and ear. Matthews and Willey both came home with bullet holes in their hats.

No one in Stoneham could have seen what would follow. Yet their eagerness to protect their community and to achieve a more just form of government must have been central to their motivation.

Two months after the battle at Lexington, Captain Sprague led a company of Stoneham men in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It may surprise you that these men included six “patriots of color,” that is, free and enslaved blacks.

Next week I’ll tell the story of Stoneham’s forgotten patriots, the black soldiers who fought at Bunker Hill and in other battles in the Revolutionary War.

Copyright by Ben Jacques