The Ipswich Minutemen at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775

At about 10 p.m. on April 18, 1775, eight hundred British troops were ferried across the Charles River to Cambridge and began marching toward Concord. Church bells rang and Paul Revere made his famous ride. Reaching the Lexington Common at five the next morning, they were met by armed Provincials, and shot and killed eight, with several others wounded. The British pressed forward to Concord, six miles away, where they engaged in another battle with the Minutemen at the North Bridge.

Post riders quickly delivered the news along Bay Road, reaching Lynn before sunrise and Danvers by 9 a.m., where militiamen immediately ceased their morning chores and marched at a frantic pace to encounter the British at Menotomy, now a part of the town of Arlington, achieving sixteen miles in only four hours. Here, the British retreat was met by a large force of minutemen; 40 British troops ad 25 rebels died in the 3rd battle of the day, including several men from Lynn and Danvers. Several British soldiers were captured and hauled to the Ipswich jail. By the time the British reached safety in Charlestown, they had been marching and fighting for almost twenty-four hours.

Thousands of Essex County militia arrived too late to do battle. Gloucester and Marblehead, with their vulnerable ports, were the only towns not to respond. The news reached Topsfield about 10:00 a.m. and two Wenham companies, eight from Ipswich, and three from Rowley began marching toward Boston.

News of Lexington and Concord Reaches Ipswich

Thomas Franklin Waters wrote in Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony: “The day was well advanced before the tidings reached Ipswich. The alarm was sounded, and the minutemen dropped their tools, left the plows in the furrows, seized their arms, and rallied at the appointed rendezvous. The march soon began and company after company hurried away to the shrill music of fife and drum. Capt. Nathaniel Wade, Capt. Thomas Bumham, the schoolmaster, and Capt. Daniel Rogers marched at the head of their companies. Capt. Moses Jewett led his horse troop. Capt. Abram How, with his 43 men, marched from the Linebrook Parish; Capt. Jonathan Cogswell from Chebacco, and Capt. James Patch, and Dr. Elisha Whitney from the Hamlet. The day was so hot that the British regulars dropped in their tracks, overcome by the heat, but the hardy minutemen of Ipswich pushed on to Medford, 24 miles away, before they halted for the night.”

The men in the Ipswich alarm companies numbered:

• 63 Chebacco Parish men under Capt. Jon Cogswell Jr.,
• 43 Linebrook men under Capt. Abram How
• 33 men with the horse troop under Capt. Moses Jewett
• 36 Hamlet Parish men under Capt. James Patch
• 51 Ipswich men under Capt. Daniel Rogers
• 51 Ipswich men under Capt. Nathaniel Wade
• 39 Hamlet Parish men under Capt. Elisha Whitney
• 59 Ipswich under Capt. Thomas Burnham.

By April 20, 1775, ten thousand minutemen had reached Cambridge, and within two days, the British soldiers in Boston were encircled by 20,000 hostile forces. The Provincial Congress, meeting in Watertown, called for an army of 30,000 to maintain the siege at Boston. The Ipswich company marched to Watertown and received orders from the Provincial Committee of Safety assigning the company to a station in Cambridge.

The Great Ipswich Fright

The population of Ipswich at that time was a little over 4,000 people. On the morning of April 21, Capt. Jonathan Burnham and his company from Hampton, NH, reached Ipswich, only to discover that the people remaining were in a panic. A rumor had spread that British Men of War were anchored in the river, and their soldiers were advancing on the town, burning and slaughtering, to rescue the prisoners captured at Menotomy. Almost the entire population of the town fled north to Newbury, where its residents, upon hearing the news, fled across the Merrimac into New Hampshire. The episode ended the next day when the refugees learned that it was a false alarm, but it is known in history as the Great Ipswich Fright. Four days later, the population of Gloucester fled, taking refuge in Ipswich.

Encampment at Watertown

On May 7, 1775, Col. Joseph Hodgkins of Ipswich wrote a letter to his wife Sarah, the first of over a hundred letters they would exchange throughout four years of battle, “Loving wife, I take this opportunity to write a line to you to inform you that I am in good health at present, for which I desire to be thankful. I am also very glad to hear that you & the children are well. By your letter I received this morning at Watertown, I also received the things that you sent me. I have nothing new to write. The Company is well. I want to know whether you have got a pasture for the cows, for I cannot tell when I shall come home. I received Martha Kinsman’s letter, and am glad to hear that she is well. Tell Martha. Major Wade is very well. Brother Perkins sends his love to you and all his friends. But it is now almost dinner time and I must conclude by subscribing myself, your Loving husband, until death.”

The Ipswich Town Watch

On May 15, the Town of Ipswich voted that four persons be on guard as the Town Watch on Castle Hill, and that “a suitable quantity of tar be obtained to be set a-fire on a beacon erected for this purpose, so that the town may be alarmed in the night, and that the flag be hoisted in the daytime to give notice of the enemy.”

By the middle of June 1775, an estimated 15,000 Provincial soldiers had formed a 9-mile semi-circle around Boston, extending from Roxbury on the south to Medford on the north. British General Howe’s plan to sweep the Patriots from behind was thwarted when the Committee of Safety ordered the erection of a defensive fortification on seventy-five-foot Bunker Hill in Charlestown. The soldiers, including over 400 troops from Essex County, marched 2 1/2 miles on the evening of June 16 from Cambridge to Breed’s Hill, which was determined to be more defensible, despite being thirty-five feet lower. Across the Mystic River, British General Howe was preparing to ferry the first of 3000 troops to attack the Americans. Upon hearing this news, American General Ward ordered additional troops to march to Charlestown.

Capt Nathaniel Wade’s company and Capt. Abraham Dodge’s company fought from the trenches in Col. Moses Little’s regiment. The first British assault began shortly before 3:00 PM on June 17, and four hundred buildings in Charlestown were set on fire to prevent an attack from the rear. The British sent in two additional waves of soldiers, accompanied by a heavy bombardment of the Provincial fortifications on the Hill. The sound of cannons was said to have been heard as far away as Newbury, where the smoke from the battle gave the appearance that Boston was burning. With a limited amount of powder, the Americans were ordered to put four buckshot to a bullet, and not to fire till the British were within point-blank shot distance. Down to their last powder, now fighting by hand, the American forces finally withdrew, having inflicted approximately 1,054 British casualties, and receiving 450 of their own.

Only one Ipswich man, 18-year-old Jessie Story of Chebacco Parish, was killed, the first Ipswich man to lay down his life in the struggle for Independence. More Patriots fell during the retreat than when standing at the breastworks.

Shortly after the battle of Bunker Hill, the Provincial Congress ordered that 10 companies of 50 men each should be raised in Essex County, to be under the direction of the Committee of Correspondence of the town where they were stationed. An Ipswich company was dispatched to Gloucester to aid in its coastal defence. The privateer schooner, “Lee,” bound for Boston, was captured, and its large store of munitions was carted at once to Cambridge.

Joseph Hodgkins, First Lieutenant in Capt. Wade’s company gave details of the battle in a letter to his wife, Sarah Perkins: “Cambridge, June y 18, 1775. Dear wife. I take this opportunity to inform you that I am well at Present. I would just inform you that we had a very hot engagement yesterday. But God Preserved all of us for which mercy I Desire Ever to be thankful.”

The courageous actions of the Patriots at Battle Hill were the last major Massachusetts skirmish with the British. American soldiers came and went, maintaining a tight grip on the city of Boston. On the morning of March 17, 1776, the British awoke to the amazing sight of Patriot cannons aimed at them from Dorchester Heights.

Hodgkins wrote to Sarah on March 18, 1776: “My dear, I wrote a letter yesterday morning, and soon after I wrote there appeared a great movement among the enemy, and we soon found that they had left Bunker Hill & Boston, and all gone on board the shipping & our army took possession of Bunker Hill and also of Boston, but none went to Boston but those that have had the smallpox. Brother can inform you of matters better than I can by writing. All I can say is that we must move somewhere very soon, but I would not have you make yourself uneasy about that, for our enemy seems to be fleeing before us, which seems to give a spring to our spirits.”

In 1783, there was great rejoicing in Ipswich when they received news of the peace agreement with England. Over 25,000 American combatants lost their lives during the eight-year conflict.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Tagney, Ronald N.: A County in Revolution
• Tagney, Ronald N.: World Turned Upside Down, Essex County During America’s Turbulent Years, 1763-1790
• Wade & Lively: This Glorious Cause: The Adventures of Two Company Officers in Washington’s Army
• Historic Ipswich: Ipswich and The American Revolution: The Revolutionary War
• Account of the Soldiers of Chebacco Parish at Bunker Hill
• Raphael, Ray: A People’s History of the American Revolution
• Waters, Thomas: Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Vol. 2
• Arlington Historical Society: The Battle of Menotomy

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