The next day was “rainy and frosty”—no doubt miserable weather in which to walk, and they made it only to Colonel Joseph Buckminster’s tavern in Framingham. The tavern was located on the northeast side of what is now Buckminster Square and was operated by Buckminster’s son Thomas (grandson of the first Joseph Buckminster, who was discussed at length in Chapter Two). By an odd coincidence, Thomas’s older sister was the wife of Colonel Jonathan Brewer, the Waltham tavern keeper. The travelers were not impressed by the accommodations: “On our entering the house we did not much like the appearance of things; we asked for dinner and they gave us some sausages,” but they found that their hosts, especially the colonel’s wife, were mollified by their “prais[ing] every thing exceedingly,” so they stayed the night.
The next morning they hit the road for Worcester and, after making a wrong turn at Westborough, reached the Isaac Jones tavern there by 5:00 p.m. When they woke up the next morning, the landlord offered them tea for breakfast, once again indicating the ineffectiveness of their efforts to travel incognito, although they were at least staying with a friend of their cause. As it was Sunday, they dared not travel should they raise the suspicions or ire of the devoutly churchgoing New Englanders. That night the proprietor said they had visitors, but the spies refused to see them. The next morning they learned from Jones that they had been Loyalists from Petersham who reported that all the Loyalists there had been disarmed, and that the Loyalists in Worcester could expect the same fate shortly. Finally recognizing the danger of their whereabouts and mission being so well broadcast, they were not much comforted by Jones’s assertion that “only a few friends of the government” knew they were in town.
On Monday, February 27, 1775, the party headed back to Framingham, arriving at Buckminster’s tavern at about 6:00 p.m. There they saw a most interesting sight—the Framingham militia drilling on the town green not far from the tavern. The spies admitted that they “did not feel very easy at seeing such a number so very near us; however, they did not know who we were, and took little or no notice of us.” (It is interesting to note that Framingham seems to have been the only place where the spies were not immediately recognized as such, although it is certainly possible that they were recognized but not confronted.)
While it has sometimes been stated that the spies were much intimidated by the militia’s show of force, once they became assured of their own personal safety they did not seem overly impressed: “After they had done their exercise, one of their commanders spoke a very eloquent speech, recommending patience, coolness and bravery (which indeed they very much wanted).” When they further note the commander’s quoting “Caesar and Pompey, brigadiers Putnam and Ward, and all such great men,” one can almost hear the sarcasm accompanying the idea that militia commanders Putnam and Ward belong in a pantheon with the classical generals. After the drill, the members of the militia came into the tavern “and drank until nine o’clock, and then returned to their respective homes full of pot-valor.”
The next night the spies returned to the Golden Ball in Weston, where their host implored them “not to go any more into the country.” Brown and de Berniere decided to ignore this warning, as indeed they had every other indication that their mission had been hopelessly compromised almost from the moment the pair had left Boston. The next day, March 1, they decided to scout out a more northerly route to Worcester through Marlborough, although they whiled away the morning at the tavern waiting for a storm to lighten up before resigning themselves to the inclement weather and setting off at noon in the ankle-deep snow. They had made it almost the whole sixteen miles to Marlborough without incident when a rider approached and began questioning them. They reluctantly revealed that they were from Boston and intended to visit “a friend” in Marlborough. Their inquisitor then rode ahead of them toward the town. As they entered Marlborough, people came out of their houses into the snowy late afternoon to watch the two make their way to the home of Henry Barnes, a merchant, magistrate and Tory. A baker accosted them and once again questioned the men’s intentions before letting them pass.
Once they arrived at Barnes’s house, they began to explain to him that they were British officers in disguise, only to be told that not only did he know who they were, but the whole town did as well, and had been expecting their arrival since a rider had seen them leave Worcester two days earlier. They soon discovered that the baker who had questioned them was a well-known Patriot and was harboring in his house an army deserter, a drummer boy named Swain who had fled Captain Brown’s own company a month earlier. It soon became apparent that their plan to have dinner and rest for a few hours before heading back was imprudent, and they were snuck out of the house and shown a back road to take. Soon after their departure, a mob gathered at the Barnes house and, disbelieving of his explanation that his visitors were relatives of his wife from Pennsylvania, set off in pursuit of the two.
They escaped due to a wind-driven snow that discouraged their pursuers and covered their tracks. The exhausted men stopped only once between Marlborough and Weston, climbing a hill overlooking the Sudbury River near the causeway (present-day Route 27 between Sudbury and Wayland) to eat their soggy bread washed down with melted snow. Once they were on the causeway, some riders approached them but did not stop, and they immediately decided a column of soldiers crossing via this route would be too vulnerable to attack. If Gage’s men were to march to Worcester, they should go through Framingham instead. After spending one more night at the Golden Ball, the spies finally took the advice of nearly every Loyalist they had encountered and went back to the Boston barracks.
Upon reading their report, General Gage worried that the forty miles to Worcester was too far for the lightning raid he envisioned and gave the colonials too much time to martial their forces. So on March 20, de Berniere and Brown set out again, surveying the route to another possible target, this one closer to Boston. They evidently had learned little about concealing their identities, for almost as soon as they arrived in Concord at the home of Daniel Bliss, Esquire, Bliss received a note that he should immediately vacate the town on penalty of death for harboring Tory spies. The two headed back to Boston, joined by the newly homeless Bliss. (According to historian David Hackett Fischer, Bliss was the only Concord Loyalist to have his property confiscated throughout the entire war.) Their trip had not been for naught, however; it was Bliss who showed the two the road through Lexington and recommended it as the best passage to Concord.
FRAMINGHAM MEN AT THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD
When the British columns left Boston on the night of April 18, 1775, they did not march west through Framingham to Worcester, but indeed took Bliss’s route to the northwest, hoping to capture Patriot leaders at Lexington and seize an arms cache at Concord. Nonetheless, the Minutemen Captain Brown and Ensign de Berniere had seen mustering at Framingham played a role in the events of the next day.
Ensign Henry de Berniere’s company of light infantry was in the vanguard, leading the columns along the roads he had mapped a month earlier. His men were among those who advanced on Lexington Green with orders to disarm the colonial militiamen who had assembled there to challenge them, when the “shot heard ’round the world” was fired, marking the start of the conflict that became known as the American Revolution. His company suffered only one man wounded at Lexington and continued to lead the column to Concord, arriving there between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m.
The alarm reached Framingham at about 8:00 a.m. on April 19, several hours after the skirmish at Lexington. Church bells began ringing and the alarm guns were fired. The town’s three companies—under the command of Captains Simon Edgell, Micajah Gleason and Jesse Eames, respectively—assembled at Framingham Centre. The companies departed by about 9:00 a.m., although it seems likely that militiamen from the farther corners of the town continued to straggle after the main body of men on the road to East Sudbury (now Wayland) for some time afterward.
The three Framingham companies marched northeast
through Sudbury to Lincoln, taking the high ground at Brooks Hill that overlooked the road the British regulars were already taking back from Concord. Their plan to ambush the retreating column was foiled either by their having been spotted by the British soldiers or perhaps some undisciplined premature firing on their part. Nonetheless, the Framingham men, alongside several companies from Sudbury, inflicted heavy casualties on the English vanguard that was forced to charge up the hill so that the main British column could pass without being fired upon. Ensign de Berniere’s men, clearing a path for the main force, took the brunt of the fighting, and he later wrote “all the hills on each side of us were covered with rebels…so that they kept the road always lined and a very hot fire on us without intermission.” As the Tenth Foot returned to Lexington, ammunition was low and discipline began to break down. It was only the arrival of a relief column from Boston that prevented a complete rout of the British forces. One wonders whether Ensign de Berniere realized that the very same Framingham Minutemen he had so scornfully dismissed as amateurs six weeks earlier were among those inflicting such heavy casualties upon his regulars.
After this engagement, the Framingham companies joined the harassing action that pursued the retreating expedition all the way back to Charlestown. The lopsided nature of the fight can be illustrated by the fact that not a single Framingham man lost his life that day and only one—Daniel Hemenway—was wounded. Other men from the town had tales to tell of that day. Ebenezer Hemenway shot a British soldier named Thomas Sowers near Merriam’s Corner in Concord and took his gun home as a souvenir, while Noah Eaton was reloading his gun behind a rise when a British soldier came before him and started to reload his own gun. Thinking quickly, Eaton raised his own gun to his shoulder and demanded that the regular surrender, which he did, only to realize he had been tricked. The soldier told Eaton that he would have been able to reload his gun much quicker than the Framingham man, as the British were equipped with cartridges, rather than having to manually load a musket the way the colonials did.
There were 153 Framingham men who responded to the Lexington alarm—about 10 percent of the entire population of the town, an impressive number constituting about half the number of men above the age of sixteen, many of whom would have been too old or otherwise infirm for military service. Many on the list of those who served that day bear the names of families we have already discussed—two Clayes, two Nurses, two Buckminsters, two Havens, three Browns, three Winches, four Hows, four Rices, five Stones, nine Eameses—but also on the list is the singular name of Peter Salem, a private in Captain Edgell’s company.
PETER SALEM, FORMER SLAVE AND MARKSMAN
Peter Salem, also sometimes called Salem Middlesex, was born a slave to Jeremiah Belknap of Framingham. He was admitted as a member of the church in 1760. Shortly before the Revolutionary War, he had been sold to Major Lawson Buckminster, son of Colonel Joseph and grandson of the first Joseph Buckminster. After his service as a Minuteman during the Lexington alarm, he enlisted in the regular army less than a week later and continued to serve in varying stints for much of the rest of the war. (Since slaves could not enlist, Buckminster must have already given him his freedom in order to serve in the army.)
He spent much of the war as body servant to Colonel Thomas Nixon. According to most accounts, it was Salem’s shot that fatally wounded the British commander Major John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. (He is also thought to be the African American figure depicted in the lower right-hand corner of John Trumball’s famous painting of the battle.) He served with distinction until the end of the war and was present at the Battle of Saratoga, Valley Forge, the Battle of Monmouth, as well as other engagements. In 1783, he returned to Framingham, married Katy Benson and built a house to the east of Sucker Pond, near the present-day intersection of Fairbanks Road and Route 30. He removed to Leicester, Massachusetts, about 1793. He never found much success as a farmer, but earned a living as a basket weaver and caning the seats of chairs. By all accounts, he was a much-liked member of the community and often told tales of his service alongside Colonel Nixon in the war.
Peter Salem monument in the Old Burying Ground.
When the aged Salem was no longer able to earn enough to support himself, the town of Leicester sent him back to Framingham. As the latter was his native town, it was deemed responsible for caring for him under the poor laws of the period. Tradition records that Salem’s contributions were not forgotten and Framingham welcomed him home. He died in 1816, aged about sixty-five years, and his remains were interred at the Old Burying Ground on Main Street. Many decades after his death, the town erected a monument on the site to preserve the memory of its African American Patriot.
THE NIXON FAMILY IN WAR AND PEACE
Colonel Thomas Nixon, who was Peter Salem’s commanding officer, was one of three Nixons to serve in the Revolutionary War. The most prominent was General John Nixon, Thomas’s older brother.
General John Nixon was born at Framingham on March 1, 1727, shortly after his father Christopher had moved there from parts unknown and married Mary Seaver of Sudbury. John first enlisted in the army at the age of eighteen, serving in the expedition that captured Louisburg from the French in 1745. He served extensively in the French and Indian War, participating in many campaigns between 1755 and 1762, and retired as a captain. In 1757, he bought land on the north slope of Nobscot Mountain, just over the Sudbury line, but continued to attend church in Framingham and had all his children baptized there. He commanded a company of militia from Sudbury at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and five days afterward he was commissioned a colonel. He commanded a regiment of three hundred men at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, and was severely wounded there and had to be carried from the field. By August, he had recovered sufficiently to be promoted to brigadier general, a rank he held for the remainder of the war. His first command was at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, but his brigade withdrew to the Hudson Valley after Washington’s army was defeated at the Battle of Long Island in 1776. He saw his most extensive combat during the pivotal Saratoga campaign in 1777, where the rebel victory helped convince France to join the war. After the war, he resided briefly in Framingham before returning to Sudbury. He eventually removed to Middlebury, Vermont, where he died at the age of eighty-eight in 1815.
Colonel Thomas Nixon was born in Framingham on April 27, 1736, and married Bethiah Stearns, eventually inheriting her father Timothy’s extensive estate on the northeast corner of the intersection of Edmands and Nixon Roads. This property in the northwest part of Framingham remained in the Nixon family for generations. He followed his brother into military service during the French and Indian War in 1755–59 and declined the command of a regiment of the Framingham militia in 1774, instead electing to serve under his brother in the Sudbury company. Similarly, he became a lieutenant colonel in his brother’s regiment and then a regimental colonel in his brother’s brigade. After the war, he returned to Framingham before dying on a voyage to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1800.
Thomas’s son, Thomas Nixon Jr., was born on March 19, 1762, in Framingham. He enlisted as a fifer at the age of thirteen in Captain David Moore’s Sudbury company and saw action at Lexington and Concord. (His recorder and pages of sheet music are in the collection of the Framingham Historical Society and Museum.) He served in the army from 1777 to 1780 and again from 1782 to 1783, having only reached the age of twenty at the war’s end. After the war, he built a house that still stands on part of his father’s estate and became a prominent member of the community in his own right, serving as captain of the militia as well as selectman. He died on January 4, 1842.
His son, Warren Nixon, born March 9, 1793, if anything, gained even greater standing in the town, serving as teacher, surveyor, selectman and justice of the peace. He was a talented draughtsman and drew the first truly comprehensive map of Framingham in 1832. At the time of his death in 1872, there was perhaps no more esteemed and distinguished res
ident. A few years prior, the town had presented him with an embossed Bible in recognition of his contributions to Framingham over the course of his long life. But his rough-and-tumble father, who had spent his teenage years as a fifer in Washington’s army, had not been so impressed with Warren’s bookishness. The following advertisement appeared in the National Aegis, a Worcester newspaper, on May 15, 1811:
NOTICE. The Subscriber will be very much obliged to any person who will give him any information relative to his Son WARREN NIXON, who left his home on the 21st of March last in a very unexpected and unaccountable manner. He has from his youth been exceedingly attached to literary pursuits, and it is believed, has, in some degree, injured his brain. He is about eighteen years of age, about five feet seven inches high, light complexion, with very full light blue eyes. His Father will be much rejoiced to see him return to his home, and will do every thing [sic] in his power to render him contented and happy. Those printers who will have the humanity to insert the above, will confer a favor on the disconsolate Parent. THOMAS NIXON. Framingham.
That Warren did eventually return home and prospered perhaps should be a comfort to the disconsolate parents of teenagers everywhere.
JOHN ADAMS INSPECTS GENERAL KNOX’S ARTILLERY TRAIN IN FRAMINGHAM
When George Washington took command of the Continental army in July 1775, it consisted almost entirely of Massachusetts and other New England men who had surrounded General Howe’s British regulars in Boston since the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The British had expelled the Patriots from Breed’s and Bunker Hills in Charlestown, but at a considerable loss of life. As the two sides settled down to a long siege, the British control of the seas meant that they could hold out in Boston indefinitely. Meanwhile, one of Washington’s primary goals was to turn the collection of militiamen he had inherited into a proper army.
Framingham Legends & Lore Page 6