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 25^th 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/slayton-royalton-raid/.  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).

 

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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 19^th 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/parmenter/messages/171.html.  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.