Joseph Plumb Martin (November 21, 1760 – May 2, 1850)
by Joseph B. Barnes,
Esq.
The
links between Joseph Plumb Martin and Milford start early. Reverend Ebenezer
Martin (1732-1795) was Born in Hampton, Windham, CT, and was a graduate of Yale.
Yale existed partly due to the
efforts of Rev. Andrew, teaching many Yale students at Milford First Church
The
Reverend Ebenezer was the founding minister of
the First Congregational Church at Becket (MA) from February 23, 1759 until his
removal on October 12, 1764. Joseph Plumb Martin had been born at Becket, November 21, 1760.
Young Joseph recalls that his father “often got in trouble for speaking his mind too
freely.” Despite a Yale education, an
out of work Puritan minister who spoke his mind may have had difficulty making
ends meet. His parents provided Joseph an education but, when he was just seven
[possibly six], they sent him to live with Susannah’s more affluent parents in Milford
.
From 1774 young Joseph knew of the strain between the
colonials and the British but intended to keep out of it, at least until after the
battles in Massachusetts in 1775:
“During the winter of 1775-1776, by
hearing the conversation and discussion of the good old farmer politicians, I
collected pretty correct ideas of the contest between this country and the
mother country. I thought I was as warm a patriot as the best of them. The war
was waged; we had joined issue, and it would not do to “put the hand to the
plow and look back.” I felt more anxious than ever to be called a defender of
my country.”
That
spring, uniformed recruiters with fife and drum came to the center of this
little hamlet promising adventure and pay to all patriots who would sign up.
Joseph was as patriotic as any and with the pressure of his peers enlisting
sought to do the same. Grampa forbade it but under his threat to run away and
join a naval privateer he was allowed to join the army. Better on land than sea,
thought his grandparents.
Joseph
was, perhaps, still not totally
committed. In June 1776, at just fifteen and a half, he signed up for just a
six month enlistment with the 5th Connecticut State Militia. He was assigned
duty in New York where on August 27,
1776 Martin fought at the Battle of
Long Island, a/k/a Battle of Brooklyn or Brooklyn Heights. It was the first
major battle after
the Declaration of Independence. In
numbers involved, it was the largest battle of the entire conflict, and the
first battle for an army of the now “United States.”
Ultimately it was a serious defeat which only the hesistance of General Howe
and an early morning fog prevented it from being the total destruction of
Washington’s escaping army to Northern Manhattan. Many took ill in the fall of
1776, including Martin:
“It now began to be cool weather,
especially the nights. To have to lie as I did almost every night (for our duty
required it) on the cold and often wet ground without a blanket and with
nothing but a thin summer clothing was tedious. I have often while upon guard
lain on one side until the upper side smarted with cold, then turned that side
down to the place warmed by my body and let the other side take its turn at
smarting, while the one on the ground warmed, thus alternately turning for or six
hours till called upon to go on sentry ... and when relieved from a tour of two
long hours at that business and returned to the guard again, I have to go
through the operation of freezing and thawing for four or six hours more…”
“I had the canopy of heaven for my hospital
and the ground for my hammock (bed). I found a spot where the dry leaves had
collected between the knolls. I made a bed of these and nestled in it, having
no other friend present but the sun to smile upon me. I had nothing to eat or drink,
not even water, and was unable to go after any myself, for I was sick indeed.
In the evening, one of my messmates found me and soon after brought me some
boiled hog’s flesh and turnips, without either bread or salt. I could not eat
it, but I felt obliged to him notwithstanding.”
Eventually
Howe moved against Washington, landing forces along the coast from Throg’s Neck
to New Rochelle and sweeping west across Westchester County. He defeated
Washington at the Battle of White Plains near the Croton River on
October 28, 1776.
Joseph served as a Private. Howe again allowed Washington’s army to escape.
When
his six month tour of duty ended in December 1776, Joseph returned to Milford
having done his duty. Wintering with Grampa and Grandma probably re-inspired
his sense of duty, or adventure, or boredom, he joined the Continental Army
in April 1777, signing on for the duration of the War with the 17th Continental Regiment, a/k/a
the 8th
Connecticut under General James Varnum. It had been raised on September 16,
1776
at Danbury.
The regiment
had seen action at Brandywine on September 11, and Germantown September 26, 1777 .
At Danbury that summer of 1777
Martin relates:
“I
had ample opportunity to see the devastation caused by the British. The town
had been laid in ashes, a number of the inhabitants murdered and cast into
their burning houses, because they presumed to defend their persons and
property, or to be avenged on a cruel , vindictive invading army. I saw the
inhabitants, after the fire was out, endeavoring to find the burnt bones of
their relatives amongst the rubbish of their demolished houses. The streets, in
many places, were literally flooded by the fat which ran from the piles of
barrels of pork burnt by the enemy.
Soon after,
he returned to New York where he underwent inoculation for Small pox. Smallpox
was a greater killer than war as the legacy of
Milford
“In company with about
four hundred others of the Connecticut forces, to a set of old barracks, a mile
or two distant in the Highlands, to be inoculated with the smallpox. We arrived
at and cleaned out the barracks, and after two or three days received the
infection, which was on the last day of May. ... I had the smallpox favorably
as did the rest, generally ... I left the hospital on the sixteenth day after I
was inoculated, and soon after rejoined the regiment”
Private
Joseph was assigned to join the defenders at Fort Island Battery a/k/a Mud Island Fort (officially called “Fort Mifflin”
since 1795), in the Delaware River at
Philadelphia. The British had taken Philadelphia and began a siege on the forts
to clear the river for supply. The battle lasted six weeks to mid November,
1777 and included the greatest bombardment of the war; 85 of the 400+ defenders were killed. Martin wrote:
“Here I endured hardships sufficient
to kill half a dozen horses. Let the reader only consider for a moment and he
will still be satisfied if not sickened. In the cold month of November, without
provisions, without clothing, not a scrap of either shoes or stockings to my
feet or legs, and in this condition to endure a siege in such a place as that
was appalling in the highest degree.”
Martin encamped at Valley Forge
over the terrible winter of 1777–1778. There
he met the Oneida of the Iroquois who walked 250 miles to Valley Forge. They
joined the Colonials at who fought at Barren Hill in May 1778: “Stout-looking
fellows and remarkably neat for that race of mortals.”
The Connecticut Regiment
fought at Monmouth (now
Freehold, NJ) on June 28, 1778, a partially
successful battle against the rear guard of the British. General Clinton had
been ordered in May 1778 to evacuate Philadelphia to New York after France had
entered the war on the American side. That year, Martin was made a Corporal of Light Infantry.
After
the most difficult winter of the war, 1779-80, during which merchants would not
accept worthless Continental currency for desperately needed supplies, soldiers
starved and froze in near nakedness at Morristown, NJ. Martin commented on the Connecticut
line mutiny in May 1780:
“They [the mutineers] were truly
patriotic; they loved their country, and they had already suffered everything
short of death in its cause; and now, after such extreme hardships to give up
all was too much, but to starve to death was too much also .... Here was the
army starved and naked, and there their country sitting still and expecting the
army to do notable things while fainting from sheer starvation .... We were
unwilling to desert the cause of our country, when in distress; that we knew
her cause involved our own.”
In
the summer of 1780, Washington ordered the formation of a Corps of Sappers and Miners, the predeceasor to
the Army Corps of Engineers. Martin was selected for this regiment and promoted
to Sergeant. Still in the New York area, he witnessed British Major John Andre
being escorted to his execution at Tappan on October 2, 1780 for his part in
the treason of Benedict Arnold over control of West Point.
By August 1, 1781 the British under Cornwalis was
surrounded by forces under the Marquis De Lafayette. Washington hurried to join
the battle at Yorktown, VA. Prior to Yorktown,
Martin’s corps was responsible for digging defensive entrenchments for the
Continental Army. At Yorktown they cleared the field of sharpened logs called abatis. Abatis are
placed along trenchlines and fortified hillocks to prevent mass charges by man
or horse. Martin and his men advanced
under fire to remove these before, or during, battle. His actions allowed a
regiment commanded by Alexander Hamilton, to capture Redoubt #10, a site preserved (re-built) to
this day at Yorktown national historic park.
On October 19, 1781 Cornwallis surrendered, effectively ending
the conflict.
Martin was
discharged from duty when the Continental Army disbanded in October 1783.
He taught in New York
state for a year, and became one of the founders of the town of Prospect,
Maine. In
1794, when he was 33, he married eighteen year old Lucy Clewley and had five
children: Joseph (b. 1799), twins, Nathan and Thomas (b. 1803), James Sullivan
(b. 1810) and Susan (b. 1812). At Prospect he was a farmer, served as a
selectman, Justice of the Peace and, finally, 25 years as Town Clerk .
In 1836, a platoon of United
States Light Infantry was marching though Prospect and discovered that Plumb
Martin resided there. The platoon stopped outside of his house and fired a
salute in honor of the Revolutionary War Hero.
He also wrote many stories and
poems over the years, most famously his 1830 a narrative of his experiences
during the war drawn from his own contemporaneous diaries originally published
anonymously in 1830, A narrative of
some of the adventures, dangers, and sufferings of a Revolutionary soldier,
interspersed with anecdotes of incidents that occurred within his own
observation, despite the snappy title, had been mostly a failure and
went out of print.
His work would re-gain
national acclaim and become a major primary source for researchers when an old
first edition copy was donated to Morristown National Historical Park.
From it a new publication under the title
Yankee Doodle Boy: A Young
Soldier's Adventures in the American Revolution, told by himself was
published by Holiday House, New York, in 1955. The book was published again by Little & Brown
in 1962, in an edition edited by George F. Scheer under the
title Private Yankee Doodle.
It also appeared as a volume in Series I of The New York Times
“Eyewitness Accounts of the American
Revolution” in 1968. last published as A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers
and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin. (Signet, New York, 2001), but
perhaps the best version is by descendant James Kirby Martin, editor: Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary
Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin. 3rd ed. (Blackwell, Malden , MA
The “boy soldier” view has
been played up in modern television accounts feauring Phillip Seymour Hoffman
and Ricky Schroeder as the title character. Martin would have bristled at “boy soldier” as his exploits were that of a man
forged in war and hardship. He was a seasoned and hardened sergeant of 22 years
by the end. A version of Joseph Plumb Martin’s life is on display by
re-enactors with a history trail at Valley Forge, PA. There is even a face-book
page one can visit to see a spiffy clean version of his life, suitable for
children.
Joseph Plumb Martin lived to
be 89, dying on May 2, 1850. He is buried with his wife at the Sandy Point
Cemetery, outside of Prospect, ME. He never returned to live in
Milford.
Joseph B. Barnes, Esq.
Compiled from the above
sources for the
Joseph Plumb Martin induction
to the Milford Hall of Fame September 22, 2009
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