Friday, June 26, 2020

"The Rank or Age of the Counties" - The Raising of the Massachusetts Grand Army of 1775

In the aftermath of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the British army found itself trapped; surrounded by an army of Massachusetts Yankees.

Over the next few days, scores of Bostonians discovered they were prohibited from fleeing the town. General Thomas Gage was fearful that if the residents were permitted to leave, they would provide material assistance to the American army. As a result, he issued orders barring residents from leaving Boston. Boston resident Sarah Winslow Deming despaired “I was Genl Gage's prisoner -- all egress, & regress being cut off between the town & country. Here again description fails. No words can paint my distress.” According to merchant John Rowe, Boston’s economy immediately collapsed. Businesses stopped operating and fresh provisions for market stopped coming into town. “Boston is in the most distressed condition.”

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the Committee of Safety were confronted with their own dilemma. Within a very short period of time, the provincial army surrounding Boston began to slowly disappear. Regiments lacked any organization and soldiers were continuously coming and going. At first, militiamen left in small groups, and then by the hundreds, as lack of provisions along with the tug of responsibilities back home weakened their senses of duty. Artemas Ward, the overall commander of the American army besieging Boston, opined that soon he would be the only one left at the siege unless something was done. To meet this problem, the Provincial Congress agreed to General Ward’s requests that the men be formally enlisted for a given period of time. On April 23, 1775, the legislative body resolved to raise a “Massachusetts Grand Army of 13,600 men and appoint a Committee of Supplies to collect and distribute the necessary commodities.”

 

In undertaking this venture, Massachusetts turned to the model it had followed to attract recruits for provincial regiments during the French and Indian War. When the Massachusetts government appointed a regimental colonel to serve in the French and Indian War, he was given a packet of blank commissions for officers that he could dispense as he saw fit. Often, commissions would be contingent upon the prospective officers’ success in recruiting men. To secure enlistments of private soldiers, junior officers often made arrangements with prospective non-commissioned officers, promising posts as sergeants or corporals in return for their assistance in recruiting drives. While many recruiters operated within the confines of their own minute man or militia regiment that fought on April 19th, recruiters were also authorized to beat their drums anywhere in the province to enlist volunteers. Local militia officers were prohibited from interfering with beating orders and required to muster their companies and assist the colonel and his prospective officers with the drafting of recruits.

For example, between May 4 and May 8, 1775, recruiters arrived in Lexington. Over the next four days, twenty men from Lexington enlisted in a company commanded by Woburn’s John Wood. The company was to be part of Colonel Samuel Gerrish’s Regiment. In exchange for his enlistment, which was to expire at the end of December 1775, each man was paid £5 and promised a bounty of a coat. 



After the regiments were raised and certified, they were adopted into the Massachusetts Grand Army and assigned regimental numbers. It appears that the regiments were assigned regimental numbers based upon the “rank or age of the counties” from which they were raised. As a result, the regimental numbering of the Massachusetts Grand Army appears to be as followed during the early months of the Siege of Boston:


Regiment
Numerical Assignment
Date Certified
Regimental Strength at Certification
Samuel Gerrish’s Regiment
25
May 19, 1775
421
Ebenezer Learned’s Regiment
14
May 19, 1775
N/A
Joseph Read’s Regiment
6
May 20, 1775
N/A
James Scammon’s Regiment
13
May 24, 1775
396
John Thomas’ Regiment
2
May 26, 1775
N/A
Artemus Ward’s Regiment
1
May 26, 1775
449
Thomas Gardner’s Regiment
15
May 26, 1775
425
John Patterson’s Regiment
12
May 26, 1775
422
William Prescott’s Regiment
9
May 26, 1775
456
Theophilus Cotton’s Regiment
4
May 26, 1775
N/A
Ebenezer Bridge’s Regiment
11
May 26, 1775
315
Asa Whitcomb’s Regiment
5
May 26, 1775
470
James Frye’s Regiment
10
May 26, 1775
493
Ephraim Doolittle’s Regiment
18
May 26, 1775
308
Timothy Walker’s Regiment
3
May 26, 1775
N/A
Timothy Danielson’s Regiment
8
May 26, 1775
N/A
John Mansfield’s Regiment
7
May 27, 1775
345
John Fellows’ Regiment
17
May 29, 1775
N/A
John Nixon’s Regiment
16
June 2, 1775
224


John Glover’s Regiment
23
June 7, 1775
N/A
William Heath’s Regiment
21
June 14, 1775
N/A
David Brewer’s Regiment
20
June 17, 1775
N/A
Jonathan Brewer’s Regiment
19
June 17, 1775
318
Benjamin Woodbridge’s Regiment
22
N/A but likely certified after the Battle of Bunker Hill
242
Moses Little’s Regiment
24
N/A but likely certified after the Battle of Bunker Hill
400
Richard Gridley’s Regiment
Artillery, no regimental number assigned
N/A but likely certified after the Battle of Bunker Hill
370

Following General Washington’s assumption of command, the Commander in Chief made it quite clear that his mission was to turn the various forces assembled around Boston into a unified army. On July 22, 1775, Washington attempted to impose a more rational organizational structure by issuing orders dividing the American army into three divisions of six brigades each. As a result, most of the Massachusetts Grand Army regiments were renumbered to reflect this change.