Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/417

 CAPTAIN ALLIN AND BARRINGTON MILITIA. 333 it don't our bodies." The postscript adds, " I have heard a great many guns fired while I am writing this letter, which I suppose to be Putnam paying a salute to the Reglars." July 23d, he says, " we are going to move next Tuesday over to Cambridge on Prospect Hill, within two hundred yards of the Reglars. But that is not the worst of it, for its very lively there. But go we must, for General Washington says there is no soldiers here but the Rhode Island forces." On August 2d, at Prospect Hill, Captain Allin says, "we have had several small battles with the Reglars, and they killed two of our men and we about thirty of theirs, and took about thirty more and burnt two schooners belonging to the Reg- lars." August i6th, Prospect Hill, Captain Allin is writing to his brother about army discipline, telling of new skir- mishes in which " some shots came very near, but hurt nobody," advises his brother, then captain of a new com- pany at home, to " come down to Boston for here is some- thing worth coming to see." His last inquiry is, " How is my orchard like to yield, for I shall want some syder to drink when I get home." While our first Rhode Island regiment was receiving its baptism of fire and blood at Bunker Hill, the Barrington militia was reorganized in June, 1775, with Thomas Allin as Captain, Samuel Bosworth as Lieutenant, and Viall Allen as Ensign. Mr. Luther Martin was appointed as an enlist- ing officer for Barrington. The greater part of the militia was enlisted as minute men, to meet together and exercise themselves in military discipline half-a-day, once a fortnight. Barrington soldiers were now in training under Capt. Allin, and Lieut. Viall Allen, the Ensign, in Timothy Pickering's " Easy Plan of Discipline for Militia," bought by Captain Allin on his first visit to his brother Matthew, in camp at Watertown. At the August session of the General As- sembly, Viall Allen is promoted to the Lieutenancy of the Barrington Company of militia, and Daniel Kinnicutt to the rank of Ensign. It was voted in town meeting August 27, 1775, "that