Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/250

 242 NEW HAMPSHIRE MEN AT BUNKER HILL AND BENNINGTON.

��at full speed and out of breath (as the tradition is), Dea. B. announced his mes- sage at the door of Capt. W., another member of the same Committee, living near the middle of the town, who had just risen from an early breakfast, and was then standing at his looking-glass, with his face well lathered and in the act of shaving. Capt. W., without stopping to finish his work, with his face still whitened for the razor, at once dropped that instrument, hurried to his stable, mounted his horse, and in that plight aided in spreading the alarm. Other mounted messengers were soon despatch- ed to other parts of the town, and in the afternoon of the same day ninety-two minute men were rallied and met on the Hollis Common, each with his comple- ment of bullets, powder-horn, and one pound of powder supplied from the town's stock.

Among the incidents of the same clay a story is told of five brothers of the name of Nevins, then living in the North part of the town, all of whom were af- terwards in the army, which well illus- trates the spirit and promptness with which these minute men met this alarm. On the morning of the 19th three of these brothers were at work with their crow- bars, digging stone for a wall, at a short distance from their home. As the mes- senger came in sight, they had just par- tially raised from its bed a large flat stone in a farm road-way. Seeing the horseman spurring towai - ds them at full speed, one of the brothers put a small boulder under the larger stone to keep it at the height to which it had been raised, and all stopped to listen to the message. Having heard it, leaving the stone just as it was in the road-way, with the little boulder to support it, they all hastened to the house, and each of them with his gun and equipments at once hurried away to join their company on the Hollis Common. One of the brothers was af- terwards killed at Bunker Hill ; another, the next year, lost his life in the service in New York. As a family memento of this incident this large stone, with the small one supporting it, was permitted to remain for more than seventy-five years in the position the brothers had

��left it on the morning of the 19th of April.

These minute men, having made choice of Reuben Dow as their Captain, John Goss Lieutenant, and John Cumings Ensign, on the evening of that day, or before day-break the next morning were on their march from Hollis to Cambridge. An original muster roll of this company, preserved by Capt. Dow, is now among the Revolutionary documents of Hollis, and a copy of it, showing the names of its officers and ninety-two members, with the date of their enlistment, time of ser- vice, daily wages, pay for travel, and the amount paid each of them by the town, may be found in the New England His- torical aud Gen. Register for 1873, pp. 332, 333. Thirty-nine of the privates of this company, after an absence of from six to twelve days, returned home. The residue, with but few if any exceptions, remained at Cambridge and, enlisted in other companies for eight months. A large majority of those men who stayed at Cambridge enlisted in a new company commanded by the same commissioned officers chosen at Hollis, and were after- wards mustered into the Massachusetts regiment of Col. Prescott. This new company, commanded by Capt. Dow, in- cluding officers, consisted of fifty-nine men. that number making a full company under the Massachusetts act for enlist- ment. That the whole fifty-nine were from Hollis is shown by the Return Mus- ter Roll of the company, dated October 6, 1775, exhibiting the names of the liv- ing, wounded and dead, now to be found with the muster rolls of Col. Prescott's regiment in Boston, and this was the only company of the regiment in which all the men were from the same town. Be- sides the company of Capt. Dow, and the four Hollis soldiers in the company of Capt. Moor, nine others from Hollis enlisted in a company commanded by Capt. Archaleus Towne of Amherst, af- terwards mustered into a Massachusetts regiment under Col. Hutchinson, and eight others in the company of Capt. Levi Spalding of Nottingham West (now Hudson) in the New Hampshire regiment of Col. Reed. These numbers added make eighty eight mouths men enlisted

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