Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/167

 MILITARY AFFAIRS IX HOPKINTON.

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��passed making the selectmen a commit- tee to provide for the families of non- commissioned officers and soldiers. In 1779, March 1, the town passed a signifi- cant vote, affecting the pecuniary com- pensation of its "continental soldiers,"

be made good

��phen Flood, Jonathan Stevens, Josiah Heath, Solomon Goodwin, Herbert Mor- rison, James Vants, William MacAdams, William MacKeen, Joseph Simons, Zachariah Eastman, Caleb Dalton.

In all new countries the administration of government is largely dependent upon who, it decreed, should military force. The first provincial mi- as to the depreciation of money.' 1 The litia law affecting the people of New fact that a man was then demanding fif- Hampshire was passed in 1718, and re- teen dollars a day for labor attests the quired that all persons from sixteen to importance of this act. In 1780, Nov. sixty years of age, excepting negroes and 20, the soldiers' rates were made payable Indians, should be liable to military duty, in coin as well as in money-; and on the When national independence came to be 5th of February of the following year, agitated and a new government antici- Maj. Chandler and the commissioned offi-

��pated, new laws were demanded. In 177G, a law was passed instituting two militaiy bands, known as the Training Band and the Alarm Band. The first band included all the able bodied men from sixteen to fifty years of age, ex- cepting public officers, negroes, mullat- toesand Indians; the second, all persons from sixteen to sixty-five, not included in the first.

The active interest in the war for inde- pendence taken by the citizens of Hop-

��cers were authorized to employ soldiers and hire money for the purpose.*

Hopkinton men fought on many bat- tle-fields of the Revolution, side by side with others of the different New England provinces. The records of the distinc- tive part performed by Hopkinton men are very meagre. While the soldiers were fighting abroad, public vigilance was alert at home. On March 4, 1776, the town passed an act deposing certain resident parties suspected of disloyalty

��kinton is attested by the following scrap from the privileges of public trust, and

making official recognition of such a deed of public hostility. The list of sol- diers representing this town in the Rev-

��of an account:

Hopkinton Account.

��Capt. Jonathan Straw, pav Roll to Cambridge, 1775, £60, 17 s.. 9 d.

Capt. Joshua Bavley, pay Roll, Alarm at Coos, 1780, £12,"Ss., 7d.

The local population in Hopkinton was profoundly stirred by the passing events of the Revolution. On March 4, 1776, Maj. (Isaac) Chandler, Joshua Bay- ley and Moses Hill were made a commit- tee of safety. On January 14, 1777, an act was passed procuring shovels, spades, one hundred pounds of gun powder, with lead and flints*. On March 31, the town voted to raise sufficient money to procure twenty-six men for the army; and on April 14, that service already done should be considered equal to service to come ; and again, on June 9, that the militia should have the same pay as soldiers. On the loth of January, 1778, a vote was

��olution is long and honorable. In fact its length prevents its introduction into the present article.

The success of the war for indepen- dence and the formation of a permanent plan of government determined new mil- itary laws. In the year 1786 the Legis- lature" of New Hampshire passed a law instituting a training band, of men from sixteen to forty years of age, and an "alarm list," of men from forty to sixty. Each town of thirty-two privates and

��*At that time an old law required each town to keep on hand for emergencies, one barrel of gunpowder, two hundred pounds of lead and three hundred flints.

��*In elucidation of the price paid to Revolutionary soldiers from thisf town, we offer the following from the records of a town meeting held on the loth of May. 1777:

" Voted to accept the raits that is al- ready made for the warefare.

" Voted to allow to those Persons which hired men for three year before thear was any Committee Chose in Town for to hire men for three year Equal month with those which the Committee hired at Ninty D'olars the three year."

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