Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/221

 MEN OF NOTTINGHAM AT BUNKER HILL.

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��uel Johnson, Robert Morrison, William Woolis, Eliphlet Taylor, William Blake, Nathaniel Twombly, Simon Batchelder, Abraham Batchelder, Simon Marston, Moses Oilman, William Simpson, John Nealey, and Samuel Sias. Let us briefly glance at the record of sone of these men in the years that came after. Henry Dearborn was born in Hampton, Feb. 23, 1751. He studied medicine and settled at Nottingham Square as a physician, in 1772. He married Mary D. Bartlett, daughter of Israel, and sister of Thomas Bartlett of Nottingham. He was always fond of military affairs, and is said to have been a skillful drill-master and well posted in the tactics in use previous to the Revolution. He fought with his company at the battle of Bunker Hill. In the September following, he joined Arnold's expedition to Quebec, accompanied by these Nottingham men,--James Beverly, John P. Hilton, Samuel Sias and Moses Oilman. They marched up the Kenebec river, through the wilds of Maine and Canada. In the assault upon that city, Captain Dearborn was taken prisoner. Peter Livias, the Tory councilor at Quebec, influenced the authorities to parole and send him home, on condition that Dearborn should forward his wife and children to him from Portsmouth to Quebec, which was done as agreed. In April. 1777, Capt. Dearborn was appointed Major in Scammel's regiment. He was in the battles of Stillwater and Saratoga and fought with such bravery, having command of a distinct corps, as to win the special commendation of Gen. Gates. In 1778, he was in the battle of Mon- mouth, with Col. Cilley acting as Lieut. Col., and helped retrieve Lee's disgraceful retreat. He was with Gen. Sullivan in his expedition against the Indians, in 1779, and was at Yorktown at the surrender of Cornwallis in 1781. Upon the death of Scammel, the gallant Colonel of the Third N. H. Reg., at the hands of a barbarous foe, Dearborn was made Colonel and held that position to the end of the war. After the war, he settled in Maine, where he was Marshal by appointment of Washington. He was two terms a member of Congress ; Sec'y of War under Jefferson from 1801 to 1809 ; collector of the port of Boston between 1S09-12 ; senior Maj. General in U. S. Army, 1812-13, and captured York in Canada, and Fort George, at the mouth of Niagara. He was recalled by the President, July 6, 1813, and put in command of the military district of N. Y. City, which recall was, no doubt, a great mistake. In 1822 he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal ; recalled in 1824, at his own request : died at Roxbury, Mass. June 6, 1829. General Dearborn was a man of large size, gentlemanly deportment, and one of the bravest and most gallant men of his time.

Joseph Cilley, son of Capt. Joseph Cilley of Nottingham, was born in 1734; died 1799. He was engaged in the attack upon Fort William and Mary, in 1774; appointed Major in Col. Poor's regiment by the Assembly of N. H. in 1775 ; he was not present in the battle of Bunker Hill, as his regiment was engaged in home defence. He was made Lieut. Col. in 1776, and April 2, 1777, was appointed Colonel of the 1st. N. H. Reg. of three years' men, in place of Col. Stark, resigned. He fought his regiment bravely at Bemis's Heights, near Saratoga ; and two weeks later was among the bravest of the brave, when Burgoyne made his final attack before surrendering his entire army of six thousand men. So fierce was the battle, that a single cannon was taken and retaken five times ; finally, Col. Cilley leaped upon it, waved his sword, and " dedicating the gun to the American cause," opened it upon the enemy with their own ammunition. He was with Washington's army at Valley Forge, 1777-8; was at the storming of Stony Point ; at Monmouth he was one of the heroes in retrieving Gen. Lee's retreat ; was at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and in other hard-fought battles of the Revolution. After the war he was Major- General of the 1st Div. N. H. militia, and as such headed the troops which quelled the insurrection at Exeter in

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