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304 Benjamin Walker; and one company composed largely of Dracut men was under Captain Peter Colburn.

Captain Ford had served previously at the siege and capture of Louisburg, in 1745. When the first man in his company fell at Bunker Hill, an officer prevented a panic by singing Old Hundred. When closely pressed by the British, and the ammunition had been exhausted, Captain Colburn, on the point of retreating, threw a stone at the advancing enemy and saw an officer fall from the blow.

Colonel Simeon Spaulding, of Chelmsford, was an active patriot during the Revolution and did good service in the Provinicial Congress.

During Shays' Rebellion, in 1786, a body of Chelmsford militia under command of General Lincoln served in the western counties.

The people of Chelmsford, from the earliest settlement, gave every encouragement to millers, lumbermen, mechanics, and traders, making grants of land, and temporary exemption from taxation, to such as would settle in their town. It became distinguished for its sawmills, gristmills, and mechanics' shops of various kinds. Billerica, Dracut, and Tewksbury gave like encouragement. About the time of the Revolution a sawmill was built below Pawtucket Falls and owned by Judge John Tyng.

Toward the close of the last century the lumbering industry on the Merrimack grew into prominence; and, in 1792, Dudley A. Tyng, William Coombs, and others, of Newburyport, were incorporated as "The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River." This canal,

which was demanded for the safe conduct of rafts by the Falls, was completed in 1797, at an expense of fifty thousand dollars. The fall of thirty-