| The year 1775 was
the eighth year of my age -- Among the first fruits of the War, was the
expulsion of my father's family from their peaceful abode in Boston, to
take refuge in his and my native town of Braintree -- Boston became a walled
and beleaguered town -- garrisoned by British Grenadiers with Thomas Gage
their commanding General, commissioned Governor of the Province -- For the
space of twelve months my mother with her infant children dwelt, liable
every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold blood, or
taken and carried into Boston as hostages, by any foraging or marauding
detachment of men, like that actually sent forth on the 19th. Of April,
to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams on their way to attend the continental
Congress at Philadelphia -- My father was separated from his family, on
his way to attend the same continental Congress, and there my mother, with
her children lived in unintermitted danger of being consumed with them all
in a conflagration kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the 17th.
Of June lighted the fires of Charlestown -- I saw with my own eyes those
fires, and heard Britannia's thunders in the Battle of Bunker's hill and
witnessed the tears of my mother and mingled with them my own, at the fall
of Warren a dear friend of my father, and a beloved Physician to me. He
had been our family physician and surgeon, and had saved my fore finger
from amputation under a very bad fracture -- Even in the days of heathen
and conquering Rome the Laureate of Augustus Caesar tells us that wars were
detested by Mothers -- Even by Roman mothers... My mother was the daughter
of a Christian Clergyman |
