May 27, 2020 Founders & Patriots
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/27/2020
Samuel Dow to his brother Joseph, autograph letter signed, Cambridge, August 28, 1775. 1 folio p., addressed on recto: "To Joseph Dow Att Falmouth to be Left at Mr. William Oens Casco Bay." Samuel Dow was a member of Captain David Bradish's Minute Company that responded to the Lexington Alarm and he later joined the Grand Army besieging Boston as a private in Phinney's Regiment, arriving at Cambridge in June 1775. Dow notes that he is now in good health, but was "Very Poorly 4 or 5 days...by a Very Bad Cold, But the Docter Gave me some trade [sic] that helpt me Soon." He complains of receiving "No Letter Since I Came hear from home" and that he had previously wrote for "my Jacket and Shirt and paper Quill and ink, But I Dont See as They Ever will Come [though] Mother has Taken a good Deal of Pains to send Abner some Sugar and other things 130 miles witch got hear today....[noting that] I should Not A thought that she would A took So much Pains to Sent a Sugar tit 130 miles When There is Anough hear." He hopes to receive "Some things Sent up for I Dont No when we Shall get our wages" and "Cant tell When we Shall come home [but to] Not Look for us till January if we should Live." Dow then goes on to describe the fortifying of Ploughed Hill on the Mystic River by troops under General John Sullivan on the evening of August 26th: Last Sarterday Night about 2 or 3 thousand of our People went on A hill to entrench about A half a mile from the Regulars [on Bunker Hill], noting that "the Regulars began to fire on them and they fir[e]d Cannon all Day and kild 8 of our People 2 of them had thare heads Shot of[f] one of the Rifel men had his Leg Shot of." Dow's account is quite accurate, as confirmed by an excerpt from a letter written on the same day by Major Robert Magaw of the Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment: "Poor Billy Simpson...had his Foot and Ankle shot off by a Cannon Ball as he lay behind a large Apple Tree, watching an Opportunity to Fire at the Enemy's Advanced Guards." Simpson's leg was amputated, and he expired later on the 29th--the first non-New England combat casualty of the war. A rare private soldier's account of camp life and military action during the Siege of Boston. Samuel Dow served in various units from 1776 until 1778, when he entered the Continental Army as a blacksmith in "The Corps of Artificers" in the Quartermaster General's Department, serving until discharged in 1782. CONDITION: Chipping and some losses to upper and lower edges, separating at some folds in paper and a few small, random stains; letter is hinged in a free-float arrangement within a deep window mat and has not been examined outside of the frame. JLK
Letter transcribed and pictured on pp. 206-207 of "For Liberty I Live".