The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War, fought On This Day, April 19, 1775.
One of the more colorful veterans of that opening engagement was Samuel Whittemore.
Samuel Whittemore was in his mid-40s when he enlisted as a private in Colonel Jeremiah Moulton’s Third Massachusetts Regiment. He had fought in the French and Indian War, again fighting the French in Canada, and he even spent a brief period on board a ship that was hunting for a pirate.
He was always ready to drop his farming tools, pick up his weapons and march off to battle.
At the age of 64, in 1745, he was among the forces that stormed the French fortress at Louisburg, Nova Scotia, where he captured a fine, albeit gaudy and overdecorated, French saber that he would treasure the rest of his long life. As legend has it, Whittemore said that the former owner of the saber had "died suddenly," but furnished no further details.
As a young married man Sa
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