The Patriot Post® · Profiles of Valor: Samuel Whittemore, Patriot
What follows is a Profile of Valor about a 78-year-old farmer who stood his ground against soldiers of the most powerful army on the planet — and lived to tell about it.
It all happened on one of the two most historic days on every American Patriot’s calendar: April 19, 1775 (Patriots’ Day) — the other being, of course, July 4, 1776 (Independence Day). Patriots’ Day marks the dawn of American Liberty, commencing with the opening salvos of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord.
For context, on the evening of April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage, acting as the Crown’s military governor of Massachusetts, dispatched a force of 700 British Army regulars with secret orders. These troops, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were to arrest 53-year-old Boston Tea Party leader Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Provincial Congress President John Hancock, and merchant fleet owner Jeremiah Lee. Notably, what directly tied Gage’s orders to the later enumeration in our Constitution’s Second Amendment assurance of the innate “right to keep and bear arms” was the primary mission of his Redcoat brigades. They were charged with undertaking a preemptive raid to confiscate arms and ammunition stored by Massachusetts Patriots in the town of Concord.
Patriot militia and minutemen, under the leadership of the “radical” Sons of Liberty, anticipated this raid, which resulted in the armed confrontations with British regulars at Lexington and Concord. The Massachusetts Patriots, as with other New England citizen militias, were bound by “minute man” oaths to “stand at a minute’s warning with arms and ammunition.” The oath of the Lexington militia read thus: “We trust in God that, should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the common cause.”
In the early dawn of April 19, their oaths would be tested with blood.
Under the command of 46-year-old farmer and militia Captain John Parker, 77 militiamen assembled on the town green at Lexington, where they soon faced Smith’s overwhelming force of seasoned British regulars. Parker did not expect shots to be exchanged, but his orders were: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
Within close musket range from the Patriots’ column, British Major John Pitcairn swung his sword and ordered, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!”
Not willing to sacrifice his small band of Patriots on the green, as Parker later wrote in a sworn deposition, “I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse, and not to fire.” But his Patriots did not lay down their arms. Then, under Pitcairn’s orders, as Parker testified, “Immediately said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously, fired upon, and killed eight of our Party without receiving any Provocation therefor from us.” Ten other Patriots were wounded.
As the American militia retreated toward Concord with the British in pursuit, their ranks grew to more than 400.
In Concord, the British divided in order to search for armament stores. Before noon, the second confrontation between regulars and militiamen occurred as 100 British light infantry from three companies faced the ranks of militia and minutemen at Concord’s Old North Bridge. From depositions on both sides, we know that the British fired first, killing two and wounding four.
This time, however, the militia commander, Major John Buttrick, ordered, “Fire, for God’s sake, fellow soldiers, fire!” And fire they did. The volley commenced with what poet Ralph Waldo Emerson later immortalized in his Concord Hymn as “the shot heard round the world.”
With that shot, Patriot farmers, laborers, landowners, and statesmen alike brought upon themselves the sentence of death for treason. In the ensuing firefight, the British suffered heavy casualties. In discord, the Redcoats retreated to Concord proper and, after reinforcing their ranks, marched back toward Lexington.
During their Concord retreat, the British took additional casualties in sporadic firefights. The most notable of those was an ambush by the reassembled ranks of John Parker’s militia, which became known as “Parker’s Revenge.” Despite reinforcements when they returned to Lexington, the king’s men were no match for the Patriot ranks. The militia and minutemen inflicted heavy casualties upon the Redcoats along their 18-mile tactical retreat to Boston.
It was when passing through the town of Menotomy on their retreat to Boston that 78-year-old Capt. Samuel Whittemore confronted the Redcoats alone.
Word of the Lexington and Concord Battles traveled ahead of the British that day, and old Capt. Whittemore, who had already established his fighting record against the French in Canada in 1745 and two decades later in the French and Indian War, steeled himself for another fight. Despite his pre-Revolutionary service in King George’s wars against the French, in the years ahead of the American Revolution, he had established himself as a Patriot, in defiance of British tyranny in Massachusetts.
Knowing the retreating British troops would pass on the road by his house, Whittemore left his field, gathered his old firearms, positioned himself behind a stonewall on his property, and waited to ambush the British grenadiers of the 47th Regiment of Foot.
According to the New England Historical Society account: “When the regiment passed by, Samuel Whittemore stood and shot point-blank at a British regular with his musket. Then he took out his dueling pistols and shot two more soldiers to death. The old farmer then grabbed his ornamental sword to fend off the British soldiers who swarmed over him. It didn’t go well. The British shot him in the cheek, bayoneted him and beat him with the butts of their rifles.”
Whittemore was found soon thereafter by Patriot militiamen, lying in a pool of his own blood, trying to reload his musket. He was taken to the nearby home of Dr. Cotton Tufts, who assessed the old man had little chance of survival.
However, against all odds, Whittemore survived, and he lived another 18 years enduring the severe wound to his face and other injuries until his death of natural causes on February 2, 1793, at the age of 96.
Capt. Samuel Whittemore: Your example of valor — a humble American Patriot defending Liberty for all above and beyond the call of duty, and in disregard for the peril to your own life — is eternal.
“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Live your life worthy of his sacrifice.
(Read more Profiles of Valor here.)
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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