Blacksmith, politician, and soldier, Seth Pomeroy never lived long enough to see the country he helped forge. But perhaps more lasting than what he did, is what he gave us. He yet stands alongside a rail fence on an immortal hill amidst hell’s fury. Before a wall of British steel, he turns his face from death and calls out to his fellow militiamen:
“Don’t run boys. Don’t run! Fight them with the breech of your muskets, as I do! It shan’t be said of Seth Pomeroy that he was shot in the back.”
Whether the scarred and ancient warrior said those words or not. What matters is that we can still hear those eternal words echoed over time, two hundred and forty-five years later. It is who he was… it is who we are. It is his legacy, to which we all have a share.
Seth Pomeroy was one of the early commanding generals of the American Revolution. He was sixty-eight years old when Massachusetts chose him on October, 27, 1774, as one of the three brigadier generals who would lead the colony’s militias if war with England were to erupt. He was a fourth-generation blacksmith, gunsmith, and armorer. Like his father Ebenezer, and grandfather, Medah, Seth was well known throughout New England for his quality muskets, sold to both settlers and Native Americans in trade. So too, like his father, on January 23, 1743, he would answer the call to arms as an officer of militia.
He served as captain of the third company of the Hampshire County Militia under Colonel John Stoddard. This company of fifty men were labeled ‘snow-shoe men.’ They would assemble at a minute’s notice, similar to later ‘minute men.’ In the dead of winter, often when Native Americans would attack settlements and disappear in the deep snow, they’d rush to the sound of alarm and pursue the attackers. Two years later, Seth was commissioned a major of the Hampton County Militia on February 24, 1745. At age thirty-nine, he soon embarked on the most important aspect of what would become known as King George War [also War of the Austrian Succession lasting from 1744-1748]. His and other regiments of Massachusetts militia would join additional militias from New Hampshire and Connecticut, all under the command of William Pepperrell.
This large band of colonials would do the unthinkable; lay siege to and capture Louisbourg, a fortress on Cape Breton Island that had been twenty years in the making and cost the French over four million livres to build. With a wife Mary and seven young children at home, he set off in early March. As an armorer and gun specialist, he was kept quite busy assisting the expedition’s engineer Richard Gridley. The siege lasted from May 11 to the 28th of June and it is toward the end that Pomeroy played a key role. According to his journal, after the Grand Battery was captured and the cannon were found spiked, [metal rods driven in touchholes that prevented the cannon from being fired], Pomeroy supervised twenty some smiths as they drilled out the cannon. After an intense day’s work, the guns were soon turned on the city’s walls, effecting the earlier surrender of the fort. Only a hundred colonials would die assaulting the works. However, almost a thousand perished from fever and Seth nearly become one of them. He was overcome and near death, but recovered to return home to his family.
For the next ten years, Major Seth Pomeroy would remain active as blacksmith, gunsmith, and militia leader. So too he was renowned throughout the colony as an excellent marksman. By the mid-1750s, war between England and France came to blows along the Hudson River and Lake Champlain region. Seth was commissioned a Lt. Colonel and second in command of Colonel Ephraim William’s Hampton regiment. In September, 1755, William’s regiment would join British Indian Agent and New York General of Militia, William Johnson (with 500 Mohawk allies), along with Connecticut militiamen, Colonel Nathan Whiting’s regiment. Their goal was to capture the French strongpoint at Crown Point, NY that was garrisoned with an equal force of French and their Native American allies of mostly Abenaki.
Johnson moved his force up from Albany, past Fort Edward, where he left about five hundred men to help defend the fortification. He continued on to Lake George where he got word of a possible French attack against the fort. While he remained on the southern part of Lake George, he sent Williams and Whiting’s column of about 1,500 men south as reinforcements. While in route, the column was ambushed by the French and Native Americans of equal numbers between Lake George and Fort Edwards. What has been called ‘Bloody Morning Scout’, many of the column were massacred by the ferocious French and Native American attack. While surviving militiamen fled north back toward Johnson, a hundred or so colonials and Mohawks, led by Lt. Col. Pomeroy and Colonel Whiting (Colonel Williams had been killed) were able to conduct a stiff fighting retreat.
Seth would later write that they “killed great numbers of them [French and native allies]; they were seen to drop like pigeons.” Pomeroy and Whiting would prove to be the only officers to make it back to Johnson’s camp at Lake George where they helped to throw up a defensive barrier. When the overconfident French attacked, three cannon and well directed small arms fire mowed them down as one defender said, like “lanes, streets, and alleys.” This portion of the battle lasted from noon until about five that evening. Pomeroy would later write of the battle as “the most violent fire perhaps yet ever was heard of in this country.” There was little joy in victory after the many friends killed that day, including personal tragedy for the hearty blacksmith. Seth’s brother, Lt. Daniel Pomeroy. who had also accompanied Seth ten years earlier at Louisbourg, died instantly with a bullet through his forehead.
Soon after the battle, Seth became deathly ill. As at Louisbourg, he barely survived and on October 23, 1755, returned home to Northampton. After his courageous actions at the Battle of Lake George that saved so many of his fellow militiamen, Pomeroy’s fame as a leader spread throughout New England. Due to illness and circumstances, and perhaps a reluctance to leave his family, he would take no other active part in the French and Indian War outside a false alarm march in 1757 and a couple months of fort garrison duty in 1760 at the close of hostilities. The next fifteen years, Pomeroy settled down to raising his family and grandchildren while working steadily at his gun shop; training his sons for the next generation of smiths. He still continued his role in the local militia while tensions increased over revenue acts by an English government determined to force Americans to help pay for the previous war. Seth would prove that he was no sword rattling patriot like Samuel Adams or James Otis. Nor did he glorify the greater sacrifice like Dr. Warren. He was already a veteran of two wars. He’d seen men’s heads laid open. As he wrote his sister-in-law, their brains spread out before him. So many of his friends, taken in their prime, his dear brother one of them. When asked his opinion on the possibility of war, like a true veteran, he expressed himself sincerely that he wished it would never come to that.
In 1774, he was a member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress representing his region of Hampton. While serving this civil duty, on February 9, 1774, he was commissioned a ‘general officer’ for militias without any official duties. On October 27th, one of the first duties of the new Committee of Safety (military arm of the Provincial Congress), was to commission three generals of Massachusetts militia. Pomeroy would be third behind Jedediah Preble and Artemas Ward. In 1775, he was once more a member of the Provincial Congress.
He was at Northampton, a hundred miles west of Lexington, during that fateful morning of April 19, 1775 when the ‘shot heard round the world’ ignited the American Revolution. He was also at Northampton when word arrived on the morning of June 16th, that General Artemas Ward, now Commanding General of all Militia forces in Massachusetts, will be ordering several regiments onto Charlestown Peninsula. This time Seth didn’t hesitate, he immediately set off on horseback towards Cambridge. He rode all day and through the night, switching horses twice. He arrived at the Hastings House, Cambridge at around two o’clock the afternoon on the next day, June 17, 1775. It was an incredible feat especially for a man of his age; over a hundred miles in one day. He entered General Ward’s headquarters and immediately requested a fresh horse to take him to Charlestown Peninsula. Ward had just been persuaded to send the remaining reinforcements to Bunker Hill and agreed to give Seth a horse. Once at Charlestown Neck, it is told that Pomeroy dismounted and viewed the narrow neck that was being bombarded by British gunships. He gave the horse’s reins to another, not wanting to harm the animal, and walked through exploding shells and solid shot to support his fellow countrymen.
Bunker Hill quickly came into sight where General Israel Putnam was holed up with over a thousand men. He kept right on going, descending the larger hill to the American line at Breed’s Hill. There he came to the wooden fence that ran down from the redoubt and breastworks to the water line. He joined New Hampshire Colonels James Reed and John Stark, including Connecticut men under Captain Thomas Knowlton. The sixty-nine-year-old warrior was quickly recognized and cheered as he took his place along the fence, not as a general, but as a volunteer – like General Joseph Warren had done at the redoubt. He would lift his handmade musket – the same he carried at Louisbourg thirty years earlier – the same he used while protecting his surviving regiment at Lake George – and the same that he would weld that eventful day with deadly precision as he helped beat back three charges of British steel. Only after the third British charge on the redoubt’s garrison – that had run out of ammunition, were the British successful in driving the Americans back. Though most of the 450 American casualties would occur after the British overwhelmed the redoubt, Pomeroy and those along the fence line, drew back slowly and carefully – keeping up a persistent fire and escaping with few casualties. His actions no doubt mirrored what he had done at Lake George twenty years earlier as he drew back his men in a controlled retreat, firing constantly while leading his men to safety.
Three days after the battle, on June 20, 1775, General Pomeroy would be commissioned a Major General of Massachusetts Militia. Two days later, on June 22nd, he was appointed as the Continental Army’s first Brigadier General. Congress had appointed eight brigadiers that day and Pomeroy was put on the top of the list signifying him as the first. Artemas Ward had become a Major General, second in command after Washington, and Major General Charles Lee was selected by Congress to be third in command. So too were Major General Philip Schuyler (4th in command) and Major General Israel Putnam (5th), technically establishing Pomeroy as 6th in command of the new Continental Army. Seth maintained his commission for one month before refusing the Brigadier position with the Continental Army. He chose to remain Major General of the Massachusetts Militia and at his advanced age, proceeded to offer his services on the siege lines under the army new commander, General Washington. He soon instilled the supreme commander’s confidence in his abilities as a leader of soldiers. When the British abandoned Boston and the war moved south to New York City, Pomeroy would remain in Massachusetts. He, along with Major General Ward, would keep an eye on British activities in Canada. Also, British General Henry Clinton’s invasion of Rhode Island on December 8, 1776. Pomeroy was among those who kept busy preparing New England’s militia for a possible invasion inland.
Immediately after Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton, he established his headquarters at Morristown, New Jersey. Besides the main army in New Jersey, two other American armies had been created; one at Albany under Major General Phillip Schuyler (later Horatio Gates) and the other north of New York City at Peekskill under Major General Israel Putnam (later Alexander McDougal). At Morristown, Washington was intent on consolidating and strengthening his command to keep the British in New York under close scrutiny. Unlike Artemas Ward, who he considered a “church warden”, Washington needed an officer of true grit. He requested Seth Pomeroy to lead the militia from Massachusetts south to Peekskill and then on to Morristown. Pomeroy, though technically still a general of militia, had recently been appointed a colonel of the 2nd Hampton County Militia on January 31, 1776 [It was common for both British and American armies where officers simultaneously filled both ranks]. He left Northampton at the head of his militia on or just before January 15, 1777, in the dead of winter and much to his family and doctor’s chagrin for having failed to keep him home.
By January 25th he was in Peekskill and writes that he dined with Brigadier General Alexander McDougal of New York City. He had intended to stay at Peekskill for a longer spell and arranged housing on January 28th at a Captain Johnson’s home for two and a half dollars board per week. On February 11th, he writes one last time to one of his sons. It was probably Asahel. Seth had written to him earlier on the 24th of January and in the 11th letter, he asks that his son try another at the smith business; Asahel had apprenticed as a blacksmith with his father. Seth tells his son that he will leave for Morristown within the next two days. It is a tender letter in which he ends, “my love to all the family. Your loving father.” Twice he’d escaped the deadly fever so prevalent among colonial troops, once at Louisbourg and later at Lake George. Within the next couple of days, he would fall sick, and this time not escape its morbid clutches. On February 17th, he was dead. [Some accounts state the 15th while others list the 19th]. He was buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard in an unmarked grave. The churchyard was the Old Van Cortlandtville Cemetery of Westchester County at Peekskill and now part of Hillside Cemetery. His wife Mary, with whom he’d been married for forty-five years, passed away seven months later and is buried in the family plot in Northampton, MA.
Historian Robert Middlekauff wrote of Pomeroy, “so steady in mind and manner as to seem immune to the madness that sometimes overpowers men facing the choice between battle and passivity.” Seth Pomeroy was deep down a passive man, who faced war’s madness with a clear mind and undaunting courage. In his last letter to his son, he penned his own epitaph that is blazed in a bronze plaque at his memorial in Peekskill: “I go cheerfully, for I am sure the cause we are engaged in is just, and the call I have to it is clear, and the call of God.” At age seventy-one, his body worn out. General Pomeroy still rose in his saddle and called out to his regiment – one last time before the old warrior’s light flickered…and went out.
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Further Reading on Revolutionary War Journal
General Artemas Ward – America’s First Commander-in-Chief in the War for Independence
History of Early Colonial Militias in America
Battle of Lexington and Concord Part 1: Road to War
Muskets & Rifles of the American Revolution: Difference and Tactics
Matchlocks & Flintlocks: Weapons That Tamed a New World & Claimed an American Revolution
RESOURCE
DeForest, Louis editor. The Journals and Papers of Seth Pomeroy. 1926: New Haven, Connecticut.
Drake, Samuel Adams. The Taking of Louisburg 1745. 1891: Lee and Shepard Publishers, Boston, MA.
Eltweek, George. An Address on the Character of General Seth Pomeroy Delivered on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth. 1906: Published by author, Sunday, May 20th, Northampton, MA.
Correira, David. Seth Pomeroy: The Forgotten General. 2011: fall/summer – Website Varsity Tutors.
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War, The Seven Years’ War and Fate of British Empire in North America. 2001: Vintage Books, New York, NY.
Phillips, Kevin. 1775, A Good Year for Revolution. 2012: Penguin Group, New York, NY.
Fleming, Thomas J. Now We are Enemies, The Story of Bunker Hill. 1960: St. Martin Press, New York, NY.