Colrain in the Revolution April 1775

rev April 6  additions
rev April 4   Cemetery Locations column
 rev April 1       9 "Find-a-Grave" sites added 
 rev March 31  total of 23  Colrain names (maybe)names

(see also Franklin County Blog)
"A Muster Roll for a Company of Minute Men under the Command of Capt. Hugh McClellan in Col. Samuel Willliams Reg.t which marched from Colrain & Shelburne April 20 1775"

 On April 20 1775, one day after the famous battles of Lexington and Concord, 40 men from Colrain and Shelburne marched to Boston to join the resistance to British rule.
With the 250th anniversary of that march fast approaching, it would be a good time to remind us of who these men were and of what they did to help forge the USA.

The Massachusetts Archives has a one-page "muster roll" which records the names, length of service, and how much each man was owed for the service. We will add it to Colrain Archives.

The names are familiar, McClellan (sp incorrect). Stewart, Pennel, etc.  (partial only above). For the full document, go to the bottom of this page.
But which men were from which town? 
Below is the list, typed, with Colrain people identified.  24 as of April 5..  Also, we have found 13 gravesites, (yellow highlights), 10 in Colrain. See bottom of page.

The full document (2 scans of one 2-sided document) are below. The left side of the 1st image is the cover of our document, folded over.  (right side is a diff. document). The 2nd image is the full muster roll, opened up.
Below:  full muster roll.  see beneath for a more legible copy.

Below is an edited copy of the full muster roll which we made for ease of transcribing.


Below:
An edited version of the cover of the Muster Roll


The cover of the document indicates that it was prepared in January of 1776, as Jan 30 is the date when Col, McClellan certified to the accuracy of this list. Though hard to read, the last paragraph appears to be a Jan 31 1776  authorization to pay the men for their service the previous April.

================================================================
Below, some context:   The Town of Greenfield's Muster Roll, taken from Sheldon's History of Deerfield. This list has 50+ men, from Greenfield, Bernardston, Deerfield and one from Shelburne.
Note that they marched the very next day after the battles, as did the Colrain-Shelburne group.



===================================================================
Graves of 13 of the April 20th militiamen:   10 in Colrain 1 in Halifax 2 in New York.... To scroll through the pics, click on the first one and then arrow to the right)

04_HughMcClellan-NorthRiverCem.JPG   
11_Patterson_John.JPG                               
13_ElishaRansom_Shelburne.JPG        
16_MattClark.JPG                     
17_RobFulton.JPG                      
22_Pennel_James_Halifax.jpg                         
24_White_James.JPG                              
26_DavidMorrison.JPG                 
27_Caldwell_FindA.JPG                
30_RobtMiller.JPG                    
31_JamesWallis.JPG
32_Stewart_James.jpg    No Pic                                         
41_JabezRansom_Shelburne.JPG         
 














Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 11, 2025 at 6:55 AM

    Cool stuff. Will you be able to ferret out the rest of the Colrain folks that were there. The second scan is still blurry. Maybe a link?
    Great job!
    David

    ReplyDelete

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