Colrain in the Revolution April 1775

rev April 12  4 additions

(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, 43 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?    30 from Colrain
After some research we have found that 30 of the 43 men were from Colrain, and 10 are known to be buried in town. See bottom of page for headstones

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-NorthR.JPG    Chandler Hill  Cem
11_Patterson_John.JPG                   Chandler Hill Cem    
13_ElishaRansom_Shelburne.JPG       New York
16_MattClark.JPG                          Brick School Cem
17_RobFulton.JPG                          Chandler Hill Cem
22_Pennel_James_Halifax.jpg        Pennel Hill Cem, Halifax, VT               
24_White_James.JPG                      Christian Hill Cem               
26_DavidMorrison.JPG                   North River Cem
27_Caldwell_FindA.JPG                  North River Cem           
30_RobtMiller.JPG                           Chandler Hill Cem                
31_JamesWallis.JPG                        Chandler Hill Cem
32_William Stewart  .jpg   No Pic   Chandler Hill Cem                                    
41_JabezRansom_Shelburne.JPG        New York 
 














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
  2. AnonymousApril 26, 2025 at 1:11 PM

    Wonderful! I just found out that I'm related to Hugh McClellan so this is very interesting to me

    ReplyDelete

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