Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

Readings

The first reading is from “A Narrative History of Cohasset,” written in 1898 by Victor Bigelow:

The battle of Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, exploded the pent-up fury of a myriad of yeomen throughout the colonies.

When the news reached Cohasset nearly every man in the town able to bear arms was ready to spring into battle. Thomas Lothrop, who had already served in the province wars with a lieutenant’s rank, hastened to the scene of bloodshed, where he was soon commissioned a major.

Of others who seized this first opportunity for martial promotion was probably James Hall, who afterwards became an aide to General Washington.

There were doubtless other young men who did not wait for the formation of a company to march, but started at once for the seat of war, because they had no family responsibilities to keep them at home.

The whole town was trembling with excitement, and a town meeting was immediately called to convene on the twenty-eighth day of the month. They voted to lay in a stock of corn — five hundred bushels — because food might soon be sadly needed if the war should rage. They also voted to buy one hundredweight of gunpowder, and five hundred flints for the old flintlock guns which had been used by the militia of the town since the beginning.

The men who swarmed about the church that day on the Common may be imagined from the muster roll of [fifty-six] men who enlisted within a few days.

The second reading is from the poem “Concord Hymn,” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837 to commemorate the Battle of Concord.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Sermon

It’s Patriot’s Day, that obscure Massachusetts holiday when the Red Sox play a home game, the Boston Marathon is run, and sometimes we get an extra day to file our taxes. But of course the real purpose of Patriot’s Day is to allow us to commemorate the start of the American Revolution, right here in our state on April 19, 1775. In honor of Patriot’s Day, I’d like to tell you stories of three Revolutionary War heroes and heroines, all of whom were part of our congregation. These are stories of how ordinary people lived through unbelievably hard times: hostile war ships right off the coast of Cohasset; men going away to war and never being heard of again; food shortages and not enough people to work the fields. And one of the questions that I’ll ask, but won’t be able to fully answer, is how the people in those days found the resilience and courage to survive hard times.

Persis Tower Lincoln Hall

I’ll begin with Persis Tower, the daughter of Daniel Tower and Bethia Nichols. Her family was firmly aligned with the Patriot cause. When Persis was 14 years old, her older brother Abraham took part in the Boston Tea Party. She was 15 years old at the time of the Battle of Concord and Lexington, and seven months later, at age 16, she married 20-year-old Allen Lincoln, a seaman, who was soon to go off to battle.(1)

Allen served at least three times with the Continental forces. He did at least one stint with the local militia, defending our coast. He served in the Continental Army for three months in 1777, serving in the New York and New Jersey area.(2) And he served as a sailor, perhaps aboard a privateer; indeed, he may have been at sea much of the time during the early years of the Revolution. Many men in Cohasset went away for military service during the war, leaving Cohasset women to take on their work. Persis’s mother Bethia had the nickname “Resolution” Tower, because she was “said to have carted water in barrels from Lily Pond to water the corn [on the farm on King Street.] during a drought while the men were away in the Revolutionary War.” For her part, Persis bravely sailed a small boat through the British blockade across Massachusetts Bay to get much-needed supplies. Because of this, we remember her as a heroine of the American Revolution.(3)

In March, 1778, while Persis was pregnant their first child, Allen was one of several seamen imprisoned by the British in Rhode Island. Allen never came home again, and there appears no record of when or where he died. When Sally, Persis and Allen’s daughter, was christened in our meetinghouse on October 18, 1778, Persis wouldn’t have known where Allen was, or whether he was alive or dead. It wasn’t until 1782 that Persis could finally settle her husband’s estate.(4)

Allen Lincoln’s story is a reminder what prisoners of war faced during the Revolution. The total death toll among prisoners of war held by the British may have been as high as 19,000 men.(5) Persis probably never knew the exact fate of her husband, and I find it difficult to imagine the uncertainty she had to live with — raising an infant child while not knowing where her husband was.

In 1786, Persis married James Hall, who had been a captain in the Continental Army, even serving as an aide to General Washington. Persis and James lived in the house that his father had built on Cohasset Common using timbers of the old meetinghouse, which was taken down when our present meetinghouse was erected in 1747. Three of their children died in infancy, but they received a bigger shock when their oldest child, Henry, died at age sixteen; he had gone to sea and died of yellow fever in the West Indies. Persis and James hadn’t bothered christening four of Henry’s younger siblings, but within weeks of hearing of his death, they had those four siblings christened all on the same day.(6) After all Persis had been through — Allen’s disappearance, the loss of children in infancy, Henry’s death far from home — perhaps the religious ritual of christening served as a reminder that there was hope for the future.

Briton Nichols

The next Revolutionary War story I’d like to tell you is the story of Briton Nichols. I told his story in a previous sermon, but I got some facts wrong, and found out some new facts, so I thought I’d tell it again.(7)

Briton Nichols first appears in the historical record when he was 17 years old, and listed as a slave in the 1757 will of Nathaniel Nichols, Sr. The next time he appears in the historical record is on March 16, 1776, when he was thirty-seven. This was the day before the British evacuated Boston; Cohasset and other coastal towns were securing their coastal defenses against the possibility of a British naval attack. Briton served for a few days with the Hingham town militia, one of many men from Cohasset, Hingham, and Hull who helped defend the coast.

A year later, in 1777, Briton enlisted in the Continental Army. We can only speculate why he decided to enlist at age 37. Although enslaved men would join the military to earn their freedom, Nichols was probably free by this time. The economy was in a shambles due to the war, he probably had a wife, and he might have enlisted because he needed money. He also may have believed in the Patriot ideals of freedom and liberty. Whatever his reasons, he and a contingent of soldiers from Cohasset marched together to join the fighting in Saratoga, New York.

Ambrose Bates, one of Briton’s messmates, kept a diary during their military service. The Cohasset men reached Saratoga in early September and joined the fight against General Burgoyne. The Bates diary shows that much of their military service was filled with boredom. Several days were filled with monotonous marching back and forth from one place to another. Many days, Bates simply records, “Nothing new today.” Days of boredom were interspersed with days with more than enough excitement. On October 7 Bates recorded: “today we had a fight we were alarmed about noon and the fight begun, the sun two hours high at night and we drove them and took field pieces and took sum prisoners.” The British finally surrendered on October 16. All the Cohasset men then marched down to Tarrytown, where they saw little action. Their three month term of service ended on November 30. They marched home at a quick pace, averaging 27 miles a day, arriving in Cohasset on December 7.

Next, in 1779 Briton Nichols enlisted for a month’s service in Rhode Island, and a month’s service in the Hudson River Valley. Then in 1780, now age forty, he enlisted for six months as part of a levy raised by the town of Cohasset. When the Cohasset men arrived in Springfield, New Jersey, the last major battle in New Jersey had already been fought, but they didn’t know that, and British troops were still active in the area. In October, he was stationed at a military base in New Jersey, part of a large force encamped on two heights above the Totowa River. Even though some of the soldiers’ clothes were in rags, and they sometimes didn’t get enough to eat, they were nevertheless an able fighting force. The British attempted only one attack on Camp Totowa, following a band of Americans who had been out on a foray; they were quickly driven back. We can imagine that perhaps Briton Nichols was sent out on one of the forays against the British, but there’s no way of knowing what service he actually saw.

That was his last stint in the army. In traveling to and from military service, he walked the astounding distance of some 1500 miles, sometimes managing a punishing pace of 27 miles a day. After the war, Briton moved from Cohasset to Hingham, where he lived with his wife Phebe. Although Briton and Phebe never made much money, at least they kept their freedom and independence.

I’m not sure that we today can fully understand what Briton Nichols lived through. He began life enslaved, then became free before he became a soldier. He served as a Revolutionary War soldier where he probably saw serious fighting. After the war, he lived to see slavery abolished in Massachusetts. While he never owned real estate, as other free Blacks in Cohasset and Hingham did, he at least managed to maintain his financial freedom.(8) I imagine he must have had a strong spiritual core to get through all that. Perhaps, as was true of many African Americans, he drew on both Christianity, traditional African spirituality, and the humanism that was later expressed in the blue. Whatever the source of his spiritual strength, I admire his resilience and courage.

Noah Nichols

The third and final person I’d like to tell you about is Noah Nichols Jr. Before I do, let me digress briefly to tell you how the lives of all three of the people whose stories I’m telling today are intertwined. Noah Jr.’s paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Nichols, was the enslaver of Briton Nichols, and Briton may have been living with one of Noah’s cousins as late as 1776.(9) Noah Nichols Jr. and Persis Tower Lincoln Hall were second cousins, sharing their great-grandfather Israel Winslow Nichols. And Persis’ first husband, Allen, was third cousin once removed to Noah’s wife Abigail. Now let’s get back to Noah.

Noah Nichols was born on January 8, 1754, the third of thirteen children. His father, Noah Sr., had served in the French and Indian War.(10) And Noah Sr. was one of the wealthier landowners in Cohasset; in 1771, just before he died, he ranked 31 out of 123 property owners in Cohasset.(11)

Noah Sr. died in 1771, when Noah Jr. was seventeen; leaving his wife Abigail pregnant and responsible for nine other children. By March of 1775, Noah was having sex with his girlfriend Abigail Lincoln. Their first child was born on December 15 of that year, though they remained unmarried. This may seem surprising to us today, but there was a rise in premarital sex in Massachusetts in the second half of the eighteenth century, and some 30 to 40% of all first births were conceived before marriage.(12)

Noah and Abigail finally got married on February 28, 1776. By July, Noah was working as a wheelwright for the Continental Army at Ticonderoga.(13) As with Briton Nichols, we can’t know whether he was motivated by money or by ideals. He must have displayed leadership ability, though, for on November 9, 1776, he was commissioned as a captain in Col. Ebenezer Stevens’s artillery battalion.(14) The army had decided to create companies of skilled workmen whose trades they needed. These were called “artificer companies,” and a master artisan was placed in charge of the company, often with the rank of officer.(15)

Now that he was in charge of an artificer company, Noah had to find skilled workers to fill the company. By January, 1777, he was back in Cohasset, and on February 2, four Cohasset men enlisted in Noah’s artificer company: his brother Bela, Jonathan Bates, Melzar Joy, and James Stoddard (James had been one of the Cohasset men who participated in the Boston Tea Party).(16)

While in Cohasset, Noah also attended to some spiritual business. His daughter Susannah was now two years old, and hadn’t been christened yet. On February 15, Noah and Abigail presented their child to be christened here in this meetinghouse by Rev. John Brown, our Patriot minister. Noah and Abigail went further than that — they also “owned the covenant,” that is, became formal members of the church. The process of owning the covenant went like this: after a private meeting with the minister, a formal meeting of the church was convened during which the applicants for membership publicly confessed their sins. Noah and Abigail did this on February 15.(17) Owning the covenant was a serious and major commitment; many people waited until they were a good bit older to own the covenant, if they bothered doing it at all. We can thus sense a change in Noah from the young man who, before the war, didn’t bother marrying his girlfriend until after their first child was born. Perhaps some of the things Noah had seen during his military service had given him a sense of his mortality, a desire to deepen his spirituality.

Noah was back with the army in March, 1777, marching with his company for Ticonderoga. They were stationed there when General Burgoyne’s forces attacked. In July, they retreated to Albany with the rest of the artillery brigade.(18) During the retreat, a private serving under Noah was taken prisoner by the British.(19) By mid-July, Noah was back in Cohasset for leave.(20) Then in September and October, his company was in the battles that eventually led to the defeat of the British, and was present at the surrender of General Burgoyne.(21)

After leaving Albany, Noah was based in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the remainder of his military service. It was probably during this time that he had a memorable encounter with General Washington. While on a forced march, General Washington ordered him to repair the wheel of a gun carriage. Captain Nichols requested permission to stop the carriage while he was doing the repairs, but the general abruptly refused. Noah had to do the repairs while the gun carriage was underway. Telling this story in later years, Noah added, “It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I did it.”(22)

By 1779, when Noah had put in three years of military service, the pay of the artificers had depreciated badly, and because the artificer companies didn’t belong to a state unit, their officers didn’t receive the allowance given to regular officers.(23) And although Noah had received an officer’s commission, the other officers serving under him — including his brother Bela — never received their commissions, though they had been promised.(24) In early 1780, the artificer corps were reorganized under cost-saving measures.(25)

I suspect this was the last straw for Noah. On March 26, 1780, Noah’s second child, Elizabeth, was christened, and presumably he was present for the ceremony.(26) Noah resigned his officer’s commission on April 3.(27) By 1781, all officers of the artificer corps were dismissed as a cost-saving measure.

After returning to Cohasset, Noah resumed working as a cartwright and a housewright; when there wasn’t enough work in his chosen trade, he would take on other kinds of work like plowing.(28) In 1787, he finally received compensation from Massachusetts for the depreciation of wages he suffered from 1777 to 1780.(29) Noah and Abigail had five children in 1787, so no doubt the extra money was welcome.

Noah was one of two highest ranking Revolutionary War veterans in Cohasset; the other being Captain James Hall. Late in life, Noah took pride in his military service, and he “was accustomed in his old age to shoulder his fire-lock, ‘And show how the fields were won.’”(30) Noah died in 1833, aged 79, still an active member of this parish.(31)

Now that I’ve told you about these three people — Persis, Briton, and Noah — here’s what I take away from their stories. First of all, all three of them lived through very challenging times. Living in Cohasset during the Revolution meant the threat of British invasion. The war also caused economic hard times, with depreciation of currency and shortages of food and goods. With all the men away fighting, that meant more work for those who stayed home. Soldiers and sailors might wind up as prisoners of war or missing in action, leaving their families in dreadful uncertainty. Even the soldiers and sailors who returned might have seen horrors that would affect them for the rest of their lives. — And all this was on top of the normal difficulties of those times: the many children who died in infancy; the challenge of wresting a living from the rocky soil of New England, or from the often dangerous Atlantic Ocean.

Looking back, we think of the Revolutionary generation as somehow more heroic than we are. But they weren’t. They were ordinary people just like us. Somehow, they managed to summon up the courage to get through the hard times. Some of them, like Noah Nichols, found extra strength through participating in this religious community. For others, like Briton Nichols, we’ll never know know for sure where they found the strength to get through those hard times.

We face hard times today — if we’re honest, times today aren’t nearly as hard as they were then — but still, we face hard times. Looking back at that Revolutionary generation causes me to wonder about where I’m going to get the strength to get me through the hard times of today. The Revolutionary generation found strength in their spiritual practices, and they found strength in the connections of family and community. Perhaps those are the places we should be looking for our own strength.

Notes

(1) Records of First Parish in Cohasset; Mass. Vital Records.
(2) Details of Allen’s military service may be found in Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1902), p. 798; “United States, Rosters of Revolutionary War Soldiers and Sailors, 1775-1966,” www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q5W9-9RDY , Entry for Allen Lincoln. Record of his imprisonment may be found in Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1902), p. 79; “United States, Rosters of Revolutionary War Soldiers and Sailors, 1775-1966,” www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG2M-NFW5 , Entry for Allyn Lyncoln [note the two different spellings of his name]: “Lyncoln, Allyn. List of prisoners delivered to Col. Gabriel Johonnot by Mr. Charles Waller, Commissary of Prisoners at Rhode Island, March 17, 1778; reported a Seaman.”
(3) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 306; p. 290.
(4) Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family (Worcester, Mass.: Commonwealth Press, 1923), pp. 185-186.: “August 9, 1782, Persis Lincoln of Cohasset, widow, was admitted administratrix on the estate of Allin Lincoln, late of Cohasset, deceased intestate. The inventory of his estate, dated Aug. 14, 1782, shows that he left: real estate, house and half an acre of land, £80; personal estate £26:10. (Suffolk County Probate Records, vol. lxxxi, pp. 379, 630.)”
(5) See e.g. Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12.
(6) First Parish records.
(7) The story of Briton Nichols is a condensed version of a talk I gave for the Cohasset Historical Society on 28 Feb. 2026, revised 30 March based on comments by Paula Bagger and George Quintal, and further research. That talk has been deposited in the First Parish archives, and full footnotes may be found there.
(8) His wife Phebe was not so fortunate. After Briton’s death, she sank into poverty, and died in the Hingham poorhouse.
(9) Paula Bagger’s research (personal communication) indicates the following: In 1773, Nathaniel Sr.’s estate is finally settled on Nathaniel Jr.’s children; the land is divided up, but there is no mention of Britain Nichols. In Cohasset’s 1776 census, the household of Nathaniel Nichols 3rd (1749-1833) had one Black resident; this may or may not have been Briton, and it is not clear whether that person was enslaved or free.
(10) Victor Bigelow, p. 279; History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, vol. III [Cambridge: University Press, John Wilson and son, 1893], p.87-88.
(11) Victor Bigelow, pp. 277-276.
(12) Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill, 1976), p. 217, concluded that 41% of all first births in Concord, Mass., between 1760 and 1774 were prenuptial conceptions. Karen A. Weyler, “The Fruit of Unlawful Embraces,” Sex and Sexuality in Early America, ed. Merril D. Smith (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 292, says that the “changing relationship between parents and children may have also contributed to the striking rise in the incidence of premarital sex during the last decades of the eighteenth century…. from 1761 to 1800, 33 percent of all first births to married women occurred before the ninth month of marriage.”
(13) Letter dated July 11, 1776, reprinted in: Peter Force, American Archives, Fifth Series: A Documentary History of the United States of America [July 4, 1776 to Sept. 3, 1783], volume I (Washington, D.C.: M. St. Clair and Peter Force, 1848), p. 653.
(14) Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army), p. 329; also see: W. T. R. Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Charles C. Saffell, 1894), p. 160.
(15) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), p. 152.
(16) Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War, p. 160.
(17) In the First Parish records, these events appear as follows: In records of church meetings, “1777. Feby 15. Noah Nichols, and wife Abigail”; this would have been the church meeting where they confessed their sins. In records of those who owned the covenant, “1777. Feby 15. Noah Nickols and his Abigail his wife.” Finally, Susannah’s baptism is listed on that date. Note that in the terminology of the day, “church” meant the religious organization; this was different from the business side of the congregation, which was managed by the proprietors.
(18) Some of these details from the account of the military service of Edward Burril of Lynn, Mass., who served under Capt. Noah Nichols. See: Howard Kendall Sanderson, Lynn in the Revolution, Part II (Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1909), pp. 236-237.
(19) Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War, p. 160.
(20) Deduced from the birth date of his daughter Elizabeth.
(21) Sanderson, p. 237.
(22) From the address given by Hon. Thomas Russell at the Centennial Anniversary of the town of Cohasset, May 7, 1870, reprinted in: Duane Hamilton Hurd, ed., History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Cop., 1884), Chapter XIX: Cohasset, pp. 219-220.
(23) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), p. 155.
(24) Journals of the Continental Congress 1774-1789, vol. XV. 1779 (September 2-December 31) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 1388-1389.
(25) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), pp. 156-157.
(26) First Parish records.
(27) Francis B. “Alphabetical List of Officers of the Continental Army,” Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April 1775 to December 1783 (Washington, DC, Rare Book Shop Publishing Co., Inc., 1914), p. 414.
(28) The account book of Ambrose Nichols, covering dates from c. 1809 to c. 1830 provides these details; presumably the two brothers, pursuing the same trade, had similar experiences. See the finding aid: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Ambrose Nichols Account Book, 1809-1830, 1 volume (0.25 linear ft.) Call no.: MS 210, findingaids.library.umass.edu/ead/mums210.pdf
(29) “Noah Nichols appears as a Captain on an account rendered against the United States by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for amounts paid officers and men of Capt. Jeduthan Baldwin’s regt. on account of depreciation of their wages for the first three years’ service in the Continental Army from 1777 to 1780. Account exhibited by Committee on Claims in behalf of Mass. against U.S., Sept 21, 1787.” — Entry for Noah Nichols, 21 September 1787, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGKC-WVCV
(30) Thomas Russell, in Duane Hamilton Hurd (1884), p. 220.
(31) First Parish records. Rev. Jacob Flint usually only recorded the name of the person who died, but in this case he noted: “June 23. Noah Nichols in his 79th year.”