Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Persis Tower Lincoln

  • Three Cohasset Patriots

    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.”

  • Remembering the American Revolution

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below has typographical errors, missing words, etc.

    Readings

    The first reading was the well-known poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson called “Concord Hymn,” which was written in tribute to fallen Revolutionary War soldiers. This poem was first read in public on July 4, 1837, at the dedication of a monument to those soldiers.

    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.

    The second reading was a poem written by Captain George Bush, an officer in George Washington’s army.

    How luckless the fortune we soldiers endure.
    Uncertain our pleasures, mischances are sure.
    If friendship should bind us, or love’s softer tie
    The drum beats; from friendship and love we must fly.

    Submissive to fate, then adieu to the fair.
    Peace, smile on our friends, and redeem them from care.
    May angels indulgent detach’d from above
    Soon vanquish fell discord with friendship and love.

    The third reading told the story of Persis Tower Lincoln, a Revolutionary War heroine whose husband died in military service in about 1776. This comes from Narrative History of Cohasset by Victor Bigelow.

    “[An act of] blockade running… is credited to a Cohasset heroine, Persis (Tower) Lincoln…. Persis had been married to Allen Lincoln, November 23, 1775…. Allen Lincoln was a seaman, and tradition says that he was taken from a vessel which the British captured and was carried to England, where he was placed in Dartmoor prison, from which he never returned. The wife of this absent seaman knew how to sail a boat and was not afraid of the sea. In that year when Boston was besieged by our soldiers on land and when the harbor was filled with British vessels, it is said that Persis did the work of our absent men by sailing one of our vessels across the bay to Gloucester to get supplies that could not be had in the blockaded port of Boston. This daring deed makes her properly a Revolutionary heroine.”

    Sermon: Remembering the American Revolution

    Originally, Memorial Day was called Decoration Day. It was the day when families would tend to the graves of loved ones who had died in military service. But of course, as long as you were tending to the grave of a dead soldier, you would also tend to the other graves in your family’s plot in the cemetery. Thus by the mid-twentieth century in the New England town I grew up in, Memorial Day had become a day when many families would see the Memorial Day parade in the morning, and then in the afternoon would head to the cemetery to put flowers on all the family graves. Now, of course, many of us — perhaps most of us — live far enough away that we can’t go tend to family graves. Nevertheless, Memorial Day is still a day for us to remember those who died in military service, and additionally all those who have died.

    I’ll take some time tomorrow to remember my parents, grandparents, cousins, and others in my life who have died. But I’m one of the people who can’t actually go and visit any of their graves tomorrow; the closest graves I could visit are more than a day trip away. And given the busy-ness of life, I know it’s going to be hard to carve out any time to just sit and remember. I suspect many of you are in the same boat — you live too far away to go and visit family graves, and your life is so busy that it might be hard to some quiet time to just sit and remember. (If that’s true of you, maybe you could take the next fifteen minutes to remember — just tune out the rest of the sermon and devote the next fifteen minutes to your memories.)

    But what I’d like to talk with you about this morning are the veterans of the American Revolution who died in military service. I’d like to talk about these people for three main reasons. First, as of April 19 this year, the American Revolution began 250 years ago; this significant anniversary is a good time to reflect on the sacrifices that were made by Revolutionary War-era soldiers and sailors. Second, in a time of deep cultural and political division, one thing that nearly all Americans hold in common is a respect for the people who fought in the American Revolution; remembering the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution could be a way for all of us to begin to reach across some of the divisions that lie between us. Third, it turns out that we don’t know as much as we think we know about the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution. We don’t have very good records of exactly which soldiers and sailors died during the Revolutionary War; there simply weren’t full and accurate records of military service,(1) and we don’t even have accurate figures for how many military deaths there were in the Revolution.(2) Yet by digging in to the historical record, historians have been able to recover some remarkable stories that had been forgotten or mis-remembered.

    And so I’d like to tell you a couple of stories about people from First Parish who served in the American Revolution, stories that have been partially forgotten then recovered through the efforts of historians..

    First I’d like to tell you the story of Persis Tower Lincoln, a story which some of you may have come across in the book Narrative History of Cohasset by Victor Bigelow (this was the third reading this morning). Persis Tower’s story is dramatic enough by itself. During the occupation of Boston, which lasted from spring of 1775 into 1776, Persis was married to Allen Lincoln, a seaman; Persis was then 16 years old, and Allen was 20; John Browne, minister of First Parish, officiated at their wedding. Allen then left Persis to go off on a voyage. While he was away, Persis sailed a small boat across Massachusetts Bay to Gloucester to get supplies through the British blockade, so we remember her as a heroine of the American Revolution. Meanwhile — so the traditional story goes — Allen’s ship was captured by the British, and according to local tradition he was taken to Dartmoor prison in England where he died.(3)

    Persis’s story appears to be true. Unfortunately, Allen’s story has been remembered incorrectly. Dartmoor Prison wasn’t completed until 1809, so he couldn’t have been imprisoned there during the Revolution. Then too, Allen and Persis had daughter together, who was was born in 1778.(4) Finally, military records show that Allen Lincoln of Cohasset served in the Continental Army after his purported death, in 1776, 1777, and again in 1778.(5)

    A more accurate history of Allen Lincoln appears to be something like this: After serving in the military for several months in both 1776 and 1777, Allen re-enlisted in the Continental Navy with the rank of Seaman. Then on March 17, 1778 he was taken prisoner by the British — this happened about a month after his daughter Sally was born. Allen was initially imprisoned at Rhode Island.(6) Subsequently, he was probably taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died in 1778.(7) It’s not surprising that he died while he was a prisoner of war; the mortality rate was notoriously high among prisoners of war held by the British, and more Revolutionary War soldiers and sailors died in prison camps than died in battle. Allen died when he was 22 years old, leaving behind an 18 year old wife and an infant daughter whom he probably only saw for the first few weeks of her life.

    Allen Lincoln’s story is worth remembering on its own merits. But it’s also a reminder of how much has been forgotten or mis-remembered about the sailors and soldiers who died during military service in the Revolution. Indeed, historians aren’t even sure how many prisoners of war died while being held captive by the British; it may have been as many 19,000 men.(8) At a local level, it seems that we’re not even sure of how many people from First Parish served in the Revolution. It should be simple to generate such an honor roll of military service — First Parish was the only church in Cohasset, everyone in town belonged to the church, so all we’d need is a list of Cohasset residents who served. However, the only such list I found lists almost certainly includes men from other towns who were recruited by Cohasset to help fill the town’s quota.(9) Given the incomplete records that remain, we may never know exactly how many people from Cohasset served in American Revolution — nor how many of those soldiers and sailors never returned from their military service.

    Yet even though the historical record has gotten a bit muddled over the past two and a half centuries, what’s remarkable is how much we still remember. We still remember Allen Lincoln and Persis Tower, and we still tell their stories when we talk about the history of First Parish. Even if some of the details of the story have been confused or forgotten, we still remember this young couple from First Parish who can be counted among the heroes and heroines of the American Revolution. Memories are passed down in communities like this one, and through such communal memories individuals can achieve a kind of immortality.

    For my second and final story, I’d like to tell you about another veteran of the American Revolution, a man who because he lived in Cohasset belonged to First Parish. I find this story especially interesting because of the way historians have been able to connect separated facts in the historical record, and then tell a fuller story of a Revolutionary War soldier.

    In the historical record, you can find a list dating from July 19, 1780, giving the names of nine men from Cohasset who began six month’s military service on that day.(10) One name on that list, the name of Briton Nichols, stands out for two reasons. First, he had a very unusual name; the written record shows no other man in Massachusetts with the first name of Briton. Second, Briton Nichols is identified as being Black, the only person on that list whose race is given, and (as near as I can tell) the only Black man from Cohasset who served in the American Revolution.

    Because Briton Nichols had such an unusual first name, and because his race is given, historians have been able to trace his life in more detail.(11) Historians discovered that in 1760, he published a book in which he told of thirteen years worth of adventures.(12) As a boy, he was enslaved by the Winslow family of Marshfield. At that time, he called himself Briton Hammond. On December 25, 1747, with the permission of his master, Briton left Marshfield to go on a sea voyage; perhaps his master hired him out as a sailor, taking a cut of his salary, a common practice in those days. Briton doesn’t say how old he was when he sailed, but later sources give his birth year as roughly 1740, so he may have been a boy or a young teen. The ship Briton was on sailed for Jamaica, took on a cargo of wood, and sailed north. Having struck a reef off Florida, the ship was attacked by Native Americans who killed everyone except Briton, and then set the ship on fire. After being held captive by the Native Americans for five week, he was able to make his escape on a Spanish schooner, whose captain recognized him, and took him to Havana, Cuba. The Native Americans followed and demanded the Governor of Havana return Briton to them, but the Governor paid ten dollars for him and kept him. A year later, Briton was caught by a press gang, but he refused to serve in the Spanish navy and was thrown in a dungeon.

    Briton was finally released from the dungeon four years later, though he was still trapped in Havana. Then a year after his release from the dungeon, he managed to escape from Havana aboard a ship of the British Navy. It appears Brition served in the British Navy for some time thereafter, aboard several different ships, until 1759 when he was wounded in the head by small shot during a fight with a French ship. Briton was put in Greenwich Hospital, where he recovered from his wounds. After additional service on British Navy ships, this time as a cook, he managed to find a berth on a ship bound for New England. By coincidence, his old master, one General Nichols, was on the same ship. Through that chance meeting, Briton was finally able to return to his home in Marshfield after a thirteen year absence.

    Soon after his return from Marshfield, Briton’s account of his adventures was published in Boston, perhaps the earliest published memoir written by an African American. Two years later, in 1762, Briton married Hannah, a Black woman who was a member of First Church in Plymouth (today this a Unitarian Universalist congregation). In the late 1770s, Briton left the Winslow family, possibly upon the death of his master, and moved to Cohasset to join the Nichols family; at this time he changed his last name from Hammond to Nichols.

    In 1777, Briton joined the Continental Army.(13) He must have been around forty years old when he enlisted. We can only speculate as to why he decided to enlist at that age. Most likely, enlisting in the military was a way for him to free himself from slavery. Ambrose Bates, who was one of Briton’s messmates, left a diary that tells a little about their military service.(14) Briton Nichols, Bates, and the rest of their contingent left Cohasset on August 27, 1777, and finally reached Saratoga, New York, in early September. There they joined the conflict between the Continental forces and General Burgoyne’s forces. Much of their military service was filled with boredom. Several days were filled with monotonous marching back and forth from one place to another. On other days, Bates simply records, “Nothing new today.” Those days of boredom were interspersed with days where they had more than enough excitement. To give just one example, 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 prisners.” The tide of battle was with the Continental forces, and Burgoyne finally surrendered on October 16. Soon thereafter, Bates and the other Cohasset men marched down to Tarrytown. Their service in Tarrytown was less exciting. Finally, on November 30 their term of military service ended, and they began marching home. They finally arrived back in Cohasset on December 7. So ended Briton Nichol’s first term of military service.

    Briton Nichols enlisted again in 1780, giving his age at the time as forty years old.(15) I suspect he lied about his age, presenting himself as younger than he was. I could find no details of his 1780 military service. The next time I found him in the historical record was in the 1790 federal census. At that time, he was living in Hingham as a free Black man, along with his second wife Experience and one other household member, probably their child.

    The story of Briton Nichols shows how we can recover some of the lost knowledge of Revolutionary War veterans. Briton Nichols was little more than a name on a list of soldiers, until historians were able to deduce that he was almost certainly the same person as Briton Hammond who had had such amazing adventures from 1747 to 1760.

    Of special interest to us here at First Parish, Briton Nichols would have attended Sunday services right here in this very building. We know his wife Hannah was a member of the Plymouth church before they were married. When they moved here to Cohasset, we can imagine them sitting upstairs in the balcony, where people of color and White indentured servants had to sit. We can imagine Briton sitting here on Sunday, August 24, 1777, a few days before he marched off to Saratoga. We can imagine the prayers of the entire congregation centering on the hope that all the Cohasset men marching off as soldiers that week would return home safe and sound.

    We today think of all those from this congregation who have served in the military. We think of all those veterans who are now members and friends of First Parish. We also think of those who grew up in this congregation and went off to join the armed services. And we think of those people from First Parish who died in military service. It is good for us to keep alive the memories of all those who served in our armed forces.

    And because Memorial Day has become a day when we remember not just military personnel, we think of all those who have died — parents and grandparents, siblings and cousins, friends and mentors, everyone whom we remember with love. It is good to keep those memories alive, because it reminds us of the bonds of love which transcend even death.

    Notes

    (1) Historian mark Edward Lender states that “…most combat was local and took place without major British or Continental forces on the scene”; in other words, many soldiers served in militia units. Lender, Citizen Soldiers or Regulars? The Revolutionary Militia Reconsidered,” in Jim Piecuch, ed., Seven Myths of American Revolution (Hackett Publishing, 2003) p. 59. Militia units did not necessarily keep accurate records, and even where good records were kept they may not have survived or may be hidden in local archives.
    (2) According to historian Howard Peckham, who carefully reviewed military records kept by the original thirteen colonies, 5,992 soldiers were killed in military engagements, and 832 sailors were killed in naval engagements, for a total of 6,824 battle casualties. In addition, Peckham estimated that 10,00 soldiers died in camp from diseases such as dysentery, and 8,500 soldier and sailors died in British prisoner-of-war camps. Thus, Peckham estimated the total number of probable deaths in service at over 25,000. Source: Howard Peckham, The Toll of Independence : Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974), “Summations and Implications.” However, other historians feel that Peckham underestimated the number of deaths among prisoners of war, 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; Burrows places the total number of prisoners of war who died at 19,000, giving a total death toll that is closer to 35,000. (Burrows cites the total number of Americans who took up arms during the war as 200,000.)
    (3) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 290. The marriage record showing that John Browne officiated at the wedding may be found here: Entry for Allen Lincoln and Persis Tower, 23 Nov 1775, “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638-1927,” archived on FamilySearch website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHQY-G2B accessed 23 May 2025.
    (4) According to the Massachusetts State Census of 1855, Sally was born in 1778; so this was not a matter of a christening that was delayed for three years. According to Cohasset Vital records, she was christened on 18 Oct. 1778.
    (5) A search for military records for Allen Lincoln on genealogy website FamilySearch.org turned up two records for military service of Allen or Allyn Lincoln from Cohasset: First, as one of the soldiers who mustered at Hull on June 14, 1776, to serve in the military: Entry for Allyn Lincoln, 14 Jun 1776, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783″, FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-LHBT accessed 22 May 2025. Second, as serving in “the Northern Dept.” in 1777: Entry for Allen Lincoln, 24 Aug 1777, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-9CH6 accessed 22 May 2025.
    (6) Entry for Allyn Lyncoln, 17 Mar 1778, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-2NLM accessed 22 May 2025.
    (7) The FamilySearch.org entry for Allen Lincoln lists his date of death as 1778, and place of death as Halifax, Nova Scotia, unfortunately with no documentation. See person entry for “Allen Lincoln” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/LCZP-2JH accessed 22 May 2025.
    (8) 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.
    (9) See “The American Revolutionary War Honor Roll,” Cohasset Veteran’s Memorial Committee website https://cohassetveteransmemorial.org/the-american-revolutionary-war-honor-roll/? accessed 22 May 2025. I counted 179 names on this honor roll. However, according to Victor Bigelow, it was something more than 120 men from Cohasset out of a total population of 165 adult males who served during the Revolution (p. 309). If there were only 165 total men in Cohasset, we couldn’t have sent 179 men into military service. This should not be taken as a criticism of the efforts of the Cohasset Veteran’s Memorial Committee. I estimate it would take dozens or even hundreds of hours of research among tax rolls and genealogical material to determine which men actually lived in Cohasset, and even then we might not have a final answer. Thus the Cohasset Veteran’s Memorial Committee’s “American Revolutionary War Honor Roll” remains the best list of Revolutionary War veterans.
    (10) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 308.
    (11) An introduction to a narrative by Briton Nichols, who earlier in life was called Briton Hammond, gives an overview of what historians conclude about his life: “It is accepted that in 1762 Hammon married Hannah, an African American woman and member of Plymouth’s First Church, with whom he had one child. For many years this was all that was known of Hammon’s life after his return to New England. More recent research, however, has revealed that Hammon probably changed his name to Nichols some time in the late 1770s, after the family with whom he and his master were living when Winslow died in 1774. Briton Nichols is listed as having fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, as did many members of the white Nichols family…. In later census records, Briton Nichols is described as a free husband and father.” Derrick R. Spires, editor, Only by Experience: An Anthology of Slave Narratives (Broadview Press, 2023), p. 54.
    (12) In this paragraph, the details of the earlier life of Briton Nichols/Hammond are taken from his book, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man (Boston: Green & Russell, 1760); as reprinted on the Pennsylvanian State Univ. website https://psu.pb.unizin.org/opentransatlanticlit/chapter/__unknown__-9/ accessed 22 May 2025.
    (13) Victor Bigelow, p. 208.
    (14) Victor Bigelow reprints the text of this brief diary, pp. 299-303.
    (15) Entry for Briton Nichols, 19 July 1780, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLLS-BBT3 accessed 22 May 2025.