NEW HAMPSHIRE MEN AT BUNKER HILL AND BENNINGTON. 243
��from Hollis, at Cambridge, of whom sev- enty-two were in Massachusetts regi- ments.
Capt. Dow's company, with the other companies of Col. Prescott's regiment, marched on to the battle ground in Charlestown, on the night of the 16th of June, aided in the night work of build- ing the redoubt, and in its defence the next day. From an original descriptive list of this company, still among the Hollis documents, exhibiting the ages of the men and also their height and com- plexion, it appears that Peter Cumings, a son of the Ensign, and the youngest member, was of the age of thirteen years, and that the oldest, Jonathan Powers, was sixty. Noah Worcester, Jr., the flfer of the company, and Major fifer at Bennington, the youngest next to Cum- ings, was sixteen. He was the son of Capt. Noah Worcester, and many years after was known as Noah Worcester, D.D., whose monument now stands in the Cemetery at Mt. Auburn, Mass.. with the following inscription :
" TO NOAH WORCESTER, D.D."
" Erected by his Friends in commem- oration of his zeal and labors in the cause of Peace and of the consistency of his character as a Christian Philanthropist and Divine." " Speaking the truth in love."
The following terse and touching rec- ord of the Orderly Sergeant, copied ver- batim from the foot of the Return Roll of the company, now in the office of the Secretary of State at Boston, tells the sad tale of the company's dead :
" These are the Names of the Dead."
Sergt. Nathan Blood, Hollis, died June 17.
Phineas Nevins, Hollis, died June 17.
Thomas Wheat, Hollis, died June 17.
Peter Poor, Hollis, died June 17.
Caleb Eastman, Hollis, died June 19.
Isaac Hobart, Hollis, died June 17.
Jacob Boynton, Hollis, died June 17. These two Died by Sickness.
James Fisk, Hollis, died May 29.
Jeremiah Shattuck, Hollis, died May 29.
[Signed] Joshua Boynton, Orderly Sergt."
Besides the six Hollis soldiers above named, killed on the 17th of June at Bun- ker Hill, Thomas Colburn and Ebenezer Youngman, two of the minute men who left Hollis on the 19th of April, and en- listed in the company of Capt. Moor, were also killed in the battle, making eight in all ; a loss in killed, as is believ-
��ed, greater than that sustained by any other town in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. Six of Captain Dow's com- pany were also wounded in the fight, in- cluding the Captain himself, who was af- terwards a cripple and pensioner for life.
It appears from Frothingham's Siege of Boston (p. 192) that the whole loss in killed in Col. Prescott's regiment, was forty-two, and twenty-eight wounded. Of those numbers nearly one-fifth of the killed, and more than that proportion of the wounded were Hollis soldiers.
Col. Stark, in his letter to Matthew Thornton, written two days after the battle, says that the loss of his own regi- ment in killed and missing was fifteen — the killed and missing in Col. Reed's he states as four. (_N. H. Collections, p. 145.) It appears from the above statis- tics that the loss of Hollis in killed at Bunker Hill was fully equal to two-fifths of both the killed and missing of the two New Hampshire regiments.
It is now impossible to learn with cer- tainty how many of Capt. Dow's compa- ny were present in the action. But it is shown by a return of the losses of the men made after the battle, exhibiting the articles lost and their value, now in the possession of the writer, that twenty- eight of them, not reckoning the killed or commissioned officers, lost more or less of their equipments. From this re- turn it appears that twenty-five of the men lost their knapsacks, nine of them their guns, two their bayonets, three their cartridge boxes and one his sword. It may not be impertinent to state in this connection, that the eight Hollis soldiers in Captain Spalding's company, in Col. Reed's New Hampshire regiment, were all present at the battle, as it is shown by a like return of losses made afterwards that each of the eight lost some portion of his equipments. See N. H. Prov. Pa- pers, vol. VII.. p 591.
At this late day it is difficult to ascer- tain with certainty all the reasons that may have influenced so many of the Hol- lis soldiers to enlist in the regiment of Col. Prescott. But the following well known facts undoubtedly had their in- fluence.
Col. Prescott at the time lived very
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