[0:00] My name is Doug Wood, and I represent the Salem Historical Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

[0:12] And today we're going to take a tour of what is the remains of the house of a true patriot who died at Bunker Hill.

[0:31] This is actually a pretty historic hole in the ground.

[0:35] It is an early house from the foundation of Salem.

[0:40] The Clough family owned all of this land here, and this house was built by them and one of their sons, James Clough, lived here for quite a while up until the 1770.

[0:57] Some of you probably have bedrooms this big.

[1:00] This house housed three children, two adults, probably had a second story to it.

[1:08] It was found by a sixth grade class of students.

[1:12] It was all overgrown.

[1:14] They found these stones and they found what looked like a boot scraper and looked like where the front door would be, which is over there on the other side.

[1:26] So work was taken to open it up so that everybody could take a look at it, and it actually has some historic significance.

[1:36] A patriot lives here, and I don't use the word lightly.

[1:40] Moses Poor lived in, was now Plastow, and eventually Atkinson broke off and he moved to, he ended up at Atkinson.

[1:53] And he was a partner in the sawmill, and so he was also an industry guy, and he was very active in social responsibilities, very well known to the community.

[2:10] In 1771, he bought this plot of land and the house and started to work the land.

[2:20] Now remember, by this time most of the land is all cleared. There are no trees.

[2:26] And so he lived here up into the mid-1770s, and he was here when word filtered into Salem about Lexington and Concord.

[2:42] Now, just like today, the initial information is garbled. Nobody really knows what's going on.

[2:49] It wasn't until the 22nd of June that they learned exactly what had gone, happened in Lexington and Concord.

[3:00] So the townfathers decided to have a town meeting on the 25th of June, but Moses Poor, being very patriotic, enlisted immediately into the militia.

[3:16] Now, you've got to remember, we're approaching 10 years after the French and Indian War, the last time that anybody from Salem had gone with the military into war.

[3:25] He wasn't a member of the militia. Salem did not have its own militia at the time, so he enlisted in what became Colonel Stock's regiment, the first regiment of New Hampshire.

[3:42] And so he enlisted, and they sent him back home. He wasn't needed right at that moment.

[3:50] And then about two months later, he received a muster call.

[3:54] Now, a muster call was for assembly of the unit. The unit was to assemble, was going to march to Charlestown.

[4:03] So he kissed his wife and his three sons goodbye, marched out that door, and never came back.

[4:13] So what he did is he headed down with Colonel Stock, who had just been promoted to Colonel, based on his French and Indian War service, down to Charlestown, where they already started building a redoubt.

[4:32] On the wrong hill. They've been told to build it on Bucker Hill. They didn't build it on Bucker Hill.

[4:39] But they were doing a pretty good job building a pretty good redoubt.

[4:43] But Colonel Stock showed up with Moses poor and close to a thousand other troops.

[4:50] 800 had enlisted immediately with Colonel Stock.

[4:55] He was given the left of the line is his responsibility.

[5:00] Well, he looked at it. You had a rail fence, you had part of a stone fence all the way down to the beach.

[5:07] There was no defense.

[5:09] So Colonel Stock, along with Moses poor, built the fences along that area all the way down to the beach.

[5:18] And that being part of that is part of what the history of Moses poor is.

[5:26] Had Stock not extended in his troops, not extended those defenses.

[5:32] The regiment that the British were putting together on the beach, the far end, would have marched around the left of the flank of the line turned.

[5:43] And it would have been a very short battle and a very quick massacre.

[5:47] So that's the first thing.

[5:49] The fact that the battle occurred at all is very much due to these guys.

[5:55] Plus they had fired discipline because Colonel Stock taught them not to fire until they passed stakes that he'd put out at 50 yards.

[6:08] They got to remember, as far as we know, Moses poor had received zero training.

[6:15] And as is true for the period, it was a come as you are war.

[6:20] You walked out the door in your civilian clothes.

[6:23] I'm wearing civilian clothes.

[6:25] I'm wearing a hunting shirt with it.

[6:27] He might have worn a frock coat, which is more like a dress coat.

[6:32] Walked out the door.

[6:34] He would have had a musket probably.

[6:37] The requirement for the militia was you had to have your own weapon.

[6:41] There were very few militia units that that time could supply weapons.

[6:45] So as a large variety of weapons, many of them foulers used for hunting of various calibers.

[6:52] Some may have had bayonets like I'm carrying, probably not many at that time.

[6:58] Wouldn't have done a much good anyway because the bayonet fighting requires a lot of training, a lot of discipline.

[7:05] They had neither of these things.

[7:08] But they put up a very, very strong fight.

[7:13] The British had three attacks.

[7:16] And on the third attack, the readout folks read out of ammunition.

[7:22] Now there was a difference for stocks folks and a difference for Moses poor.

[7:29] Moses poor in many respects was no longer a British subject.

[7:35] After the fall of Fort William and Mary in December of 1774,

[7:40] the government of the royal government in New Hampshire fell.

[7:44] And essentially New Hampshire was without government.

[7:48] It then became ruled by a committee of nine that operated out of Exeter.

[7:53] So these guys were different.

[7:57] They may have also been committing treason as far as the king was concerned.

[8:01] But their outlook on things was different than the Massachusetts folks

[8:06] and the Connecticut folks that joined for the Battle of Bunker Hill.

[8:12] They also had a little bit more powder.

[8:15] They had some of the powder from Fort William and Mary was probably carried by them.

[8:19] They hadn't quite run out.

[8:22] So at the end of the third attack, the readouts overrun.

[8:27] It's hand-to-hand combat, very vicious.

[8:30] And they give the order to withdraw.

[8:34] Now the New Hampshire folks, including probably Moses poor,

[8:41] provided covering fire for the withdrawal.

[8:47] We don't know when Moses was killed.

[8:51] We don't know exactly how he was armed.

[8:53] We don't know where he was killed.

[8:55] And unfortunately we don't know exactly where he was buried.

[8:58] A lot were buried and unmarked graves on site.

[9:01] There was a large grave of mass grave of New Hampshire soldiers that died at Bunker Hill

[9:08] in the town of Medford.

[9:10] We don't know.

[9:12] But they did cover the withdrawal.

[9:15] Now General Burgoyne watched this battle and the withdrawal from across the river.

[9:23] And he made a formal note, a formal statement,

[9:27] that the Continentals withdrew in good order with great discipline.

[9:35] He complimented the rebels on the quality of their withdrawal

[9:42] and the military bearing that they used that it was not a route.

[9:47] They didn't flee.

[9:49] That's an unusual comment on traitors from the British military.

[9:56] And it's really odd because it was General Burgoyne.

[9:59] It's later in 1777 that General Burgoyne is the first British officer ever to surrender

[10:07] an entire British army when he was defeated at the Battle of Saratoga.

[10:13] So in many respects the New Hampshire troops played a great role here

[10:18] and Moses poor also played a role.

[10:21] Now some things, I mean, those people don't realize.

[10:24] When they gathered around Bunker Hill they became part of what's known as the Army of Observation

[10:31] which their job was to watch what the British were doing,

[10:34] sort of keep them bottled up in Boston.

[10:39] On the 14th of June the Continental Congress declared that we would have an army

[10:45] and appointed George Washington as the leader.

[10:50] When these guys went to war they also were to absorb the Army of Observation.

[10:57] So when these guys went to Bunker Hill, unbeknownst to them,

[11:01] they were members of the new United States Army.

[11:04] And this was the very first significant battle in the United States Army

[11:09] which is also 250 years old today.

[11:12] Now there's always which comes first, the chicken or the egg.

[11:17] We like to think that Lexington-Concott was really the first battle

[11:21] for the American Revolution in many respects it was.

[11:24] But there was no formal army at that point.

[11:27] There wasn't even the Army of Observation.

[11:29] So this was a very momentous time.

[11:32] So this guy, he went off, little training, all fired up

[11:38] just like the folks who joined after 9-11 and he did not come back.

[11:45] Now what happens, and most people don't realize,

[11:48] says she became a widow,

[11:52] his wife got one-third of the property.

[11:56] The other two-thirds were auctioned off.

[11:59] The one-third is considered the dowry portion under the laws of the time.

[12:04] That's all the wife got.

[12:06] She didn't inherit all of his property.

[12:10] That was just the way it worked.

[12:13] So he's worth remembering.

[12:16] He walked here, he lived here,

[12:19] and he sacrificed some of the first American veterans.

Salembration: Historical Narration of American Revolution Veteran, Moses Poor

Transcript