Prudence Hastings was 22, and 6 months pregnant when she and Ebenezer Graves were married on January 1st 1753. Eben wrote on the back of the title page of his Bible “bought in the 28th year of his age, which is the year 1753. Price 6 pound ten shillings." As their oldest son, also Ebenezer, was born in March 1753, it is highly likely that the Bible was bought in preparation for raising the family they anticipated. Their second son, Daniel Graves, was born in 1754. 10 more children followed, all recorded on the blank page between the Old and New Testaments.
The Bible's expense was a major investment in the family's future, equaling $1,930 in 2020 dollars. Having a Bible in the home would help the children learn to read, teach them the ethical and religious position of their parents, and bind the family together through daily prayers and reading aloud. The Holy Bible was the most commonly owned book in colonial America, with annual agricultural almanacs a close second. The Protestant emphasis on the Bible in liturgy, instruction and meditation played a major role in the high literacy levels that characterized early New England.
1753 was also the year Greenfield became a separate town from Deerfield. Eben and Prudence Graves were part of the excitement of forming a new township while they were raising a young family, and were part of America becoming a new country as well. The three oldest Graves brothers were eager to do their part to help bring about the birth of the new nation:
Daniel joined the fight first, and died in January 1776, in the very beginning of the war, but his service record is missing.
Job enlisted next. He started as a Private in Captain John Williams’ company in Colonel Timothy Robinson’s detachment of the Hampshire militia in December of 1776, fought with his unit at Ticonderoga, and served in several different units throughout 1777 and 1779, for a total of 209 days.
Eben Jr, the oldest child of Eben and Prudence, enlisted in February, 1777. He was a Private in Captain Timothy Child’s company in Colonel David Leonard’s regiment at Ticonderoga and in Colonel David Field’s regiment at Bennington, for a total of 1 month and 21 days in 1777.
The process of independence was not without great hardship and many losses, and the Bible would have been a comfort to the Graves family, even through the deaths of their children: Eben and Prudence lost two-year-old Moses in 1760, and Daniel, their second son, died in 1776 as a revolutionary in the very beginning of Revolutionary War, at age 22. Soldiers traveling through town were often sick, with smallpox and dysentery and other illness, and in 1777, 50 people out of 900 inhabitants of Greenfield died in an outbreak credited to sick soldiers, including Electa (age 2) on the 1st of August and Solomon (age 8) on the 23rd of September.
Imagine Eben and Prudence Graves in the summer of 1777, having lost one son to the war and worrying about two others currently away fighting, seeing young soldiers like their own sons come through town ill, and their baby daughter sickens and dies. This was part of the terrible price of what was, in many ways, a civil war playing out on the home front. Perhaps this Bible gave them some comfort.
Daniel Severance was about 25 years old, dark-complected, light-eyed, and working as a blacksmith in what is now Washington, New Hampshire when the talk of revolution began. He enlisted as a private in Captain Ezra Towne's Company, Colonel James Read's Regiment on April 23, 1775. Less than 2 months later, he fought with his regiment at the pivotal Battle of Bunker Hill. In September of 1776, Daniel reenlisted as a private in Captain Abijah Smith's Company, part of Colonel Loammi Baldwin's 26th Massachusetts Continental regiment.
We know this was Daniel’s fife, but as there is no concrete record of him serving as a fifer, many questions remain. The military companies that made up the larger militia and continental army regiments during the Revolution included at least one fifer and one drummer. The owner of this fife had to master all the musical calls that told the members of his company when to get up, where to muster and when to go to bed, as well as providing the music on the march that helped the company keep the cadence and hopefully lift the army’s spirits. In battle, fifers and drummers used special tunes and drum beats to cut through the din of battle and communicate officers’ orders, including when to advance or retreat. Did Daniel ever learn or play these special tunes? How did this fife come into his care? What else might he have played?
Before the Revolution, music was already an important part of the colonial social experience. Although the early Puritans of the 1620s were less inclined to song, by 1776 there were not only the everyday lullabies and work songs and tavern anthems, but sacred hymns and public concerts as well. In 1770, William Billings, of Boston, printed The New-England Psalm-Singer, the first book of music written in colonial America, with a frontispiece engraving by Paul Revere. A few pieces were new words written to familiar tunes, but most were entirely new, like Chester, which was extremely popular in the 1770s, and started off boldly, thus:
Let tyrants Shake their Iron rod
And slav'ry Clank her galling Chains
we fear them not we trust in god
New englands god for ever reigns.
(Billings, New-England Psalm-Signer)
This was everyday music, the type anyone could play or sing, in a type of book anyone could buy. The type Daniel could have picked up during his time in Boston.
After the war, Daniel bought land in New Hampshire, married Betsy Safford, and raised two sons, Benjamin and Jeremiah. The fife went to his oldest son, who passed it to his son Ben Jr, who passed it to his son, B. F. Severance, who donated it to the Historical Society of Greenfield in 1910. What tunes might this little wooden fife played all those long years!
Journal from ye 1st of March 1773
1773--- Mar 1st- Went with Mr Cutler in ye Morning to Leiut
Fields drank Egg Pop and from there to Hoyts
drank Cherry and then back to Lt Fields & dined &
in ye Afternoon to Dickinsons Shop drank Cherry from
there we went to Joiners and in ye Evening we had
a dance and I waited upon Mr C Williams the Co
were Doctr Barnard et lexor J Williams & Sister T. Cutler
Murray Dickinson Cooley Peggy Ingersoll & Vira do
with several other Gentleman and Ladies a very fine
Dance, the Co braking up I came and Lodged wth Murray
Tuesday Majr Murray paid ye fine of 10/0 to
Colo Thos Williams Esq for riding of a
Sunday from Hubbards in Sunderland to Deerfield he
complaind of himself up & ye Afternoon I began
to read Van Swietens Commentaries upon Boerhaaves
Aphorisms drank Tea with ye Ladies, in ye Evening
went to Lt Fields to get an order of Abatement wc he
promised he would make when he saw ye Selectmen
from there I went to Ensn Barnards & from there
went to Catlins wth Murray, and from Catlins we
went to Doctr Barnards and playd Checkers, Murray
married me to Vira and I married him to Peggy after
which Murray and Peggy in truth like married People
went to Bed in presence of Theod Barnard & Vira & myself
where I left them when I came away Theod took Vira away
& into ye Kitchen and them I see no more---
In early 1776, Belchertown, like most of Massachusetts was caught up in the spirit of independence. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense had been published in January, the Massachusetts Provincial Government had drafted a new constitution, and towns and cities were preparing to declare their position on the issue of independence from Great Britain.
On June 25, 1776 a town meeting was held to consider this last question and by “a univercel vote” the residents voted to support independence and pledged to “firmly Ingage with their Lives and Fortunes” to assist the cause. This document memorializes that event.
Prominent among the names recorded on this document is Nathaniel Dwight, who was a scion of the town’s influential Dwight family. An innkeeper, he was a member of the Board of Selectmen and also Town Clerk, at the time. A month earlier, he had been chosen by a town meeting as a delegate to the Watertown Congress. At that time, it was also “voted that said Nathaniel Dwight shall go armed as there is every danger of invasion by the King’s troops that are now stationed at Boston, there being about 4000 men and the Governments of Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire have 30,000 men that are stationed round about Boston.”
Patriotically named Independence Booth was born on July 4, 1776 in Enfield, Connecticut, to Captain Joseph and Mary Hale Booth. Perhaps Independence (did she have a shorter nickname?) got her name because her father Captain Joseph Booth was a patriotic soldier. His grave in Enfield, Connecticut, includes the information that he "served in the French and Indian Wars from 1755-1762 and the War of the Revolution from 1775-1777 and received his commission as Captain Mar. 21st, 1777."
Independence married twice. Her first husband Danforth Charles, whom she married in 1802, died prematurely in 1807. They had a daughter Hannah, who was born after her father's death. Independence married a second time to Lewis Barber in 1817. Her grave can be found in Ludlow's Fuller Cemetery at the corner of Church and Center Streets.
Independence had several gravestone carvers in her family, including Enos Booth, who signed a stone in the Fuller cemetery–a rare find made more unusual as the signature appears on the back of the stone. Cousin Enos didn't carve her stone, though, nor her cousin Hanan Cooley, who also has a signed stone in the same cemetery, since they both pre-deceased her. A third carver, Herman Newell also signed a stone in Fuller Cemetery; he is a possible carver for her stone.
Prior to arriving at Fort Ticonderoga, Caesar lived and worked at a vast estate known as Forty Acres in Hadley, Massachusetts. His enslaver, Charles Phelps, Jr, was a man of high status in the community, and had him sent to fight in his place. It was common for white men, when called up to serve in the army, to send their enslaved servants as a substitute. Though they would receive the same wages as their white counterparts, they were required to give half or more to their owner. Caesar wrote to Charles in September of 1776, complaining that he had not received his wages. While lack of pay was frequently an issue for American soldiers during the Revolution, Caesar’s poignant letter reveals the complicated and precarious nature of his life as an enslaved person. He strives for some control over his living situation and meager personal possessions even as he acknowledges his status and that Charles has the power to sell him at any time.
The “stock and buckel” Caesar requests in his letter would have been his neck stock and buckle, a clasp that held a tightly wrapped piece of fabric around the neck. They would have been some or all of the possessions he would have been able to own. Enslaved persons were able to purchase small items like this, usually with the exchange of labor.This horn was described in an exhibition of historical artifacts in Hatfield in 18891 as the powder horn of Henry Wilkie, a Hessian in General Burgoyne's army.
While Hessian soldiers during the Revolutionary War were typically pre-issued cartridge boxes, this horn may have been issued to Henry once in America, or could have been taken off a captured or killed soldier from the Continental Army. Since the more prominent initials on one side of the horn do not match Henry Wilkie’s initials, the latter scenario is more likely.
There are two known versions of how Henry came to Hatfield, MA. Samuel Partridge in his reminiscences2 indicates that he knew Henry and described him as follows:
“…Henry Wilkie, who was from Wolfenbüttel, Germany, belonged to General Burgoyne's army, and was taken prisoner at Saratoga. While on his march to Boston for reembarkation to Germany, he made his escape, preferring to remain in this country. He was a barber in his native country, and told me that the barbers there were surgeons to the extent of bleeding patients. He lived in a small one-story house with his wife and four sons. All of these sons attended school in the old brick schoolhouse. One of the sons, Henry, remained in town, where he died at an advanced age. The others left town before their father's death.”
Another version of how he came to be one of the earliest non-English residents of Hatfield comes from an obituary of Henry’s grandson Charles E. Wilkie (donor of the powder horn), in which Henry is said to have been paroled. He, like many of his fellow Hessian soldiers, chose to remain in this country and was allowed to settle on condition that he not take up arms again for the British. Some Hessian POWs were paroled to local farmers, who needed manpower.
There were several paths of march taken by the prisoners from the Saratoga battlefield to Boston following General Burgoyne’s surrender on Oct. 17, 1777. One march led by General James Brickett did pass through Hatfield and another passed through Northampton. These, however, were thought to consist of British soldiers. The Hessians were marched via more southerly routes through Springfield and Connecticut. Along these routes, the Hessian soldiers were encouraged to desert their British armies and settle in the new land.
A more in-depth profile of Henry Wilkie is available from the Hatfield Historical Society.