A Forgotten Patriot: Lt. Col. Thomas Williams, Jr. of Stockbridge, Massachusetts

The American Revolution ended many lives and cut short many promising futures. A few of the fallen became celebrated martyrs in the cause of liberty, but most died in obscurity and are unremembered today. Thomas Williams, Jr. of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was one who died, after considerable military service, less than a week after the Declaration of Independence. If it were not for an extraordinary commemorative powder horn from the siege of Boston that belonged to Williams, he might have remained virtually unknown. His story may stand for countless others.

Williams was born in 1746 into a prominent family numbered among the “River Gods” of western Massachusetts: powerful interests allied by marriage and dominating political and economic life in Hampshire and Berkshire counties during the eighteenth century.[1] His father Thomas Williams, Sr. was minister in Deerfield and his uncle Ephraim Williams, for whom Williams College is named, died leading Massachusetts provincial troops and their Mohawk allies during the 1755 Battle of Lake George. For decades, several members of the Williams family were actively involved in displacing and dispossessing indigenous Mohicans from their individual and tribal lands in the region. Thomas Williams, Jr. became the first lawyer in Stockbridge, itself established as a Christianized Mohican settlement and chartered in 1737 as “Indian Town.”

Williams married Thankful Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts in 1771 and started a family in Stockbridge. He was active in the political life of his community and a delegate to the Berkshire County Convention on July 6, 1774, where he was appointed to a committee to review and report on the various American taxation and revenue acts passed by Parliament.[2] With the closure of the courts in Berkshire County that August, Williams suspended his law practice and soon represented the towns of Stockbridge and West Stockbridge in the 1st Provincial Congress.[3]

The Siege of Boston

In response to the news of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, two Minute companies from Stockbridge and West Stockbridge mustered together on April 22, 1775. One was led by Capt. Thomas Williams, Jr. and the other by Capt. William Goodrich, whose company included at least seventeen Mohican soldiers, making the Stockbridge tribe the very first to support the rebellion.[4] As part of Col. John Paterson’s regiment of Berkshire County militia these companies marched to the siege of Boston, reaching Cambridge by the end of April. [5] On May 8, Daniel Phelps of William’s company was accidently shot and mortally wounded by another soldier. He was interred on May 11 in a solemn ceremony where Williams’ men paraded with arms—that is, muskets—reversed.[6]

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Paterson’s command reorganized later in May as the 12th Massachusetts provincial regiment, comprising ten companies from both eastern and western counties.[7] Captain Williams’ and Captain Goodrich’s companies were part of this regiment, which on June 9 numbered four hundred and twenty-two men of all ranks.[8] Some of Paterson’s men were sent with a strong detachment under Col. Ephraim Doolittle on May 28 to Winnisimmit Ferry to guard stores taken from the Sloop Diana at Chelsea Creek, but the regiment itself was posted near Prospect Hill between Cambridge and Charlestown at a breastwork which would later be expanded as “Fort No. 3.”[9] They held this position on June 17 and observed but did not engage in the fighting beyond Charlestown Neck on Breed’s Hill.

On July 22, 1775, Paterson’s regiment brigaded under Gen. William Heath, whose command defended the lines “between Cambridge River and Prospect Hill” as part of Maj. Gen. Israel Putnam’s corps-de-reserve.[10] In the reorganization of the army on August 20, Paterson’s became the 26th Continental Regiment. Throughout the rest of that year, most of Paterson’s men held their position at Fort No. 3 and operated between there and Prospect Hill, Cobble Hill, Winter Hill and Phipp’s Farm at Lechmere Point. Many of these locations are depicted on a powder horn carried by Captain Williams that is held in the collections of the Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives.[11]

Arnold’s Expedition

Washington’s general orders on September 8, 1775 had great significance for Capt. Thomas Williams: “The Detachment going under the Command of Col. Arnold, to be forthwith taken off the Roll of duty, and to march this evening to Cambridge Common; where Tents, and every thing necessary, is provided for their reception.”[12] Both he and Captain Goodrich would be among the company commanders accompanying Arnold through the Province of Maine as part of a two-pronged invasion of Canada. Theirs were composite companies comprising men from more than one regiment. There were seventy-seven men in William’s Company, including eighteen from Stockbridge and eight from West Stockbridge. His company officers included Ens. Luke Day of West Springfield, who had a long war ahead of him and would later become a prominent Shaysite leader in the Connecticut River valley. Goodrich’s Company had seventy officers and men, only eleven of whom were from Stockbridge and including none of the Mohican members of his old militia company.[13]

Washington’s instructions to Arnold were very specific about the strategic purpose of the expedition and how it was to be conducted. Near the bottom of the list came an acknowledgement that it was late in the year to embark on a Northern campaign: “if unforeseen Difficulties should arise or if the Weather should become so severe as to render it hazardous to proceed in your own Judgment & that of your principal Officers (whom you are to Consult)—In that Case you are to return: giving me as early Notice as possible that I may give you such Assistance as may be necessary.”[14] Benedict Arnold was an aggressive commander and unlikely to abandon the effort no matter how arduous, but he understood that his New England officers in particular were accustomed to making strategic decisions by means of a council of war.[15]

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Shortly after arriving at Fort Western on the Kennebec River, Sgt. Reuben Bishop of William’s company was shot and mortally wounded in a public house by a soldier named James McCormick from Goodrich’s Company.[16] Bishop, who was from Stockbridge, succumbed to his wound on September 24. McCormick, from North Yarmouth, was condemned at court martial, only to be reprieved at the gallows and sent back by ship under guard to Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge. Colonel Arnold wrote on September 27 that “The criminal appears to be very simple and ignorant [and] had the character of being a peaceable fellow … I wish he may be found a proper object of mercy.”[17]

Arnold’s force proceeded upriver by bateaux in three divisions, with the riflemen under Capt. Daniel Morgan of Virginia in the advance, Captain Goodrich’s Company among those in the second division under Lt. Col. Christopher Greene of Rhode Island, and Captain Williams’ in the third or rear division with most of the expedition’s stores under Lt. Col. Roger Enos of Connecticut. They endured difficult portages, poorly constructed and leaky boats, an alarming depletion of their food supplies and a late season hurricane on their way up the Kennebec and through the swamps of the upper reaches of the Dead River. The divisions became widely separated and Colonel Arnold effectively lost tactical command of his rear division.

At a critical moment on October 24, Colonel Arnold wrote to Lieutenant Colonel Enos that he was sending back all the sick and feeble men from the forward divisions with three-days’ supply of food and instructed Enos to provide them with additional supplies for their return down the Kennebec to the commissary at Norridgewock. He ordered Enos to “proceed with as many of the best men of your division as you can furnish with fifteen day’s provision; and that the remainder, whether sick or well, should be immediately sent back to the Commissary.”[18] Further compounding the situation, Lieutenant Colonel Greene expected the bateaux that delivered the invalids to Enos to return with food supplies for his division which was now down to half a pint of provisions per man.[19]

Lieutenant Colonel Enos had far less food on hand to meet the requirements of the forward elements and the worn out men returning downriver. On October 25 he held a council of war attended by several of Greene’s officers as well as those from his own division. They were equally divided as to whether Enos should send a body of men forward or return with his entire division, and Enos ultimately sided with his officers – including Captain Williams – who voted to return. Capt. Simeon Thayer of Greene’s division, who was at the council, noted that “they only received two Barrels of flour, nothwithstanding all our entreaties, and that few only through the humanity of Capt. Williams.” Thayer also recorded as they parted that “Capt. Williams stept’d towards me, and wish’d me success, But in the meantime told me he never expected to see me, or any of us, he was so conscious of the imminent Danger we were to go through.”[20]

Enos turned back with three hundred and seventy-three men, including one hundred and forty from those companies remaining with Arnold and the two hundred and thirty-three men of his rear division. On November 9, 1775 he wrote to General Washington from Brunswick, Maine explaining that his division had only four days provisions when they held the council of war and voted to return. Upon reaching Cambridge he was brought before a court of inquiry which concluded on November 29 that that “Colonel Enos’s misconduct (if he has been guilty of misconduct) is not of so very heinous a nature as was first supposed, but that it is necessary, for the satisfaction of the world, and for his own honour, that a Court-Martial should be immediately held for his trial.”[21] The only witnesses at his trial for deserting his commanding officer without leave were the officers of his own division who had voted to return. Captain Williams testified that while passing through the Great Carrying Place, he had encountered several parties returning home and had furnished them with provision,

When I came up with Colonel Enos, I was informed by Major Bigelow there had been a Council of War, and that it was settled that, for want of provisions, the whole detachment under Colonel Enos should return. Colonel Enos proposed to go forward, and let his division return; but as there was a large number, besides those which belonged properly to our division, and as we had several invalids to bring back, and were very short of provision, (for we had but three days’ provision, and were above one hundred miles from the English settlements) I thought it was absolutely necessary for Colonel Enos to take the command of the party back, and protested against his going on to join Colonel Arnold; at the same time, not knowing that Colonel Enos had any orders from Colonel Arnold to join him.[22]

Lieutenant Colonel Enos was acquitted but the taint of having abandoned Colonel Arnold’s expedition stayed with him, especially given subsequent events in Quebec. Captain Williams and the other officers who returned with Enos were not censured (at least not outside of Arnold’s remaining force). Captain Williams resumed his duties with Paterson’s 26th Regiment, which was reengaged as the 15th Continental Regiment at the beginning of January 1776 with enlistments for a full year. A number of officers continued with Paterson in the new establishment, but Williams resigned on or before January 6 and Lt. Moses Ashley of his company was recommended to succeed him.[23] Far from being finished with military service, however, Williams may have anticipated an opportunity for promotion.

Reinforcing the Army in Canada

On January 19, 1776, Thomas Williams, Jr. was commissioned lieutenant colonel of a new regiment to be raised in western Massachusetts under Col. Elisha Porter for service with the Northern Army in Canada. This was one of several unnumbered Continental regiments recruited after the failed assault on Quebec and enlistments that expired at the end of 1775. Washington’s instructions to Colonel Porter made it clear that his regiment “is to be upon the continental establishment” and stressed “I woul[d] have you order each Company to march as fast as they are rais’d—the whol putting themselves under the Command of the General or Commanding Officer in Canada, as fast as they arrive there.”[24]

The date of January 30, 1776 is engraved on Thomas William’s beautifully carved powder horn with its depictions of the siege of Boston. By then, he may already have left Charlestown and returned to Stockbridge for a brief reunion with his family before leading advanced elements of Porter’s Regiment to Canada. He probably received his commission from the Massachusetts Council in Watertown along with Colonel Porter and Maj. Abner Morgan on January 22 and then proceeded to Stockbridge.[25] One indication that he was home in January is the birth of his third son that October. By late-March, he was at the siege of Quebec, seemingly leaving his commemorative horn behind him.

The first surviving mention of Lieutenant Colonel Williams at Quebec is an orderly book reference to his serving as “Field Officer for the Day, Below” on March 26, 1776.[26] Only one of the companies from Porter’s Regiment was with him at this time, with the rest well back on the march. Colonel Porter together with four companies of the regiment only reached Quebec on April 27, delayed by a shortage of arms and late season ice and snow. Porter noted in his diary that the men in the company which had preceded him to Quebec had all had small-pox, presumably by inoculation, and all but one recovered. On May 3, the same day that Gen. John Thomas took command of the siege, Porter recorded, “The 4 Companies which came with me were ordered off to Cape Saute to have the smallpox.”[27]

Smallpox and Retreat

The timing for the deliberate exposure of Porter’s Regiment to smallpox could not have been worse. The inoculation process required effective quarantine for three to four weeks, during which the men were both weak and contagious. Even for those under treatment, severe cases could still develop and mortality rates under the best conditions still ran 1 to 2 percent. Porter’s men had no more than three days in hospital after they were inoculated before the siege was dramatically lifted by the arrival of a British fleet on May 6 and the American forces were soon driven back upriver in full retreat. Not only were they exposed to physical stress while they developed smallpox symptoms, but they became a significant vector for the spread of the disease to others in its more deadly form.[28]

By May 11, elements of Porter’s regiment reached Lac Ste. Francis where the colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Williams dined at the local Seigneur’s. Williams brought several boats into Sorrel at the mouth of the Richelieu River on May 13, then went back downriver the following day to retrieve flour supplies and returned on May 16. While he was away, one of Porter’s men died of smallpox, the first of many to come. Both Colonel Arnold and General Thomas were now at Sorrel, where they had a disagreement over Arnold’s order to immediately inoculate another hundred and nineteen men from Porter’s regiment. Lieutenant Colonel Williams proceeded on his own to Montréal on May 18, followed two days later by Major Morgan and all of the men from Porter’s regiment who had been inoculated and were well enough to travel. Back at Sorrel, General Thomas broke out with smallpox on May 21 and died at Chambly on June 2, 1776. Colonel Porter and four of his officers attended his burial that same day as pallbearers.[29]

Response to The Cedars and Withdrawal from Canada.

The inoculated men from Porter’s regiment arrived at Montréal on May 21. As news of the defeat and capture of a Continental garrison upriver at “The Cedars” reached the city, Lieutenant Colonel Williams was sent by the Congressional commissioners at Montréal to reinforce Colonel Arnold at Lachine. Williams marched on May 22 with about one hundred and sixty men, including some from Porter’s regiment and those from Paterson’s 15th Continental Regiment that were then at Montréal. They were with Colonel Arnold when he set out for Fort Ste. Anne at the western end of L’ȋle de Montréal on May 26, arriving to find that the invading force and some of its captives had withdrawn from the island to Pointe-de-Quinchien on the opposite shore. Not to be deterred, Colonel Arnold prepared an amphibious assault at dusk that included some of the men from Paterson’s regiment who were serving under Lieutenant Colonel Williams, though it is not known whether Williams himself participated. The landing was opposed and Arnold’s boats eventually returned to Fort Ste. Anne.[30]

After a cartel was arranged to exchange most of the Continental prisoners, Colonel Arnold and his force returned to Montréal. By mid-June, Lieutenant Colonel Williams had rejoined the depleted companies of Porter’s regiment either at Chambly or at Sorrel where on June 14, following the army’s defeat at Trois Rivièrs, he travelled in the same bateau as Colonel Porter on the retreat to Ste. Jean’s, which they reached on June 17. Two days later while encamped at Ȋle aux Noix, Lieutenant Colonel Williams was appointed to a court of inquiry investigating the conduct of officers connected with the defeat and capture of the garrison at The Cedars.[31] That same day, the sick were ordered withdrawn to Crown Point in advance of the retreating army. Porter noted in his diary on June 19, “126 sick of my Regt. ordered to go. Col. Williams, Capt. [William] Bacon, Lt. [David] Morgan, Ensign [Jabez] Snow, and sixty privates ordered to go with them.”[32]

Illness and Death

Lieutenant Colonel Williams and his detachment of invalids and guards left for Crown Point on June 20, 1776. Whether he was among the sufferers at this time is unclear, but on July 4, Colonel Porter recorded that “Col. Williams and Capt. Bacon went off this day on furlough for the recovery of their health.” Capt. William Bacon returned to the army “well recruited” on July 25, having convalesced in Pawlett, Vermont, but Lieutenant Colonel Williams only travelled as far as Skenesborough, now Whitehall, New York. Colonel Porter sadly observed in a diary entry on July 12, “About noon rec’d the melancholy tidings of the death of Col. Williams on the 10th—a loss I deeply feel.”[33]

Lieut. Col. Thomas Williams, Jr. was the highest-ranking officer from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to die during the Revolutionary War. He lived just thirty years and was survived by his pregnant wife and two small children. His widow Thankful Williams later married her cousin Moses Ashely, his former subaltern in Paterson’s regiment. Subsequent Williams family genealogists forgot the extent of his service with the Northern Army, assuming he died on his way to Canada in the summer of 1776.[34] His surviving powder horn is a tangible reminder of the sacrifice he made in the service of American liberties, for which he and so many others deserve to be remembered.

[1] Robert J. Taylor, Western Massachusetts in the Revolution (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1954), 11.

[2] Rev. David. D. Field, ed., History of the County of Berkshire, Massachusetts (Pittsfield, MA: Samuel W. Bush, 1829), 115.

[3] The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775 and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston: Dutton & Wentworth, 1838), 15.

[4] Patrick Frazier, The Mohicans of Stockbridge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 198.

[5] Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, Vol. 17 (Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Company, 1908), 483.

[6] “A Chaplain of the American Revolution; From the Rev. David Avery’s Diary,” American Monthly Magazine, Vol. XVII (July-December 1900): 344 (“David Avery’s Diary”).

[7] “Return of Officers in Regiments at Cambridge 1775,” NARA RG93, M246 Revolutionary War Rolls, Folder 91, Roll 0042.

[8] Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (Boston: C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1851), 117, 118.

[9] “David Avery’s Diary,” entries for May 28 and 29, 1775.

[10] General orders, July 22, 1775, The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775 – 15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 153–156, (PGW).

[11] Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Accession # 72.203, Object ID 42.007.

[12] General orders, September 8, 1775, PGW, 431–432.

[13] Stephen Darley, Voices From a Wilderness Expedition; The Journals of Benedict Arnold’s Expedition to Quebec in 1775 (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2011), 241-241, 251-253.

[14] “Instructions to Colonel Benedict Arnold, 14 September 1775,” PGW, 457–460.

[15] Kenneth Roberts, March to Quebec; Journals of the Members of Arnold’s Expedition (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1953), 73, 75.

[16] “Moses Kimball Journal,” in Darley, Voices From a Wilderness Expedition, 163; “Ephraim Squier Diary”, in Roberts, March to Quebec, 620.

[17] Benedict Arnold to George Washington, September 27, 1775, in Roberts, March to Quebec, 67.

[18] Arnold to Roger Enos, October 24, 1775, in Roberts, March to Quebec, 75,76.

[19] “Captain Simeon Thayer Journal,” in Roberts, March to Quebec, 255, 256.

[20] Ibid., 256, 257.

[21] “Letter from General Washington to the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, enclosure” in Peter Force. American Archives, Series 4, 3:1709.

[22] “Proceedings of a General Court-Martial of the Line, held at Head-Quarters, at Cambridge, by order of his Excellency GEORGE WASHINGTON, Esq, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of the UNITED COLONIES, DECEMBER 1, A˙ D˙ 1775,” in Peter Force, American Archives, Series 4, 3:1709.

[23] “Return of the Officers of the 15th Regiment of Foot Commanded by Colonel John Paterson, Charlestown, January 6, 1776,” NARA RG93, Revolutionary War Service Records, M881, Roll 0053, NARA Catalog id 570910.

[24] Washington to Elisha Porter, February 10, 1776, PGW, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 3, 1 January 1776 – 31 March 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988): 285, 286.

[25] Appleton Morgan, “The Diary of Colonel Elisha Porter of Hadley Massachusetts; Touching his March to the Relief of the Continental Forces Before Quebec,” The Magazine of American History, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1893): 185-206 (original in the collections of Fort Ticonderoga, MS.6022) (“The Diary of Colonel Elisha Porter”).

[26] Doyen Salsig, Parole: Quebec, Countersign: Ticonderoga; Second New Jersey Regimental Orderly Book 1776 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 1980), 53.

[27] “The Diary of Colonel Elisha Porter,” 192.

[28] Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana; The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 31-37, 67, 68.

[29] “The Diary of Colonel Elisha Porter,” 194-196.

[30] “The Northern Campaign; From the Unpublished Diary of Rev. David Avery, chaplain of Col. John Paterson’s Regiment,” American Monthly Magazine Vol. 18 (March 1900): 238-240; Mark A. Anderson, Down the Warpath to the Cedars; Indians’ First Battles in the Revolution (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021), 11, 118-121.

[31] “Orderly Book of Adjutant William Walker, Paterson’s 15th Continental Regiment,” Fort Ticonderoga collections MS.6021: 75.

[32] “The Diary of Colonel Elisha Porter.” 198.

[33] Ibid., 200, 201.

[34] Harrison Williams, The Life, Ancestors and Descendants of Robert Williams of Roxbury … (Washington, D.C.: F.W. Roberts, Co., 1934), 139.