Military History. 251 



those of John Murphy, a corporal, and Edmund Moorey, or 

 Mooncy, both of Hingham. 



Murphy was again found serving against the French on behalf 

 of Hingham in 1725, — this time upon a small vessel of which 

 Lieut. Allason Brown was commander. 



Among the many conferences held with the Indians of Maine 

 in the endeavor to secure the safety of the settlements, was one 

 bv Governor Belcher, at Falmouth, in Casco Bay, in 1732, at 

 which he was accompanied, as would appear from an account 

 found in the Thaxter papers, by Col. Samuel Thaxter, Rev. 

 Nathaniel Eells, and Ebenezer Gay. Colonel Thaxter was a 

 very prominent and trusted citizen, was colonel of the regiment 

 in which Bingham's companies were included, and held many 

 important offices. Among these was that of one of his Majesty's 

 Council, in which capacity probably he acted as adviser to the 

 Governor. On one occasion, while moderator of a meeting, 



he was grossly insulted by Cain, who dared him to fight. 



Colonel Thaxter quietly ordered the constable to remove Cain. 

 The meeting being concluded, however, Cain obtained all the 

 fight he wished, for Colonel Thaxter found him, and administered 

 a severe thrashing. It is probably safe to assume that, although 

 frequently moderator of the town meetings, Colonel Thaxter was 

 never subsequently troubled by personal challenges. This inci- 

 dent recalls to mind the fact, that with the occupation of the 

 new meeting-house of 1(381, there followed the uses to which the 

 earlier building had been applied, and that not only were the town 

 meetings held in the same place as the religious services, but 

 that the military character of the old belonged, at least to a 

 degree, to the new building also. We should find in searching 

 the yellow and stained records of the selectmen for the year 1736, 

 an account of an inquiry made by those officials into the amount 

 and places of deposit of the town's ammunition, and the discovery 

 that in Colonel Thaxter's hands was a barrel of powder weighing 

 two hundred pounds, two hundred and sixty-three pounds of 

 bullets, and a thousand Hints, besides a large amount held by 

 Capt. Thomas Loring, and considerable by Mr. Jacob Cushing, 

 all of which, together with other purchased by the town, " we 

 removed into the ammunition house made in the meeting-house 

 of the first parish in Hingham." In the absence of other infor- 

 mation, this record may justify the inference that Captain Loring 

 then commanded one of the Hingham companies. Of this, how- 

 ever, there is no certainty. Captain Loring represented the town 

 at one time in the General Court, and from his son Benjamin are 

 descended some of the present Hingham Lorings. 



During the colonial period there were two expeditions, at least, 

 by Great Britain against the Spanish possessions in the "West 

 Indies in which Xew England actively participated, and in which, 

 almost as a matter of course, men from Hingham served. The 



