280 History of Hingham. 



This was endorsed : Capt. Jotharn Lorings Billeting Roll 



at Hinaham in 1775. 

 £18. 10. 8 



These men also were in service thirteen days. 



Four companies, numbering in all one hundred and fifty-four 

 men, marched from the old town on that bright April morning 

 when the grass was already long enough to be waving in the soft 

 spring breeze and the cherries were white in the glory of their 

 blossoms. The occasion and the scene were never to be pre- 

 cisely re-enacted. On the night of the 18th Revere and Dawes 

 had left Boston, and commenced their famous ride, alarming the 

 inhabitants to the north of that town. Messengers were sent to 

 the surrounding country, and the response was so prompt that in 

 the records of the killed and wounded on the 19th, names appear 

 of persons from no less than twenty-three places. 



We seem to hear again the rush and clatter of the hurrying 

 horseman through Weymouth and into our own streets, and the 

 startling cry " To arms ! " " To arms ! " We seem to see our 

 forefathers as they gather on the company training-fields at 

 South Hingham, the Lower Plain, and Broad Bridge, while Levi 

 Burr, Peter Hearsey, Reuben Sprague,and Zadoc Hersey wake the 

 sleepers with the continual roll of their drums, and the cheerful 

 notes of the fifes in the hands of Ezra Garnett and Reuben Her- 

 sey sound the reveille of the period. But this is no holiday 

 parade these men are engaged in, and there is little of the pageantry 

 of war in the gathering of these earnest, sober country farmers 

 and mechanics and sailors. The call has not been entirely unex- 

 pected, however, and the companies move out for their long march 

 with full ranks, their bright silk colors gleaming red in the sun- 

 light, and the veterans of the Canada campaigns at their head. 

 We do not forget, as we watch them leading their men, — Captain 

 Loring with his artillery lumbering along the uneven roads, or 

 Captain Lincoln with his large company of down-town foot, — that 

 their names became familiar long ago on the rolls of those who, 

 under Samuel Thaxter or Edward Ward or Ebenezer Beal or 

 Joseph Blake, bravely fought in his Majesty's service ; and the 

 sight of Seth Stowers recalls the sad scenes around Fort William 

 Henry on the bloody morning of the terrible August day in 1757. 

 When these men, and many another now again in the ranks, 

 marched out of Hingham ten years earlier, the commander of the 

 regiment to which they belonged was Benjamin Lincoln ; now 

 too, their colonel's name is Benjamin Lincoln ; he is the son of 

 their old commander, and is destined to become for all time 

 Hingham's most famous citizen. 



Too remote from the field of battle to have made active par- 

 ticipation in the conflict possible to her organized military, 



