Age: 19 Occupation: farmhand & [grist-miller]
Resided: Lexington
Type: MI Unit: 2nd Middlesex-Col. Thomas Gardner/Capt. John Parker
To correspond on this ancestry, please contact: George_Quintal@ yahoo.com
BENJAMIN SAMSON was born January 1756 in Harvard, MA the son of the late Benjamin & Elizabeth (Stone) Samson, his father having died just before his birth. He was baptized in the First Congregational Church of Harvard on 14 March 1756. On 11 July 1763, Samuel Stone of Lexington took Benjamin into his home. On March 1764, Benjamin was warned out of Lexington. He lived in East Lexington when he entered the service in 1775 as a Private in Capt. John Parker’s militia company, very probably being the poorest man in the company. He ‘was in the battle of Lexington … the morning of the Battle’. He was one of ten men known to have returned the British fire. EBENEZER MUNROE JR., also a participant on the COMMON that day, testified: ‘As we retreated, one of our company, BENJAMIN SAMPSON, I believe, who was running with me, turned his piece and fired.’ Prior to the Battle he had rung the bell in the belfry on the Common, shortly after Paul Revere passed through giving the Alarm.
It was undoubtedly his mother, living along Battle Road in Lexington the day of the Fight, who petitioned the Provincial Congress for her losses that day: This may certify, to whom it may concern, that I, the subscriber, lost, on the 19th of April, 1775, by the British troops, in wearing apparel, more than I can replace with the sum of … 10 0 0 – Elizabeth Samson
“Five or six days” after the Lexington Fight, he continued in the service at the Siege of Boston: Enlisted into Captn John Woods company in the 26th Regiment Massachusetts line, commanded by Col. Gerish[sic] who was broken for disobedience at the Battle of Bunker hill, and afterwards the Regiment was commanded by Col. Loammi Baldwin. That he marched from Lexington to Cambridge Massachusetts where he remained until the Battle of Bunker hill[. W]as engaged in the Battle, …
Fearing a British counterattack, the American command gave Benjamin urgent new orders: and the night after the Battle he marched to Prospect hill where he stayed two nights and was then ordered and marched to Medford to guard the River –
After the Battle of Bunker Hill, he was listed as sick and absent on the 10 August 1775 return at Medford, a possible sign that he might have been wounded. The September 1775 roll shows him ‘absent 42 days by permission of the Captain’. His name is also on a ‘list of men belonging to Capt. Wood’s co. who declined to serve the month of Jan. [1776], endorsed Medford Dec’br ye 22 1775. On 28 December 1775, his name is listed on a receipt for a bounty coat. Yet serve longer he did: That he enlisted for the term of eight months and remained at Medford until his time had expired when he volunteered and served at the same place under the same officers one month longer when he received a written discharge from the Captain, which he has lost –
Benjamin then became the personal attendant (waiter) for an officer: That he again enlisted as a waiter to Col. James Stone, in March or April 1776 and went with him to Dorchester Point stayed there about one month, was then dismissed and went home to Lexington.
Thus ended his Revolutionary War service, a total of approximately 1 year and 2 months.
After the War, he lived at Harvard, Lexington, and Fitzwilliam, N.H. He was taxed in Fitzwilliam from 1793 to 1807. Around 1810, he moved to Roxbury, Vt. There he lived on the current Warren Mountain Road, using the Dog River for power for his grist mill. On 11 December 1822 his fellow soldier on the COMMON, Silvanus Wood, offered this deposition for Benjamin:
He married ANN5 MUNROE. She was born 13 May 1759 in Lexington and baptized there 27 May 1759, the daughter of George4 & Anna (Bemis) Munroe. Her father was killed at the Battle of Monmouth, N.J. on 28 June 1778. She was dismissed from the Lexington church to the church in Fitzwilliam, N.H. 14 June 1801 and then admitted to the church in Fitzwilliam, N.H. 26 July 1801, on a letter from the church in Lexington. She died 24 Feb 1822, aged 63, pre-deceasing Benjamin by twenty-four years and is buried at the obelisk in Roxbury, Vt. with her husband. His offspring numbered 7 known children (4 of whom died in childhood), 6 known grandchildren (4 of whom died in childhood) and 3 known great-grandchildren (2 of whom died in childhood), a great deal of tragedy for one family.