1760 - 1850; served in gen. Washington’s army

The links between Joseph Plumb Martin and Milford start early. Reverend Ebenezer Martin (1732-1795) was Born in Hampton, Windham, CT, and was a graduate of Yale. 

Yale existed partly due to the efforts of Rev. Andrew, teaching many Yale students at Milford in the early days and First Church remained active with Yale throughout the eighteenth Century. The Reverend Martin met his wife at Milford: Susannah Plumb, a descendant of Robert Plum, one of nine persons added to the 11/20/1639 roll of 44 Milford “free planters” (but he was not a free planter). Other notable Plumbs of Milford were John Plumb, Sr. who built the first Mill on the Indian River (Rose’s Mill) in 1707. It operated until 1815 when much of the site (Quarry Road) was sold to the Milford Marble Company. They produced “Verde Antique,” a green Marble for the US capital. 

The Reverend Ebenezer was the founding minister of the First Congregational Church at Becket (MA) from February 23, 1759 until his removal on October 12, 1764. Joseph Plumb Martin had been born at Becket, November 21, 1760. Young Joseph recalls that his father “often got in trouble for speaking his mind too freely.” Despite a Yale education, an out of work Puritan minister who spoke his mind may have had difficulty making ends meet. His parents provided Joseph an education but, when he was just seven [possibly six], they sent him to live with Susannah’s more affluent parents in Milford, Joseph Plumb and Susanna Newton [other source: “Rebecca”].

From 1774 young Joseph knew of the strain between the colonials and the British but intended to keep out of it, at least until after the battles in Massachusetts in 1775: 

“During the winter of 1775-1776, by hearing the conversation and discussion of the good old farmer politicians, I collected pretty correct ideas of the contest between this country and the mother country. I thought I was as warm a patriot as the best of them. The war was waged; we had joined issue, and it would not do to “put the hand to the plow and look back.” I felt more anxious than ever to be called a defender of my country.” 

That spring, uniformed recruiters with fife and drum came to the center of this little hamlet promising adventure and pay to all patriots who would sign up. Joseph was as patriotic as any and with the pressure of his peers enlisting sought to do the same. Grampa forbade it but under his threat to run away and join a naval privateer he was allowed to join the army. Better on land than sea, thought his grandparents. 

Joseph was, perhaps, still not totally committed. In June 1776, at just fifteen and a half, he signed up for just a six month enlistment with the 5th Connecticut State Militia. He was assigned duty in New York where on August 27, 1776 Martin fought at the Battle of Long Island, a/k/a Battle of Brooklyn or Brooklyn Heights. It was the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence. In numbers involved, it was the largest battle of the entire conflict, and the first battle for an army of the now “United States.” Ultimately it was a serious defeat which only the hesitance of General Howe and an early morning fog prevented it from being the total destruction of Washington’s escaping army to Northern Manhattan. Many took ill in the fall of 1776, including Martin:

“It now began to be cool weather, especially the nights. To have to lie as I did almost every night (for our duty required it) on the cold and often wet ground without a blanket and with nothing but a thin summer clothing was tedious. I have often while upon guard lain on one side until the upper side smarted with cold, then turned that side down to the place warmed by my body and let the other side take its turn at smarting, while the one on the ground warmed, thus alternately turning for or six hours till called upon to go on sentry ... and when relieved from a tour of two long hours at that business and returned to the guard again, I have to go through the operation of freezing and thawing for four or six hours more…”

 “I had the canopy of heaven for my hospital and the ground for my hammock (bed). I found a spot where the dry leaves had collected between the knolls. I made a bed of these and nestled in it, having no other friend present but the sun to smile upon me. I had nothing to eat or drink, not even water, and was unable to go after any myself, for I was sick indeed. In the evening, one of my messmates found me and soon after brought me some boiled hog’s flesh and turnips, without either bread or salt. I could not eat it, but I felt obliged to him notwithstanding.”

Eventually Howe moved against Washington, landing forces along the coast from Throg’s Neck to New Rochelle and sweeping west across Westchester County. He defeated Washington at the Battle of White Plains near the Croton River on October 28, 1776. Joseph served as a Private. Howe again allowed Washington’s army to escape.

When his six month tour of duty ended in December 1776, Joseph returned to Milford having done his duty. Wintering with Grampa and Grandma probably re-inspired his sense of duty, or adventure, or boredom, he joined the Continental Army in April 1777, signing on for the duration of the War with the 17th Continental Regiment, a/k/a the 8th Connecticut under General James Varnum. It had been raised on September 16, 1776 at Danbury. The regiment had seen action at Brandywine on September 11, and Germantown September 26, 1777.

At Danbury that summer of 1777 Martin relates:

 “I had ample opportunity to see the devastation caused by the British. The town had been laid in ashes, a number of the inhabitants murdered and cast into their burning houses, because they presumed to defend their persons and property, or to be avenged on a cruel , vindictive invading army. I saw the inhabitants, after the fire was out, endeavoring to find the burnt bones of their relatives amongst the rubbish of their demolished houses. The streets, in many places, were literally flooded by the fat which ran from the piles of barrels of pork burnt by the enemy.

Soon after, he returned to New York where he underwent inoculation for Small pox. Smallpox was a greater killer than war as the legacy of Milford’s Steven Stow can attest.

“In company with about four hundred others of the Connecticut forces, to a set of old barracks, a mile or two distant in the Highlands, to be inoculated with the smallpox. We arrived at and cleaned out the barracks, and after two or three days received the infection, which was on the last day of May. ... I had the smallpox favorably as did the rest, generally ... I left the hospital on the sixteenth day after I was inoculated, and soon after rejoined the regiment”

Private Joseph was assigned to join the defenders at Fort Island Battery a/k/a Mud Island Fort (officially called “Fort Mifflin” since 1795), in the Delaware River at Philadelphia. The British had taken Philadelphia and began a siege on the forts to clear the river for supply. The battle lasted six weeks to mid November, 1777 and included the greatest bombardment of the war; 85 of the 400+ defenders were killed. Martin wrote:

“Here I endured hardships sufficient to kill half a dozen horses. Let the reader only consider for a moment and he will still be satisfied if not sickened. In the cold month of November, without provisions, without clothing, not a scrap of either shoes or stockings to my feet or legs, and in this condition to endure a siege in such a place as that was appalling in the highest degree.”

Martin encamped at Valley Forge over the terrible winter of 1777–1778. There he met the Oneida of the Iroquois who walked 250 miles to Valley Forge. They joined the Colonials at who fought at Barren Hill in May 1778: “Stout-looking fellows and remarkably neat for that race of mortals.”

The Connecticut Regiment fought at Monmouth (now Freehold, NJ) on June 28, 1778, a partially successful battle against the rear guard of the British. General Clinton had been ordered in May 1778 to evacuate Philadelphia to New York after France had entered the war on the American side. That year, Martin was made a Corporal of Light Infantry.

After the most difficult winter of the war, 1779-80, during which merchants would not accept worthless Continental currency for desperately needed supplies, soldiers starved and froze in near nakedness at Morristown, NJ. Martin commented on the Connecticut line mutiny in May 1780: 

“They [the mutineers] were truly patriotic; they loved their country, and they had already suffered everything short of death in its cause; and now, after such extreme hardships to give up all was too much, but to starve to death was too much also .... Here was the army starved and naked, and there their country sitting still and expecting the army to do notable things while fainting from sheer starvation .... We were unwilling to desert the cause of our country, when in distress; that we knew her cause involved our own.”

In the summer of 1780, Washington ordered the formation of a Corps of Sappers and Miners, the predecessor to the Army Corps of Engineers. Martin was selected for this regiment and promoted to Sergeant. Still in the New York area, he witnessed British Major John Andre being escorted to his execution at Tappan on October 2, 1780 for his part in the treason of Benedict Arnold over control of West Point.

By August 1, 1781 the British under Cornwalis was surrounded by forces under the Marquis De Lafayette. Washington hurried to join the battle at Yorktown, VA. Prior to Yorktown, Martin’s corps was responsible for digging defensive entrenchments for the Continental Army. At Yorktown they cleared the field of sharpened logs called abatis. Abatis are placed along trenchlines and fortified hillocks to prevent mass charges by man or horse. Martin and his men advanced under fire to remove these before, or during, battle. His actions allowed a regiment commanded by Alexander Hamilton, to capture Redoubt #10, a site preserved (re-built) to this day at Yorktown national historic park.

On October 19, 1781 Cornwallis surrendered, effectively ending the conflict. Martin was discharged from duty when the Continental Army disbanded in October 1783. 

He taught in New York state for a year, and became one of the founders of the town of Prospect, Maine. In 1794, when he was 33, he married eighteen year old Lucy Clewley and had five children: Joseph (b. 1799), twins, Nathan and Thomas (b. 1803), James Sullivan (b. 1810) and Susan (b. 1812). At Prospect he was a farmer, served as a selectman, Justice of the Peace and, finally, 25 years as Town Clerk . 

In 1836, a platoon of United States Light Infantry was marching though Prospect and discovered that Plumb Martin resided there. The platoon stopped outside of his house and fired a salute in honor of the Revolutionary War Hero.

He also wrote many stories and poems over the years, most famously his 1830 a narrative of his experiences during the war drawn from his own contemporaneous diaries originally published anonymously in 1830, A narrative of some of the adventures, dangers, and sufferings of a Revolutionary soldier, interspersed with anecdotes of incidents that occurred within his own observation, despite the snappy title, had been mostly a failure and went out of print. 

His work would re-gain national acclaim and become a major primary source for researchers when an old first edition copy was donated to Morristown National Historical Park. From it a new publication under the title Yankee Doodle Boy: A Young Soldier's Adventures in the American Revolution, told by himself was published by Holiday House, New York, in 1955. The book was published again by Little & Brown in 1962, in an edition edited by George F. Scheer under the title Private Yankee Doodle. It also appeared as a volume in Series I of The New York Times “Eyewitness Accounts of the American Revolution” in 1968. last published as A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin. (Signet, New York, 2001), but perhaps the best version is by descendant James Kirby Martin, editor: Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin. 3rd ed. (Blackwell, Malden, MA 2008).

The “boy soldier” view has been played up in modern television accounts featuring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ricky Schroeder as the title character. Martin would have bristled at “boy soldier” as his exploits were that of a man forged in war and hardship. He was a seasoned and hardened sergeant of 22 years by the end. A version of Joseph Plumb Martin’s life is on display by re-enactors with a history trail at Valley Forge, PA. There is even a face-book page one can visit to see a spiffy clean version of his life, suitable for children. 

Joseph Plumb Martin lived to be 89, dying on May 2, 1850. He is buried with his wife at the Sandy Point Cemetery, outside of Prospect, ME. He never returned to live in Milford.