Posted on by Charlie Frye · 6 Comments

List of Americans in the Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls

This is a roll of who was or likely was in or at the June 17, 1775 battle. It is not exact, complete, or the last word. The early historians Swett, Frothingham, Loring, et al. agreed that there is no basis for compiling an exact list. I completely agree with them, though we can compile useful from all of the available information.

Americans in the Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls – Feb 2024Download
Method for Compiling Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20817.75367)Download

Newly available in April 2026: Interactive map for locating patriot soldiers on the Breed’s Hill battlefield: Battle of Breed’s Hill Patriot Locator. This map is based on recent research aimed at revising and improving the locations of the British units.

I intend this roll as a 21st-century digital convenience. It is for those who wish to get a faster start researching patriot ancestors, town histories, etc.

Beyond appearing in each of the state rolls, there were two criteria for including soldiers in this roll:

  1. There was a “positive” statement of their being in the battle. This included being a casualty, prisoner, losing items, or being specifically listed on a roll as in the battle. There is a “Positives” column in the Company Summary tab reflecting the count of soldiers with a positive statement.
  2. The dates of service include June 17, 1775.  This is not positive proof, but proof of the potential to have taken the field. Typically, this was a roll taken between June 18 and August 2. These rolls gave enlistment dates in April, May, or June, and durations of service. There were a few rolls taken before the battle that established a term of service after accounting for those who marched and served for the April 19, 1775, alarm.  Many men who marched on April 19 went home within a week and did not return to the siege.  It is also worth noting omissions to the state rolls. There were quite a few soldiers who served from late April or early May only until the end of July and were not part of the Continental Army. There are cases where the Aug 1st Massachusetts rolls were not taken or did not survive, and I would assert as many as 250 men were not included in the state rolls or this digital version of them. There were also dozens of soldiers who fought but were from other units that are not recognized as marching. These men were on details or among friends and chose to march with their companies and regiments. There were also men who marched, took the field, and then were sent on duties, or left, and went back to camp. Such men are included as they were on the field at a time when others were in physical and mortal danger. The Company Summary tab has two fields 1B and 1A that indicate Y or N for a roll before the battle (1B) or a roll with service dates after the battle (1A).

Last, on the company summary tab, there are fields for phases and zones. Phases represent the three British offensives during the battle. Zones represent areas of relative conflict. Zone 1 is the accepted main line of battle, including the range of a musket on either side of where that line moved. Zone 2 is the rest of the Charlestown Peninsula, which required an act of bravery in and of itself to march onto via the Charlestown Neck. Zone 3 is the area beyond the Charlestown Neck including Lechmere Point. General Ward sent units to guard against a second landing of the Regulars. Col. Paul Dudley Sargent noted unfavorable winds also prevented this landing. However, these troops took casualties from cannon and grapeshot from the floating gondolas and smaller ships that could make their way deeper into the Back Bay.

If you note some one is missing or wrongly included, please email me at duty_liberty@mail.com, or comment on this blog – I generally can respond within a day or two. Follow this post to be notified of updates, which are listed below.

-CEF

Updates:

3/15/2021: Added Captains Abraham Dodge and Ezra Lunt from Col. Moses Little’s regiment.

3/14/2021: Removed most men from Capt. Abel Wilder’s company of Col. Doolittle’s Regiment – only part of the company was there. Added Capt. John Harnden’s company of Col. Bridge’s regiment. Added several individuals found due to improving the quality of the Massachusetts rolls file. Removed three duplicated soldiers.

3/10/2021: Added several from Connecticut.

3/9/2021: Added Daniel Shay

4/21/2022: Added Henry Farrington and Ichabod Farrington – previously omitted due to garbled OCR in Massachusetts rolls file.

2/29/2024: Learned of Samuel Bradish of Abel Wilder’s Company in Doolittle’s 18th Mass. Regiment. In Bradish’s record, the service dates included the battle and that he was wounded. I was surprised to see these service dates had been omitted from Capt. Wilder’s record. Based on this, I added Bradish and 44 additional soldiers from Wilder’s company. These men were predominantly from Winchendon and Royalston, with a few from Boston and Lunenberg.

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Charlestown Ablaze

Charlestown In Flames
Robson Map: Depicts the Battle of Breeds Hill, where Charlestown was burned by the British.

242 years ago on June 17, 1775, Charlestown was set ablaze to drive out three companies of American militia. At the outset of the Battle of Breeds Hill, these militiamen had taken positions on the north side the town. As the ranks of redcoats marched up the slope of Breeds Hill to Warren’s Redoubt the militiamen and fired into their ranks, likely taking a hundred or more out of the battle before the main action got started.

Imagine you are in the militia with these men. It is a sweltering afternoon with the sun high overhead. The British gunships on the other side of town in the Charles River and the battery at Copps Hill in Boston blast a screaming leaden hail of fiery-hot grapeshot at the mostly wooden buildings you have been using for cover and concealment. The gun-smoke blowing on the wind is, by degrees, pushed out by wood-smoke as the temperature in Charlestown rises.

My ancestor, Isaac Frye, was one of these militiamen, serving as a 2nd lieutenant and quartermaster for Colonel James Reed’s 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. During the battle Isaac Frye was assigned to Captain Josiah Crosby’s company along with a number of the men from his hometown of Wilton, New Hampshire.

In The War has Begun, Chapter 5 describes what I imagined it would have been like to be there, marching into Charlestown, taking up positions, and firing on redcoats who were marching by–easy targets, far too easy. It must have weighed on those men’s souls to shoot an enemy who was not facing them. The inferno driving them from Charlestown, to some, must have seemed as if gates of hell had been thrown open.

Burning of Charlestown
Alexander Hogg: View of the Attack on Bunker Hill with the Burning of Charlestown, June 17, 1775

If the illustrations and engravings depicting Charlestown’s fate are true, the flames from the resulting conflagration towered a hundred feet, and the smoke could be seen for dozens of miles.

It took three years to definitively locate Isaac Frye during the battle. The idea was that I could help my oldest son with his 5th grade history project. We decided to figure out where Isaac Frye was during the Battle of Breeds Hill. In the two weeks he had to finish his project, we learned Isaac Frye was in Reed’s regiment, and therefore he was either at the rail fence or there was a chance of him being with Crosby’s company in Charlestown.

About two years later I discovered New Hampshire’s Rolls of the Soldiers in the Revolutionary War, where I learned the composition of Crosby’s company, which included men from Wilton.  The final proof came a year later when I learned there were additional volumes in New Hampshire’s state papers pertaining to the Revolutionary War.  There, I found a record for the men of Crosby’s company who had lost clothing and other articles in Charlestown, and the list included Isaac Frye, who lost a coat and hat.

-CEF

Sources:

Bouton, Nathaniel D.D. 1878. “Provincial Papers. Documents and Records Relating to the Province of New-Hampshire, From 1764 to 1776; Including the whole Administration of Gov. John Wentworth; the Events immediately preceding the Revolutionary War; the Losses at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Record of all Proceedings till the end of our Provincial History.” Volume VII. Orren C. Moore, State Printer. Nashua, NH. p 596.

Frothingham, Richard, 1873, “History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Also, an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument. With Illustrative Documents.” Fourth Edition, Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, MA. p136: Lists Crosby’s company as being in Charlestown.

Hammond, Isaac, W. 1885. “Rolls of the Soldiers in the Revolutionary War 1775, to May, 1777 with an appendix, embracing diaries of Lieut. Jonathan Burton ” Volume I of War Rolls. Volume XIV of the Series. Parsons B. Cogswell, State Printer, Concord, NH

Hogg, Alexander 1783 “View of the Attack on Bunker’s Hill with the Burning of Charlestown.” Engraving after Millar. In Edward Bernard, The New, Comprehensive and Complete History of England. London

Page, Thomas Hyde 1775 “A plan of the action at Bunkers-Hill, on the 17th. of June, 1775, between His Majesty’s troops under the command of Major General Howe, and the rebel forces,”

Robson, T. 1778 “Plan of the town with the attack on Bunkers-Hill in the peninsula of Charlestown, the 17th. of June 1775. Newcastle upon Tyne [Eng.].