Major Benjamin Whitcomb, Whitcomb’s Battalion, N.H. Rangers
Benjamin Whitcomb, Jr. was born July 2, 1737 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. He was the son of Benjamin, Sr. and Dorothy (White
Major Benjamin Whitcomb, Whitcomb’s Battalion, N.H. Rangers
Benjamin Whitcomb, Jr. was born July 2, 1737 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. He was the son of Benjamin, Sr. and Dorothy (White) Whitcomb.
Benjamin Whitcomb, Jr.’s introduction to war came during the Seven Years (French and Indian) War when he enlisted in a Massachusetts regiment and joined General Johnson’s expedition against Crown Point on Lake Champlain, New York, As such, he was in the battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. His next major action came when he enlisted for service with General Jeffery Amherst in the expedition against Montreal. During the campaign, Whitcomb was promoted to Lieutenant. After the Montreal expedition ended, some of the companies returned home over the Crown
Point Road to Fort Number 4 at Charlestown, New Hampshire and then on to Massachusetts.
The trip across Vermont must have been enjoyable for Whitcomb for on October 12, 1761, he was one of the original grantees of Cavendish, Vermont. He held this piece of land until 1764. By this time, Benjamin Whitcomb had moved to Westmoreland, New Hampshire where he married Lydia Howe in 1769. They then moved to Putney in the New Hampshire Grants (present-day Vermont). In February of 1772, Maidenhead (now Guildhall), Vermont offered a bounty of 100 acres of land to anyone settling and improving it. Whitcomb and his family took advantage of the offer and moved there.
On April 10, 1772, he was made a Justice of the Peace in Gloucester County. Because of the character of frontier life and the distances and differences between northern Vermont and the settled coastland, the growing disagreements with England were slow to reach the upper Connecticut River Valley. Even with the outbreak of armed conflict in the Spring of 1775, little effect was felt in Maidenhead.
This soon changed in the Winter of 1775, when Generals Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery began their Campaign to capture Canada. On January 20, 1776, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted “to raise one regiment of soldiers forthwith” in addition to the three regiments already in Continental service. The regiment was given to Colonel Timothy Bedel and headquartered in Orford, New Hampshire.
Benjamin Whitcomb enlisted in Bedel’s regiment on January 22, 1776, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in Captain Samuel Young’s Company. Lieutenant Whitcomb was given the job of enlistment officer and as such, in March, remained in Orford when the regiment was ordered to join the Continental Army in Canada. It wasn’t until May that he left Orford with his recruits to rejoin Captain Young’s company.
By this stage of the Canadian campaign, the bulk of the Continental forces were exhausted, sick, and depleted, and the Continental Army was slowly retiring towards Crown Point. Lieutenant Whitcomb, with his recruits, finally rejoined Captain Young’s Company at Sorel, Quebec on June 2, 1776. By June 19, the major part of the Army had
reached Crown Point but Captain Young’s Company was part of the rearguard and was still at Isle Aux Soix, Quebec. On June 24, while part of the rearguard, Whitcomb was promoted to First Lieutenant. The retreat finally came to a halt in July and Bedel’s Regiment reported in on July 18, 1776.
Due to his experiences in the Champlain Valley during the Seven Years’ War, First Lieutenant Whitcomb was employed as a ranger and scout between Fort Ticonderoga and the enemy positions around Saint John’s and Montreal. It was on one of these scouting missions that Lieutenant Whitcomb was involved in one of the most notorious events of the War and one that served to make his name famous.
First Lieutenant Whitcomb had set out with two other men. One had become ill and had to return to Fort Ticonderoga, and the other deserted. In spite of being alone, Lieutenant Whitcomb stationed himself alongside the road between Saint John’s and La Prairie in order to observe the traffic. On July 24, 1776, a group consisting of a general field officer, his aides, and an escort cam