Bristol in the American Revolutionary War
By Christian McBurney
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While this article is about Bristol, Rhode Island, in the American Revolution generally, it will focus on the British army’s raid on Bristol on May 25, 1778. My argument is that there are some striking similarities between that raid and the American patriot response to it, and the Battle of Lexington and Concord. But there are important differences too.
Prior to the American Revolution, Bristol was a relatively small port. Its total population in Rhode Island’s 1774 census was just 1,209 people—1,079 Whites, 114 Blacks and 16 Indians. By comparison, Newport had a population of 9,208 and Providence 4,321.[1]
In 1774, Bristol had 197 households, only one of which was headed by a Black person (John Mingo headed a household of three) and only one of which was headed by an Indian (Ichabod Crary). Most of the people of color resided at homes headed by White heads of households. Almost all of the Black people at this time were enslaved.
Excerpt from Map of Narragansett Bay, showing Providence Bay, Bristol Bay, and Mount Hope Bay, drawn by British cartographer Charles Blaskowitz, 1777 (Library of Congress).
While today Bristol is known for its involvement in the African slave trade, prior to the American Revolution, such trade was a minor economic activity in Bristol’s history. Most of its commercial vessels were engaged in the North American coastal trade and occasionally made trips to the Caribbean. Simeon Potter invested in Bristol’s first African slave trade voyage in 1764 and invested in four more from 1764 to 1775. Mark Anthony DeWolfe commanded his first ship on a slave trading voyage in 1769. From 1769 to 1775, he captained ships on six slave trading voyages (one for which Potter was the investor).[2] DeWolfe descendants eventually would invest in dozens of slave trading voyages, but that was mostly after the 1790s.
Colonel Simeon Potter was one of Bristol’s outstanding citizens in the early part of the Revolutionary War. In 1772, he was reportedly the commander of a longboat from Bristol that participated in the famous burning of the British revenue cutter HM Gaspee. In 1770, he was named a colonel of the Bristol County militia, and in 1774, after Rhode Island created the post of major general of the colony’s militia, Potter was the first person selected to hold the position. On April 20, 1775, the day after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Potter led a small detachment of fighters from Bristol and Warren and set off for Cambridge. He often held the post of Moderator of Bristol’s Town Meeting. He was elected to the General Assembly’s upper house in May 1776 and continued in that position until the end of 1776.[3] Thereafter, Potter ceased to hold prominent posts. Bristol historian Wilfred Munro speculates that Potter’s “zeal” for the patriot cause “appears to have waned as the war went on.”[4] Potter resided in Swansea for most of the rest of the war.[5]
Bristol’s most prominent patriot during the war was William Bradford. He often served as Speaker of the House. Bradford served as deputy governor of Rhode Island from November 1775 to May 1778. He held many other governmental positions, including briefly serving as major general of the state’s militia (following Potter) and Speaker of the Lower House from 1780 to 1793. As Speaker of the lower house in February 1784, he played the decisive role in defeating a serious effort to abolish slavery in Rhode Island.[6] But a measure gradually abolishing slavery passed soon afterwards. In 1783, he purchased the 385-acre Mount Hope Farm, which had been confiscated from Isaac Royall, a leading Boston Loyalist who fled to Nova Scotia. Bradford, while a U.S. Senator, entertained George Washington there in 1793.[7]
Other prominent Bristol families included the Munros, Pearces, Pecks, Reynolds, and Russells.
Excerpt from Map of Narragansett Bay, showing Bristol Bay, Bristol, and Poppasquash Point, drawn by British cartographer Charles Blaskowitz, 1777 (Library of Congress).
As with other ports in the thirteen mainland colonies of North America, Bristol’s population mostly supported the patriot cause. There were some Loyalists (also called Tories) supporting continued rule by the Crown and Great Britain.
When the Revolutionary War broke out at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, deep concern swept through Bristol. It was, after all, a small port sitting on an exposed coastline.
Concern morphed into panic when Captain James Wallace, commanding the Royal Navy 20-gun frigate HMS Rose, and a squadron of fourteen other vessels sailed into Narragansett Bay. During the night of October 7, 1775, Wallace and his ships bombarded Bristol for failing to provide provisions for his Royal Navy squadron. No one was injured by the cannonballs, but the Reverend John Burt of Bristol’s Congregational Church ran into a cornfield to escape the bombardment, suffered a heart attack, and died. William Bradford courageously met with Captain Wallace on board the Rose to negotiate a settlement. Understandably, Bristol authorities agreed to hand over forty sheep to Wallace. Still, the next day the Royal Navy captain bombarded Poppasquash Point and houses at Bristol Ferry.[8]
On December 7, 1776, a fleet of 54 transport vessels, carrying 7,100 British, German and Loyalist troops arrived in Narragansett Bay. They were escorted by sixteen Royal Navy warships, led by none other than Captain James Wallace commanding the 50-gun HMS Experiment. The next day the British army occupied Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island, as well as Jamestown. The British army would stay for the next three years.
The occupation of Newport by the British army in late 1776 had a profound effect on Bristol. Many families fled Bristol for safer communities away from the coast, including to Rehoboth, Swansea and Dighton, Massachusetts.[9] In a military census of Rhode Island towns taken in March 1777, 93 White men aged sixteen and older had “removed out of the town of Bristol since the fleet first came to Newport.”[10] Of course, many of the women, children and elderly left Bristol as well. That left 146 White men aged sixteen and over remaining in Bristol. Needless to say, normal life in Bristol was disrupted.
Those who remained attempted to defend the port, even though it was “naked & defenceless” against a determined British naval attack.[11] Two artillery batteries were established, one at Bristol Ferry and the other at Poppasquash Point. Both included earthen embankments and barracks. A third artillery post was established in the “compact part” of Bristol at Warehouse Point—described as opposite where the Long Wharf stood.[12]
As in all Rhode Island towns, many Bristol men able to bear arms enlisted in Continental, state and county regiments to oppose the British army. Two state infantry regiments were formed that were intended to guard against potential incursions by the British army in Newport. One that served in Bristol became known as Crary’s Regiment. The soldiers in these two regiments were more experienced than the county militia regiments who were called out sporadically as needed, but less experienced than the Continental Army regiments established by the Continental Congress.
A company of militia from Bristol was established, commanded by Captain William Throop. The men of Bristol (which then extended to the border of Warren) were divided into two classes and shared patrol duty. Militiamen would be posted at Great Neck, Poppasquash Point, Mason’s Point, the Narrows (where the Kickemuit River meets Mount Hope Bay), Bristol Ferry, and the compact part of Bristol. They would be on the lookout for approaching enemy vessels. A company established in Warren, commanded by Captain Ezra Ormsbee, did the same.
A state artillery regiment, called Elliott’s Regiment, also manned the fortified posts at Bristol Ferry and Poppasquash. At the northern end of Portsmouth, at the location opposite Bristol Ferry, the British established a Royal Artillery post (called also Bristol Ferry).
Troops constantly moved through Bristol and it was thus also used as a military supply depot. Troops were stationed at, or moved through, Bristol if there was a scare that the British might land an invasion force or if the Americans were planning to invade Aquidneck Island (which they did on three occasions, twice in 1777 and once in 1778). For example, shortly after the British occupied Newport, fearing an invasion on the mainland from British forces, about 800 militia troops from Rhode Island and Massachusetts were temporarily stationed at Bristol.[13]
It is of particular interest to note men of color who enlisted in Continental Army regiments. In 1777, two men of color from Bristol enlisted in the First Rhode Island Regiment of Continentals. At this time, only free men of color were allowed to enlist. In May 1777, Joseph Reynolds of Bristol received £44 from the town of Barrington for Thomas Reynolds, a Black man, enlisting in the First Rhode Island, suggesting an agreement that if Joseph received the enlistment bounty, Thomas would be emancipated. Thomas received £34 from Nathaniel and Peleg Heath of Barrington, apparently for serving as a substitute for them.[14]
Abraham Pearce (or Pearse) was a Black man probably hailing from Bristol who enlisted in the First Rhode Island on May 11, 1777. He may have resided in the home of Nathaniel Pearce, who had three Black men residing at his household in 1774.[15] Abraham may have also come to an arrangement with Nathaniel to obtain his freedom by enlisting or he could have been free at the time.
Reynolds and Pearce saw action at perhaps the American Army’s biggest victory in 1777, the successful defense of Fort Mercer on the Delaware River on October 22, 1777. Reynolds was wounded in the battle. Abraham Pearce died of disease at Valley Forge, the Continental Army’s main camp in the winter of 1777-1778.[16]
In February 1778, the Rhode Island General Assembly enacted a law allowing enslaved people to obtain their freedom by enlisting in the First Rhode Island of Continentals for the duration of the war.[17] A total of six Bristol enslaved men obtained their freedom by enlisting, an impressive number given the town’s small population. They were Frank Bourne, Plato Van Doorn, Thomas Lefavour, Juba Smith, Prince Ingraham, and Ezekiel Diamon.[18] The first three men mentioned enlisted in the regiment on February 20, 1778, suggesting that they either enlisted together or a recruiting muster was held in Bristol that day. A 1781 registry of soldiers in the Rhode Island Regiment reveals some information about Plato Van Doorn. Aged 23 in 1781, he stood five feet, one and three-quarters inches tall, had black hair and was described as “Black.” He was born in Guinea (northwest Africa), was a resident of, and enlisted from, Bristol, and his occupation prior to the war was as a tailor.[19] Thus, in his own lifetime, he was taken from his family and African homeland, forced into a sailing ship and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold and enslaved. Now he was fighting for his new country’s independence.
Bristol having six enslaved men enlist in the First Rhode Island was impressive for a small port. Still, some men of color did not enlist for a variety of reasons, such as because of their advanced age or poor health, because their enslavers discouraged or even prevented them from enlisting, or because they voluntarily chose not to enlist. The Rhode Island 1777 military census reported seventeen Black men aged sixteen years and over and able to bear arms who did not enlist in the First Rhode Island.[20]
African American private of the Rhode Island Regiment of Continentals, with the anchor design, symbolizing Rhode Island. Watercolor by Jean Baptiste de Verger, a French Army officer, ca. 1781 (Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University).
After getting inoculated for smallpox at a Coventry hospital and training and drilling at East Greenwich, the First Rhode Island was ready for action. In July, the soldiers of color who had served in the First Rhode Island and Second Rhode Island Regiments arrived in Rhode Island. These were free Black soldiers, including Thomas Reynolds, with some free Narragansett Indian soldiers, and now they were hardened veterans. They were added to the First Rhode Island, which would be a segregated regiment (with the privates and musicians being of color, and the officers, sergeants and corporals being White).
The First Rhode Island famously fought at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. The American Army had moved onto the northern part of Aquidneck Island to try to lay siege to and take the British garrison at Newport. But when the French fleet had to sail to Boston for repairs after being devasted by a hurricane in the open sea, the American Army retreated to the north along a line bolstered by Butts Hill Fort. The British Army decided to attack, hoping to interrupt the evacuation of the American Army off the island. The First Rhode Island held a key place on the west side of the American defensive line. The regiment, along with other Continental regiments, repulsed three charges from enemy German auxiliaries and Loyalist regular troops and drove the attackers from the field after the third try. It was an impressive performance by the “Black Regiment,” given that the enslaved men were not even allowed to hold a musket prior to the war.
The outstanding event in Bristol’s history is the British raid on the port on May 25, 1778. Why did the British army from Newport raid Bristol and burn down nineteen houses, the county jail, and St. Michaels’s Episcopal Church and seize thirty of its residents as prisoners?
The story starts in Paris, France. After the stunning American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in upstate New York in October 1777, King Louis XVI was ready to commit openly to support the new United States. On February 6, 1778, France signed a treaty of alliance with the United States. France in effect had declared war on Great Britain. British spies discovered that a powerful French navy squadron was fitting out to sail to assist American patriots.
At the time, the British army occupied Philadelphia, New York and Newport. It appeared that Newport was the weak link that could fall to a joint French and American attack. The commander in chief of British forces in Newport, Major General Robert Pigot, took notice.[21]
British Major General Robert Pigot, commander of the British Army occupying Newport, the rest of Aquidneck Island and Conanicut Island. Portrait by Francis Cotes, c. 1765. (Wikipedia entry for Battle of Rhode Island).
In early May, Major Frederick Mackenzie of the British army wrote in his remarkable daily diary of learning from some British prisoners who had escaped and just arrived in Newport that “the rebels are collecting boats at Providence, [East] Greenwich and Warren” and that “An expedition is the general talk of the country, and they [American patriots] express their hopes of being in possession of [Newport] before the middle of June.”[22] Then Pigot learned that in Warren, Americans had collected military stores for the purpose, as well as about 125 flatboats at a bridge spanning the Kickemuit River. The British believed that an attack on Newport was imminent. On May 24, panic struck Newport provincials as a rumor spread that patriots were about to attack the island with 2,000 soldiers.[23]
While the British believed that an attack on Newport was imminent, in reality, the American army was then not in any position to conduct an attack. Its commander in chief, Major General John Sullivan of New Hampshire, had only about five hundred troops under his command. In comparison, General Pigot had 3,700 troops under his command.[24] Thus, it made no sense for Sullivan to attack Aquidneck Island.
Still, General Pigot decided to raid Warren and Bristol. His main goal was to destroy the flatboats and thereby delay an American attack on Aquidneck Island. He also wanted to destroy stockpiled military supplies. Pigot was confident that the “whole business” could be “finished” before the Americans assembled a significant force for a counterattack. He also had accurate intelligence, probably from spies or local Loyalists, that there was only a guard of ten men upon the boats and not more than 250 patriot troops stationed on the whole peninsula, from Warren to Bristol Ferry.[25]
“Plan of the adjacent coast to the northern part of Rhode Island, to express the route of a body of troops under the command of Lieut Colonel Campbell of the 22d: Regiment to destroy the enemies batteaux, vessels, galley &c &c &c which was accomplished May 25th 1778 / laid down and drawn by Edwd Fage, lieutt. of artillery” (Hereafter, “Edward Fage Map”) (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
At 8:00 p.m. on May 24, a total of 500 soldiers—from the British 22nd Regiment, the elite flank companies (one Grenadier Company and one Light Infantry Company) of the 54th Regiment, a company of elite German Chasseurs, 125 German troops from the von Huyn and von Bunau Regiments, a handful of Royal Artillerymen, and Loyalist guides—set out from Newport and marched northwards to Arnold Point in Portsmouth. The commander of the detachment was Lieutenant Colonel John Cambell, the head of the British 22nd Regiment.
Excerpt from the Edward Fage Map, showing route of British Army troops marching on West Main Road to Arnold Point, in Portsmouth, where they were loaded onto vessels for transport (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
By 12:30 a.m. the next morning, the attack force was on board a flotilla of flatboats, barges and whaleboats. They began to proceed north, escorted by two Royal Navy frigates, the 32-gun HMS Flora and the 36-gun HMS Venus.[26]
At about 3:30 a.m., Campbell’s men splashed ashore about three miles south of Warren and one mile north of Bristol. The British had landed on Great Neck, which was part of Bristol.[27]
Captain Thomas Allin’s company in Crary’s Regiment was stationed there. Once the men realized what was happening, they scrambled out of their camp so quickly that they left behind twenty-five blankets, thirteen shirts, twelve shoes, eight hats and a musket, as well as all their camp furniture. Allin, hailing from Barrington, also lost a musket and his silver-hilted sword.[28]
Campbell immediately started to take civilians as prisoners. This must have been part of a prearranged plan.
Thomas Champlin at the time was a corporal in Captain William Lawless’s Company in Crary’s Regiment.[29] The company too was stationed at Great Neck. Champlin had received permission to sleep at his nearby home near the border of Warren the night of May 24. On his return early the next morning, according to his wife Christy, “he was then said to be the first man that discovered [the enemy] through the fog.” Christy further recalled, “He hallowed to my father and told him the British had come, but my father was taken by them as well as many others on the Neck before they had time to escape.” Champlin evaded the raiders and “ran immediately to Bristol and gave the alarm to our forces there . . . .”[30]
Excerpt from the Edward Fage Map, showing route of transport vessels, landing zone of raiders one mile south of Warren and three miles north of Bristol, and route of British column sent to attack American artillerymen at Poppasquash Point (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
As the sun rose at about 5:15 a.m., men from Captain Gideon Wescott’s battery, part of Colonel Robert Elliott’s Rhode Island State Artillery Regiment and located at Poppasquash Point, spotted HMS Flora and opened fire. The civilians and soldiers in Bristol County were thus alerted to something, but just what was not clear to all. They were not yet aware that a raid on the mainland had started. Neither were the artillerymen in Westcott’s battery.
In response to Wescott’s artillery fire, Campbell sent a captain and thirty men in a flatboat back to Poppasquash Point. The raiders captured Wescott and nine artillerymen (others evaded capture), destroyed their 18-pound cannon and its platform, and burned down their barracks.[31]
Campbell marched his main force north to Warren and left the company of German Chasseurs to guard the crossroads of the road leading to Warren and another leading east. Campbell took the rest of his soldiers east to the bridge spanning the Kickemuit River. Most of his troops were stationed at the entrance to the bridge, while the light infantry company of the 22nd Regiment crossed the bridge to guard the other side of the bridge. Beneath it, in the river, he found about 125 flatboats (eighty according to patriot sources), some “capable of carrying forty men each.” No guards were present, only a group of workmen who launched several of the repaired flatboats into the river before they were taken prisoner. British soldiers dragged the rest of the boats “into several heaps, and the whole set fire to.” They also burned in the river a Rhode Island state row-galley mounting twelve cannon; two sloops; a store house; equipment used for repairing the boats; a corn mill; seven houses; and the Kickemuit Bridge.[32]
Excerpt from the Edward Fage Map, showing march of Lieutenant Colonel Campbell’s column to the Kickemuit River (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
His main task accomplished, Campbell marched to Warren, arriving there about 8:00 a.m. His troops burned a store owned by the Child brothers used to supply nearby American soldiers. This store held a variety of military supplies, including gunpowder. Next, they torched a newly built sixteen-gun sloop-of-war intended to be used as a privateer against British shipping. Eight or so houses and the Baptist church meetinghouse and parsonage were consumed by fire. On board the Flora, Captain Brisbane “saw a number of houses on fire and a great explosion at Warren.”[33] The church and some of the houses may have caught fire from the explosion of the gunpowder. Then the soldiers got out of hand, entering the homes of inhabitants and plundering them of valuables that could be carried, such as cash, watches, silverware, and even suits of clothes and beaver hats.[34]
Campbell continued with his pre-arranged plan to capture civilians and hold them as hostages. They included a farmer, Jonathan Peck, and a man he enslaved, Nero Peck. In Warren, his troops grabbed Congregational Church minister Charles Thompson and several other civilians.[35]
Campbell next set his sights on Bristol, about four miles to the south. His men began to march there, taking along the way White and Black farmers as prisoners. British troops reportedly threatened to throw an elderly woman into a dank Newport prison if she did not divulge the number and location of American troops in Bristol. She complied.[36] Campbell learned that quartered in Bristol was a detachment of Colonel Archibald Crary’s 2nd Rhode Island State Regiment and Captain Nathan Pearse’s Rhode Island state artillery company, in all about 250 men.[37]
Excerpt from the Edward Fage Map, showing march of Lieutenant Colonel Campbell’s column from Warren to Bristol (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
At about 10:00 a.m. from the deck of the HMS Flora, Captain John Brisbane “saw a red flag on shore and our troops marching towards Bristol.”[38] The red flag was the signal for Brisbane and the flatboats under his command to move below Bristol Neck for the upcoming re-embarkation of Campbell’s detachment.
Marching south, Campbell’s men did not escape unscathed. “As the alarm had by this time become general and many of the rebels had assembled,” Major Mackenzie wrote, “they were continually fired upon during their march, from behind walls, trees and houses by about 300 rebels.”[39] (The figure was probably closer to 120).[40]
The British column was further hurried along by the 2- and 3-pounders of Colonel Daniel Tillinghast’s United Company of the Train of Artillery based in Providence. One of Tillinghast’s artillerymen, a newspaper printer by trade, recalled after the war that his unit had “fired a few shots at them from our field pieces,” with the result that the British “retreated quick.”[41]
At this point, the raid was beginning to resemble the Battle of Lexington and Concord. On that day, April 19, 1775, a British force of about 700 regulars left Boston and marched to Lexington and Concord. After military confrontations on the Lexington Common and at the North Bridge in Concord, Colonel Francis Smith of the British Army led the march of his men back to Boston. First, Smith had a five-mile march from Concord back to Lexington. Meanwhile, aroused patriot militiamen and minutemen left their homes with their muskets and set up ambushes for the British detachment. The soldiers fired from behind rocks, stonewalls, and trees, inflicting serious casualties on the British force. In some cases, entire companies and regiments of militia formed and challenged the British column. On this part of the march, Smith had to leave his killed and many of his wounded behind (Smith also received a minor wound). Finally, the survivors of the British force reached Lexington, where British General Lord Hugh Percy had a brigade to reinforce Smith’s exhausted men. Militia and minutemen, many organized in companies, continued to harass the British and get in fierce firefights, but the British force eventually made it back to Cambridge and safety. British killed and wounded far exceeded American casualties.[42]
This excerpt from a map of the Battle of Lexington and Concord shows Massachusetts militiamen firing at British redcoats from behind stonewalls (“Provincials Firing Behind the Walls”). J. De Costa, “A Plan of the Town and Harbor of Boston . . . .,” published in London, 1775 (Library of Congress).
On May 25, after the British raiders had been on the island for several hours, patriot militiamen began to gather and set up ambushes against the enemy column. They were imitating the militiamen and minutemen who fought at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
Simon Wheeler of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, was at work “topping off a haystack” on his father’s farm when he heard about the raid. As Wheeler recalled, “I immediately jumped down, ran to the house, seized my gun and accoutrements, and was on the march in five minutes.”[43]
British Army reenactors marching at the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 2025 (Christian McBurney).
At Kickemuit, William Bowen, his brother James, and a neighbor, Jeremiah Pearce, grabbed their muskets and ran to join a militia company from Warren, “called out” by its commander, Captain Ezra Ormsbee. The local men, along with others in Ormsbee’s Company, “followed the enemy in retreat and fired on them.”[44] James Mason also recalled that, as a private in Ormsbee’s Company, he and others of his company “turned out and pursued the enemy.”[45] Placing a different emphasis, Issacher Cozzens recalled that “He was called out . . . to pursue and take plunder from” the British raiders.[46]
Walter Burdick of Charlestown, Rhode Island, in the area after being hired as a crew member on the privateer torched in Warren, joined six local men who assailed Campbell’s rear guard. According to Burdick, they “had several fair fires” at the rear guard and “continued firing at them until they retreated.” But Burdick received a nasty wound when a musket ball entered above his left hip and lodged near his backbone. He would receive state disability payments after the war.[47]
Militiamen reenactors firing at the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 2025. A similar scene occurred on the British column’s march to Bristol on May 25, 2025 (Christian McBurney).
At the Battle of Lexington and Concord, in order to reduce the effectiveness of patriot militiamen and minutemen hiding behind rocks and trees and firing at the British column trying to return to Cambridge, British officers sent out flanking parties to attack them. This is how many of the patriot casualties occurred.
Cambell adopted the same tactic on the march from Warren to Bristol, using the Grenadier Company and Light Infantry Company of the British 54th Regiment. Major Mackenzie wrote after the raid that the “flank companies of the 54th acquired great credit for their address and conduct in flanking and covering the march of the main” British column.[48]
Meanwhile, Colonel Crary’s soldiers mustered in the rear of the Court House that then stood on State Street and Captain Pearse’s artillerymen lined up on Burton Street. Crary decided not to try to defend Bristol, either because he was heavily outnumbered by the enemy or because he feared that a serious engagement could result in the town’s destruction. In any event, he and Pearse led their commands out of Bristol by way of Back Road (now called Metacom Avenue).[49]
Excerpt from the Edward Fage Map, showing the compact part of Bristol, including a bridge leading to it, and Mount Hope (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
Upon arriving in Bristol, British and German soldiers repeated their campaign of burning and plunder. Loyalist guides were aware of the depots of military supplies in Bristol. They likely were aware that Sion Martindale of Bristol had been granted by the General Assembly “the care of the forts, stores and ammunition in Bristol.”[50]
Within a one-square mile area of the port of Bristol stood roughly one hundred homes and several public buildings.[51] The raiders burned the county jail, which was used not only to hold criminals, but also to incarcerate Loyalists who supported King George III. Interestingly, it does not appear that the Bristol County Courthouse, which then stood on State Street, was burned. (The one that stands today on the Town Common, which occasionally doubled as a State House, was not built until 1816).[52]
The raiders targeted a house identified as containing military stores, houses known to quarter troops, or that were owned by known patriots, such as the homes of the deceased Reverend John Burt and Simeon Potter (his house was located at the southeast corner of Church and Hope streets).[53] Mark DeWolfe’s Burton Street home had been the quarters of Pearse’s artillery company and was set on fire.[54] The Bristol quarters for Captain Thomas Allin’s Company in Crary’s Regiment was burned.[55] William Bradford’s house at what is now the location of 474 High Street—the “best then in town”—was torched.[56] Bradford had just stepped down as Rhode Island’s deputy governor.
Elizabeth Linthorne suffered the loss in Bristol of “one-third of a large dwelling house containing in my part two large lower rooms and three above in good repair with a cellar underneath.”[57] Why this is house was burned is not known.
No doubt the British officers were advised by Loyalists of the proper houses and buildings to burn. Even so, one contemporary report recalled Loyalist guides torching houses. The Providence Gazette reported later that the notorious Loyalist William Crossing had personally “fired several houses at Bristol and Warren with his own hand” and had further been “very active in robbing defenseless women of their necklaces and rings.”[58] Cast out of the communities, Loyalists took advantage of the opportunity to obtain revenge.
The British also burned the town of Charlestown, next to Boston, on June 17, 1775, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. This is an excerpt from the drawing (Library of Congress).
The raiders dealt with Loyalist residents in Bristol harshly as well. It will be recalled that many patriots had fled Bristol after the British army occupied Newport in early December 1776. Some residents with Loyalist tendencies may not have felt a similar urge to flee. General Sullivan later reported to General George Washington that the British and German troops “made no distinction between their friends and foes—some women who had been long noted as their faithful friends, were compelled by the bayonet to stand while their buckles were taken from their shoes, their rings from their fingers, their handkerchiefs from their necks, etc.”[59] Two days after the raid, a Newport resident would complain that “wearing apparel of all sorts, necklaces, rings and paper money, taken as plunder at Bristol and Warren, were offered for sale by the soldiers.”[60]
According to one story, a British officer intentionally burned a wooden church meetinghouse, after being informed that the church housed the town’s gunpowder magazine in mounds disguised as tombs. After the blaze began, angry church parishioners informed the officer that the burning church was St. Michael’s Church of the Church of England, that many of its members were sympathetic to the Crown, and that it hid no such gunpowder supply.[61] According to another report, the officer burned the church because he believed it was a Congregational meeting house, which the British generally considered to harbor “rebels.” This explanation, however, loses credence given that the town’s actual Congregational meeting house was left intact. While the intentional torching of the church is possible, the fire probably had been ignited accidentally by stray embers from burning houses that floated onto the church’s roof.[62] Regardless, the church, with a “good bell and clock,” was “reduced to ashes,” with nothing left of it but its “funeral pile.”[63]
The most reliable report is that nineteen houses in Bristol burned down.[64] It seems probable that several of them were not intentionally burned but caught fire after a nearby house was intentionally torched. Barns and other outbuildings were also burned.
In Bristol, Campbell grabbed another thirty prisoners, including the town miller, William Gladding, and an African American named Caesar Blagrove. Also seized was Hezekiah Usher, a known sympathizer of the Crown.[65]
It was now nearly 11 a.m. With the primary goals of the raid achieved, Campbell must have been concerned that since his detachment had been marching in Bristol Neck for seven hours, it gave time for local militia to mount a serious counterattack. He ordered his men to march to Bristol Ferry where the transport vessels would pick them up.
Excerpt from the Edward Fage Map, showing the march of Lieutenant Colonel Campbell’s column from Bristol to Bristol Ferry and the re-embarkation of the troops onto Royal Navy vessels (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections).
Militiamen began to gather on the road from Bristol to Bristol Ferry to harry the British column. Private Joseph Ashley of Captain Thomas Allin’s Company, Colonel Crary’s State Regiment, recalled that initially his company had retreated to the east of Warren and had escaped over a bridge. Then, Ashley wrote, “The militia came in very soon and we drove them [Campbell’s column] off, down to Bristol Point,” that is, Bristol Ferry.[66]
The situation again seemed to resemble the disastrous march of the British detachment back to Boston on April 19. But there were some important differences. On April 19, patriot militiamen and minutemen greatly outnumbered the British detachment, and they often operated in established companies and regiments. Three years later, on May 25, enemy forces outnumbered the patriot militia and state troops by about five hundred to two hundred. Moreover, the patriot forces mostly consisted of disparate individuals and portions of companies (Ormsbee’s Company from Warren and Throop’s Company from Bristol), along with parts of a single regiment (Crary’s). Accordingly, the patriot military response on May 25 was not as effective as that on April 19.
Another difference from the Battle of Lexington and Concord is that Campbell intentionally grabbed civilians as prisoners. This tactic was not employed by the British on April 19, 1775.
Still, while the attackers had not suffered any killed, Campbell did have some wounded. Unlike at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where some wounded had to be left behind and captured and cared for by patriots, Campbell was able to bring all his wounded along with him.
Word of Campbell’s raid did not reach General Sullivan’s Providence headquarters until 8:00 a.m. Fearing that the raid was merely a feint designed to distract him from a major assault on Providence or other part of the mainland, Sullivan held what few troops he had in their positions. (In showing such caution, he was imitating General Artemas Ward on June 19, 1775 before the Battle of Bunker Hill; worried that the British would land a crushing blow at Roxbury or elsewhere, Ward limited the reinforcements he sent to Breed’s Hill.)[67] Sullivan did send Colonel William Barton, the hero of the capture of British Major General Richard Prescott at a house on the Portsmouth-Middletown border in July 1777, with a party of ten or twenty mounted and armed volunteers to assist patriot forces in Bristol. Barton had been raised in Warren and before the war had moved to Providence to open a hattery business.
Reaching Bristol Ferry, Barton took command of some 200 soldiers, including part of Crary’s Regiment, Ormsbee’s and Throop’s companies of militia, and other local militiamen who continued to pepper Cambell’s troops with musket fire from behind stonewalls and trees. This was probably the hottest firefight of the day.
Militiamen firing at the British at the 2025 reenactment of the British raid on Bristol, held at Independence Park, May 25, 2025 (Christian McBurney).
Bristol historian Wilfred Munro reported that the British herded a number of their prisoners to their rear in the hopes of discouraging American fire. “This measure furnished a very effectual relief, and probably saved many [British and German] lives.”[68] If true, using civilian prisoners as “human shields, was a shocking development. Munro was a fairly reliable historian, so the story carries some credence. Munro may have relied on the May 25, 1878 newspaper edition of the Bristol Phoenix, which contains a detailed article about the raid in recognition of its one hundred year anniversary. The author the Phoenix piece was not identified, but the author likely hailed from Bristol as the author had an intimate knowledge of its history. This author and Munro as well (if they were different people), may have spoken to descendants of Bristol residents who witnessed the raid in 1778. The article provides, “To protect themselves from the shot of the Americans, the British formed a rear platoon of their prisoners, and this manouvre greatly embarrassed the Americans in their attack.” On the other hand, neither the Providence Gazette, General John Sullivan nor any soldier in a recollection mentioned this tactic, thus casting some doubt on the claim.
It appears the tactic of taking prisoners was a lesson the British learned after the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Perhaps it was the brainchild of Colonel Francis Smith, who had led the beleaguered British army column on April 19, 1775, and would command another column at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. Even if the prisoners were not placed in the rear of the British column with the intent of using them as human shields, the presence of numerous prisoners in Campbell’s column would have inhibited to some extent Patriot soldiers from firing their muskets. Perhaps that was the plan of Lieutenant Campbell and Colonel Smith all along.
Watching the action from Aquidneck Island, witnesses heard “the fire of musketry,” “the explosion of magazines,” and the roar of cannon from British warships. And they saw “the blazes of the houses and vessels . . . with pillars of smoke ascending like pyramids into the air” above Bristol and Warren.[69]
At 11:30 a.m., Campbell’s men surged up to the heights above Bristol Ferry and seized the abandoned American artillery battery there. The Americans dared not to come nearer. Barton’s forces were kept at a distance not only by British musketry but also cannon fire from Royal Navy ships in the bay and Royal artillery fired from the northern tip of Aquidneck Island.[70]
From the heights above Bristol Ferry, Lieutenant Colonel Campbell and his officers spotted the HMS Flora and the transports between Hog Island and Aquidneck Island approaching the shoreline. Within the half hour, the raiders descended the hill in good order, reached the shores at Bristol Ferry, got back into their flatboats, and were on their way back to Newport. Racing forward to deliver parting musket shots from the shore, American militiamen were satisfied to find drops of blood left by wounded British and German soldiers.[71]
Tillinghast’s artillerymen pulled their guns up to the heights and “fired several shots” at the Royal Navy frigate. But Captain Brisbane in his journal, with evident relief, wrote that the shots “passed through our sails” and missed striking the wooden structure of his ship.[72]
Providence’s United Company of the Train of Artillery reenactors firing cannon at the 2025 reenactment of the British raid on Bristol, held at Independence Park, May 25, 2025. In the battle at Bristol Ferry on May 25, 1778, this artillery unit fired several shots at the retreating enemy (Christian McBurney).
For this article, I had Dr. Robert Selig translate excerpts from the German diary of Captain Friedrich Wilhelm von der Malsburg, which adds new information to the return trip. Malsburg wrote that General Pigot and the commander of the German auxiliary troops in Newport, General Friedrich Wilhelm von der Lossberg, travelled to Bristol Ferry at the tip of Portsmouth early in the morning of May 25 to witness the deployment of their troops. On the return of the soldiers from Bristol County, seeing Pigot and Lossberg, Malsburg recorded, “the troops shouted out to them three times Huzzah!, which was answered by them [Pigot and Lossberg] with great joy.”[73]
In Newport, a grateful General Pigot praised the “especially good fighting spirit of the officers and privates” of Campbell’s detachment. They had burned more than seventy flatboats (the British claimed 125); spiked more than forty cannon; destroyed a considerable amount of American military supplies; burned roughly forty houses and three public buildings; torched a state row galley; and returned with some sixty prisoners. (Warren residents were able to put out the fire on the privateer tied to a wharf there.)[74]
Campbell’s force had no men killed, but thirteen men were wounded (including a lieutenant who resigned from the army two and a half months later). Two drummer boys from the 22nd Regiment were made prisoners after Campbell sent them back to the Royal Navy vessels to request more “combustibles” for blowing up buildings and they were caught by local militia.[75]
The American side got the worst of the engagements. Two men were killed, several were wounded, and more than ten soldiers were taken prisoner (Wescott’s artillerymen and some of Ormsbee’s men). One of the wounded was Colonel William Barton. Standing in front of his men to rally them, he received a musket ball just above his knee and that travelled to his hip. Carried to house in Bristol, a doctor extracted the musket ball. For several months Barton suffered from a lingering fever that endangered his life. He did not return to action until about a year later.[76]
On May 27, General Sullivan thanked “the officers and soldiers of the militia and particularly the gentlemen volunteers [i.e., the mounted men from Providence] who with so much cheerfulness and expedition marched to meet and oppose the enemy on the 25th instant.” He singled out the wounded Barton “for his gallant behavior in the action with the enemy.”[77]
Bristol’s residents submitted a petition for relief to the General Assembly, explaining that the enemy had “in the most savage manner burned and destroyed our dwelling houses, furniture, clothing, etc.” so that they had “become beggars, living upon the charity of friends and neighbors.” The Assembly granted £330 in relief.[78] (After the war, the parishioners of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church submitted a claim to the British government for reimbursement of their losses but it was rejected.)[79]
Meanwhile, Generals Sullivan and Pigot entered into a heated dispute. Sullivan complained that had the British raid kept to destroying military equipment and stores, “without wantonly destroying defenseless towns, burning houses consecrated to the deity, plundering and abusing innocent inhabitants, and dragging from their peaceful habitations unarmed and unoffending men, such an expedition might have shone with splendor; it is now darkened with savage cruelty and stained in indelible disgrace.”[80] Sullivan was exaggerating. Campbell’s men did mostly stick to war-related targets. But some fires likely got out of hand or may have been started by vengeful Loyalists. Still, the British and Germans were guilty of plundering homes and taking civilians as prisoners of war, which early Rhode Island historian Benjamin Cowell called “outrageous and barbarous.”[81]
Pigot claimed that taking civilians as prisoners was proper because under Rhode Island law, males aged from sixteen to sixty were subject to being drafted “to serve as a soldier, under very severe penalties.” Pigot insisted that he would treat his prisoners subject to the draft as military prisoners who had to be exchanged for British military prisoners; otherwise, he warned, they would be sent to British prisons in New York. Pigot did, at least, release prisoners who were not subject to the draft—that is, young boys, elderly men, and all females.[82]
The Newport prison ships were bad enough, but the New York prison ships were known to be death traps, so Pigot’s threat was taken seriously.[83] On June 22, Pigot and former deputy governor William Bradford (whose home Campbell had recently torched) agreed to trade captured British sailors for the remaining Bristol County prisoners.[84]
Interior of a British prison ship in New York Harbor, with a German guard. Bristol civilians were kept in a British prison ship in Newport Harbor and a few may have been sent to dreaded prison ships in New York Harbor (Library of Congress).
General Sullivan ultimately landed on Aquidneck Island in early August 1778 with a large American army, in an attempt to seize Newport and the rest of the island and capture the British garrison. Bristol was busy in August as one of the main collection points for supplies and soldiers (the main one was in and around Howland’s Ferry in Tiverton). After the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, and the American Army’s evacuation from the island two days later, many of the American wounded were tended to at Bristol.
Bristol also became one of the important bases for the American forces that continued to surround the British army on Aquidneck Island. General Marquis de Lafayette stayed in Bristol for a brief time in the first half of September 1778, reportedly using the Joseph Reynolds house as his headquarters.[85] The British army and naval forces finally departed Newport in October 1779.
In July 1780, Newport was occupied again, this time by allies of the Americans, 5,500 French army troops under the command of Lieutenant General Comte de Rochambeau, carried by a strong French fleet. More than 650 French soldiers who landed were sick and many were sent to a makeshift hospital in the barracks set up at Poppasquash Point south of Bristol, which had a capacity of about 250. The hospital was closed in August.[86]
After meeting with Rochambeau in Newport in early March 1781, on March 13, Washington and his entourage departed Newport and rode to the northern tip of Portsmouth to Bristol Ferry and then took the ferry to Bristol. Reportedly, Washington rode the entire length of Hope Street, and as he passed State Street, a cannon was fired, probably on the Common. The entourage stopped for a brief refreshment in Warren and spent the night at Providence.[87]
In June 1781, the French departed Newport to march to the west and south to join Washington’s main army outside of New York City. On June 6, the infantry and artillery of Lauzon’s Legion crossed over to the mainland at Bristol Ferry and spent the night in the barracks at Poppasquash Point. The next day, French soldiers marched through Bristol on their way to Providence. Rochambeau and his staff and their wagon train also went through Bristol.[88] Most of the French troops travelled to Providence by ship from Newport. Eventually, the French Army marched to join with Washington’s main army to the east and both armies would eventually achieve glory at Yorktown, Virginia.
Bristol’s contribution to the war effort, along with the contributions of hundreds of other towns, helped America ultimately win its independence from Great Britain. But only Bristol can say that it held its first Independence Day celebration on July 4, 1785, and that it is now the sponsor of the country’s oldest July 4th parade.
In 1782, when the war seemed over and independence won, Bristol’s population of 1,032 did not yet reach pre-war levels. But its population would double from 1,678 in 1800 to 3,197 in 1820.[89] In 1782, Bristol’s best years lay ahead.
Research funded by the Battle of RI Association by a Whalley Family Fdn. grant and Bristol Heritage and Preservation Society.
Resources:
[1] See John R. Bartlett, Census of the Inhabitants of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations 1774 (Providence: Knowles, Anthony & Co., 1858), 239.
[2] See Rhode Island Slave Trading Voyages, 1709-1807, in Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle, Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 241-85. Interestingly, the African slave trading database at www.slavevoyages.org has no slave trading voyages listed for ships departing Bristol prior to 1775.
[3] Ezra Stiles Diary Entries, Dec. 21, 1772, Dec. 10, 1774, and April 20, 1775, in Franklin B. Dexter, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1901), vol. 1, 324, 501 and 536; John R. Bartlett, ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, vol. 7 (Providence: A. C. Greene and Bros., 1862), 6, 13, 27, 45, 206, 269, 510; John R. Bartlett, ed., Records of the State of Rhode Island, vol. 8 (Providence: Cooke, Jackson & Co., 1863), 3; Steven Park, The Burning of His Majesty’s Schooner Gaspee, At Attack on Crown Rule Before the American Revolution (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2016), 22. Potter was named as a possible leader of the attack, but he was never examined. Ibid., 70-71. In December 1776, Potter was criticized for not attending meetings of the assistants. Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8. 67. He did not serve as an assistant thereafter.
[4] Wilfred H. Munro, The History of Bristol, R.I., The Story of Mount Hope Lands (Providence: J. A. & R. Reid, 1880), 183.
[5] Ibid., 184.
[6] Mack Thompson, Moses Brown, Reluctant Reformer (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), 182-83 and 191.
[7] Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8. 3, 38, 56, 72, 118, 142, 173, 193, 218, 232, 260, 273, 285, 302, 308, 321, 339, 352, and 372 (Bradford’s service); General Assembly Resolution, Feb. 1783 Session, in ibid., 669 (authorization to sell Mount Hope Farm, 385 acres); Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 243, 255-57, and 385; Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol, Rhode Island (Providence: Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission, 1990), 99.
[8] Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, Oct. 7-9, 1775, in Dexter, ed., Literary Diary, vol. 1, 623.
[9] Ezra Stiles Diary Entries, Dec. 7, 1776, in ibid., vol. 2, 93 (“Many are removing from Newport & Bristol”) and Dec. 12, 1776, in ibid., vol. 2, 96 (“The most of the Inhab. of Bristol evacuated and removed to Rehoboth, Swansea and Dighton”).
[10] See A List of all the Persons from Sixteen Years and Upwards who have Removed out of the Town of Bristol Since the Fleet First Came to Newport, Bristol section, Rhode Island Military Census, Rhode Island State Archives. The first four names are Joseph Russell, Jonathan Russell, Benjamin Smith and Samuel Smith.
[11] Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, Dec. 22, 1776, in Dexter, ed., Literary Diary, vol. 2, 101.
[12] Jonathan Fales Declaration, May 2, 1838, in William Lindsay Pension Application, RI, W27441, Revolutionary War Pension Applications, M804, SG 15, National Archives. For fortifications being built at Bristol Ferry and cannon being placed there and elsewhere in Bristol County in 1776, see Military Defences of the Colony (undated, probably February 1776), in Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 7, 492; Henry Ward Memorial, May 20, 1776, in ibid., 551 (“Fortifications are also making at Bristol Ferry . . . .”); List of Payments by Rhode Island, June 1776, “To James Smith for timber for platforms in the fort at Bristol Ferry,” in ibid., 577; Report of the Committee Appointed by the General Assembly to Determine What Places in the State Certain Cannon shall be Stationed, June 1776, in ibid., 584-85 (Bristol County had “One twenty-four pounder; three eighteen-pounders; eleven three and four-pounders” for a total of fifteen cannon). For a thorough discussion of artillery posts and other defensive fortifications, and barracks, in and around Bristol, see John K. Robertson, Revolutionary War Defenses in Rhode Island (East Providence, RI: Rhode Island Publications Society, 2022), 219-28. This discussion does not include the artillery post across from the wharves in the “compact” part of Bristol, an indication that it did not last long.
[13] Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, Dec. 23, 1776, in ibid., 101. Stiles estimated that there were still about 600 soldiers at Bristol three months later. Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, March 9, 1777, in ibid., 141. On December 12, Stiles reported that there were 2,500 soldiers in Bristol. Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, Dec. 12, 1776, in ibid., 97. While the estimate is plausible, given the heightened concern that British forces would attack the mainland once they had secured Aquidneck Island, it is probably not as accurate as Stiles’s other troop counts.
[14] See Barrington Town Treasurer Records, May 19 and June 20, 1777, in Thomas W. Bicknell, A History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1898), 364-65.
[15] See Return of All the Bounties Advanced by the Town of Bristol to Their Quota of Continental Troops, undated (probably mid-1777), Revolutionary War Rolls, Rhode island, RG 93, M246, National Archives (Abraham Pearce received a bounty of £12.00); Bristol section, Rhode Island 1774 Census, Rhode Island State Archives (Nathaniel Pearce entry). Interestingly, the names of Thomas Reynolds and Abraham Pearce were placed next to each other in their company’s muster rolls. See, e.g., muster rolls of Captain Thomas Arnold’s Company, First Rhode Island Regiment, Dec. 1777 to March 1778, ibid. Prince Childs, a Black man who also enlisted in the regiment, hailed from Warren and was listed just before Reynolds and Pearce. Ibid. This name placement may be an indication that the three men resided near each other.
[16] See Christian McBurney, “Rhode Island Soldiers of Color at Red Bank, Monmouth, and Valley Forge,” Jan. 9, 2025, Journal of the American Revolution, at https://allthingsliberty.com/2025/01/rhode-island-soldiers-of-color-at-red-bank-monmouth-and-valley-forge/; muster roll for Captain Thomas Arnold’s Company, Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, 1777, dated Dec. 24, 1777, First Rhode Island Regiment, Revolutionary War Rolls, RG 93, M246, National Archives.
[17] General Assembly Resolution, Feb. 1778 Session, in Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8, 358-61.
[18] For the Bristol men who obtained their freedom by enlisting in the First Rhode Island, and their military fates, see https://www.bristolcountyenslavedhistory.com/.
[19] Rhode Island Regimental Record Book, in Bruce C. MacGunnigle, Regimental Book, Rhode Island Regiment for 1781 &c. (East Greenwich, RI: Rhode Island Society of Sons of the American Revolution, 2011), 45.
[20] See Chamberlain, ed., Rhode Island 1777 Military Census, 5-8. The men’s names who did not enlist were Ruben (listed after John Fales); Dick and London (listed after William Pearse); Prince (listed after four Bosworths); Peleg, Charles and John (listed after William, Hezekiah and James Munro); Simon and Newport (listed after Benjamin Harding); Hertford and Quam (listed after Simeon Potter); Charles (listed after three Coomers); George (listed after three Coggeshalls); Nino (listed after Jonathan Peck, Sr. and Jr.); Cudgo (listed after Nathaniel Cary); and Cato (listed after four Reynolds men).
[21] See Christian M. McBurney, The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation in the Revolutionary War (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2011), 49-50.
[22] Diary Entry, May 4, 1778, in Frederick Mackenzie, Diary of Frederick Mackenzie, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), vol. 1, 275-76.
[23] Diary Entry, May 22, 1778, in ibid., 284; Diary Entry, May 24, 1778, in Fleet S. Greene, “Newport in the Hands of the British: A Diary of the Revolution,” The Historical Magazine, vol. 4, part 1, 70 (Jan. 1860).
[24] John Sullivan to James Bowdoin, June 1, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 50.
[25] Robert Pigot to Henry Clinton, May 27, 1778, in K. G. Davies, ed., Documents of the American Revolution, 21 vols. (Dublin: Ireland: Irish University Press, 1972-81), vol. 15, 126-27.
[26] Ibid.; Special Report Attached to Friedrich von der Lossberg to Unknown Major General, May 31, 1778, Lossberg Papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
[27] For the landing spot, see Edward Fage, Map, undated (probably 1778), Plan of the Adjacent Coast to the Northern Part of Rhode Island, to Express the Route of a Body of Troops under the Command of Lieut. Colonel Campbell of the 22d Regiment to Destroy the Enemies Batteaux Vessels, Galley, etc., Which was Accomplished May 25th 1778, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan (hereafter, “Fage Map”); Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285 (the raiding force landed “one mile from Bristol and 3 miles from Warren”); Guy M. Fessenden, The History of Warren, R.I., from the Earliest Times (Providence: H. H. Brown, 1845), 93 (Campbell’s force landed “at a place about half a mile south of Peck’s Rocks, on the Bradford Farm, in Bristol . . . .”).
[28] A Return of Arms, Blankets, Clothing and Camp Furniture Destroyed by the Enemy of the 25th Day of May 1778 Belonging to Capt. Allin’s Company in Col. Crary’s Regt, May 27, 1778, in Revolutionary War Rolls, R.I., Crary’s Regiment, M246, RG 93, Roll 88, Folder 45. National Archives. A similar list indicates that Allin also lost a musket. See Revolutionary War Papers, Box 2, Folder 117, Rhode Island Historical Society.
[29] Payroll in Captain William Lawless’s Company in Colonel Archibald Crary’s Rhode Island State Regiment, from May 16 to June 16, 1778, in Revolutionary War Military Returns, vol. 3, 30.
[30] Christy Sparks Declaration, June 5, 1837, in Thomas Champlin Pension Application, RI, W24608, Revolutionary War Pension Applications, M804, SG 15, National Archives.
[31] Ibid.; Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285-86; Petition of Gideon Wescott, Feb. 22, 1779, Petitions to the R. I. General Assembly, XVII, No. 58, Rhode Island State Archives.
[32] Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285; Robert Pigot to Henry Clinton, May 27, 1778, in Davies, ed., Documents of the A.R., vol. 15, 126-27; John Sulivan to George Washington, May 26, 1778, in Otis G. Hammond, ed., Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan, Continental Army, 3 vols (Concord, NH: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1931-39), vol. 2, 57; Fage Map (including references to positions of the Chasseurs and Light Infantry Company). See also Samuel Bowe Declaration, Aug. 29, 1837 and Joseph Munro Declaration, July 5, 1837, in Samuel Bowen Pension Applications, RI, S23134, Revolutionary War Pension Applications, M804, SG 15, National Archives. Joseph Munro stated in his declaration that Samuel Bowen, his father “and a great many others” were “employed the state to repair the boats at Kickemuit River,” and were “taken prisoner by the English while employed in repairing said boats.” Samuel Bowen, in his declaration, said the same and added that the work crew, led by Captain Joseph Church, had been repairing the boats for about two weeks prior to the raid.
[33] Log of HMS Flora, May 25, 1778, in Michael J. Crawford et. al., ed., Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 12 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 2013), 441.
[34] Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285 (claiming the houses and church caught fire as a result of the explosion of the gunpowder); Robert Pigot to Henry Clinton, May 27, 1778, in Davies, ed., Documents of the A.R., vol. 15, 126-27; List of Losses in the Store of Cromel and Caleb Child in Warren Blown Up by the British Troops on May 25, 1778, Jan. 21, 1779, Papers of the Continental Congress, M247, vol. 184, p. 33, National Archives; Providence Gazette, May 30, 1778 (plundering); Virginia Baker, The History of Warren, RI, in the War of the Revolution (Privately Printed, 1901), 18-19.
[35] Munro, Story of Mount Hope Lands, 210-11.
[36] See “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878.
[37] For evidence that all or most of Crary’s Regiment was in Bristol or the area, see detailed discussion in McBurney, Rhode Island Campaign, 271-72, note 44.
[38] Log of HMS Flora, May 25, 1778, in Crawford et al., ed., Naval Documents of the A. R., vol. 12, 441.
[39] Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285.
[40] John Sulivan to George Washington, May 26, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 57.
[41] Wheeler, “Extract from the Diary of Major Bennett Wheeler,” Pubs. of the R.I. Historical Society, vol. 6, 91 (July 1898).
[42] For thorough accounts of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, see Rick Atkinson, The British are Coming, The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019), 60-79; Arthur B. Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), passim.
[43] Quoted in Sue Ellen Snape, Mighty Liberty Men (Rehoboth, MA: Rehoboth Revolutionary War Bicentennial Commission, 1976), 96.
[44] Deposition of William Bowen, aged 76 years. I obtained this report from Rhode Island Pension Records, Volume 6, Compiled by Miss Grace, M. Pierce, in 1921, pages 5-6, at the Daughters of the American Revolution Library, Washington, D.C. The typed compilation is from transcriptions of depositions in support of the pension application of James Bowen of Bristol. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the original pension documents. Part of the problem may be that there were at least four men named James Bowen who filed for pension applications. In any event, the typed transcriptions are in line with hundreds of others I have reviewed and so I believe they are reliable reports. In the same compilation is the following from James Mason of Warren, 81 years old. After the British burned the meeting house at Warren and destroyed the boats in the Kickemuit River, “Immediately after this whole company of militia commanded by Capt. Ezra Ormsbee called out and followed British troops down to Bristol Ferry. I was a soldier in said company at that time and went with it. James Bowen, then a near neighbor of mine, was one of the company and went with us.” Ibid. 5.
[45] James Mason Declaration, March 4, 1833, James Mason Pension Application, Revolutionary War Pension Applications, RI, S21364, M804, RG 15, National Archives. See similar recollections in Ichabod Cole Declaration, July 28, 1832, in Ichabod Cole Pension Application, R.I., S17353, in ibid; Benjamin Cole Declaration, March 4, 1833, Benjamin Cole Pension Application, R.I., S21134, in ibid.
[46] Issacher Cozzens, Jr. Declaration, Feb. 26, 1853, in Issacher Cozzens Pension Application, R.I., R2414, in ibid.
[47] Declaration of John O. Miner, M.D., and Benjamin Stoddard, Oct. 13, 1824, in Walter Burdick Pension Application, RI, S19925, in ibid.; Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8, 463-64.
[48] Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 288.
[49] Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 212; Samuel G. Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1859-60), vol. 2, 418; “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878. See also Joseph Ashley Pension Application, Revolutionary War Pensions, RI, S14926, M804, SG 15, Roll 82, National Archives (“We went over to the east side [of Warren] and got off by a bridge”). For Metacom Avenue originally being called Back Road, see Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission source cited in note 56 below.
[50] See General Assembly Resolution, March 1777 Session, in Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8, 154.
[51] Diary Entry, Oct. 7, 1779, in Dexter, ed., Stiles Diary, vol. 2, 377.
[52] Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol, 16. Bristol historian Wilfred H. Munro referred to a courthouse in Bristol standing on State Street in 1771 and in 1781. Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 153 and 166. He also said that the Courthouse was damaged (but not destroyed) during Captain Wallace’s bombardment of the town in 1775. Ibid., 206, note (citing the Providence Gazette). Munro wrote in 1880, “The old Court House stood in the middle of State Street, half-way between Hope and High. It has since been moved to the western corner of the little street which runs from Bradford, between High and Wood streets, where it is still used as a dwelling.” Ibid., 153. This old courthouse is not mentioned in Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol.
[53] The Simeon Potter house was at what is now 366 Hope Street. See Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol, 83.
[54] See Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 216. Mark Anthony DeWolfe’s house stood on the south corner of Burton Street and was one of the oldest houses in town. Ibid., 216. Anthony Van Doorn’s house on State Street was also set on fire. Ibid. The Bristol Phoenix newspaper account of the raid has specific information about the locations of Bristol houses that were burned. See “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878.
A survey by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission of houses in Bristol in 1974 indicated that thirteen surviving houses were built in Bristol on or around 1780. In addition, the Henry Peck House (649 Hope Street) was built in 1784 and the Jeremiah Ingraham House (217 Hope Street) was built in 1785. It seems likely that most of these homes could have been rebuilt from houses that the British had burned on May 25, 1778. By 1780, the British had evacuated Newport and the threat of another enemy invasion of Bristol had receded. See Inventory of Bristol Waterfront Historic District, Select Structures, Monuments and Sites of Architectural, Historical and Social Significance, Prepared by Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission, September 1974, in National Registry of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form, for Bristol Waterfront Historic District, Sept. 30, 1974, copy at the website of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission, Listed Properties, Bristol, at
[55] Joseph Ashley Pension Application, Revolutionary War Pensions, RI, S14926, M804, SG 15, Roll 82, National Archives (the British raiding force “got down to Bristol about day break and set fire to the town and burnt up our quarters and all our clothes”). It is not known to what building Ashley is referring. It is possible that Captain Thomas Allin’s Company, of which Joseph Ashley was a private, were surprised when they were at their quarters in Bristol and not their camp at Great Neck. See note 30 above and the associated text in the main discussion.
[56] For the Bristol County jail being “burnt in a late excursion of the enemy,” see General Assembly Resolution, Dec. 1778 Session, in Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8, 484. Munro does not mention this burning. For Bradford’s house being burned, see Providence Gazette, May 30, 1778; John Sullivan to Henry Laurens, May 26, 1778, in Crawford, et al., Naval Documents of the A.R., vol. 12, 456; and John Howland Recollections, in Edward M. Stone, The Life and Recollections of John Howland (Providence: George H. Whitney, 1857), 95. William Bradford’s house stood at what is now 474 Hope Street, on the northeast corner of State and Hope Streets. Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol, 86; Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 216. The location is now occupied by what is called the Bradford-Diamond-Norris House, built by William Bradford circa 1792.
[57] Elizabeth Linthorne Loss Claim, April 24, 1782, in Revolutionary War Claims for Damages, 1776-1781, p. 61, Rhode Island State Archives. Curiously, no other claims were made by Bristol homeowners.
[58] Providence Gazette, May 30, 1778; “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878.
[59] John Sulivan to George Washington, May 26, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 57.
[60] Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Greene, “Diary,” Historical Magazine, vol. 4, 70 (1860).
[61] Wilkins Updike, A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 3 vols. (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1907), vol. 2, 222. See also Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 151-52; St. Michael’s Church American Loyalist Revolutionary War Claim in Peter W. Coldham, ed., American Loyalist Claims (Washington, D.C.: National Genealogical Society, 1980), 136-37 .
[62] “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878 (calling this unintentional explanation “the most probable” one).
[63] Wardens of the Episcopal Church Petition, Feb. 7, 1784, Petitions to the R. I. General Assembly, XXI, No. 6, Rhode Island State Archives.
[64] Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, October 2, 1779, in Dexter, ed., Literary Diary, vol. 2, 376. Stiles also wrote, “In Bristol from bridge to bridge and within one mile square are about one hundred dwelling houses of which 19 burned.” Ezra Stiles Diary Entry, Oct. 7, 1779, in ibid., 377. Presumably, Stiles counted the shells of the burned houses. The Providence Gazette, in its May 30, 1778, edition, reported that the British burned eighteen “of the most elegant dwelling houses” in Bristol “not sparing the Episcopal Church, a large edifice near the center of town.” Munro had a similar estimate, writing that nineteen houses were burned and thirty structures overall were torched. Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 216. John Sullivan reported on May 26 that 22 houses were burned in Bristol. John Sullivan to Henry Laurens, May 26, 1778, in Crawford et al., Naval Documents of the A.R., vol. 12, 456. William Vernon of Boston (formerly of Newport), informed John Adams that “22 of the best dwelling houses in the town” were burned. William Vernon to John Adams, May 26, 1778, in Crawford, et al., Naval Documents of the A.R., vol. 12, 455.
[65] “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878; Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 216.
[66] Joseph Ashley Pension Application, Revolutionary War Pensions, RI, S14926, M804, SG 15, Roll 82, National Archives.
[67] See Paul Lockhart, The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 233.
[68] Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 216.
[69] Extract of a Letter from Newport, May 31, 1778, in Rivington’s Royal Gazette, June 10, 1778.
[70] John Sullivan to James Bowdoin, June 1, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 50; Christian McBurney, Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to Capture Generals Charles Lee & Richard Prescott (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2014), 190-91.
[71] Log of HMS Flora, May 25 ,1778, in Crawford et al., ed., Naval Documents of the A. R., vol. 12, 441; Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285; Robert Pigot to Henry Clinton, May 27, 1778, in Davies, ed., Documents of the A.R., vol. 15, 126-27; Providence Gazette, May 30, 1778.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Captain Friedrich Wilhelm von der Malsburg Diary, copy in the possession of and translated for this article by Robert A. Selig. The German citation for the original of the diary (hereafter, “Malsburg Diary”) follows. Curiosa, Nr. 65: [Malsburg],Tagebuch eines Offiziers jener hessischen Trouppen welche vom Landgrafen Friedrich II von Hessen Cassel an die Engländer abgegeben wurden. Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv: Zentralstellen.
[74] Special Report Attached to Friedrich von der Lossberg to Unknown Major General, May 31, 1778, Lossberg Papers, William L. Clements Library; ; Diary Entries, May 25-26, 1778, in Greene, “Diary,” Historical Magazine, vol. 4, 70 (1860); Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 285 (he claimed 69 prisoners were taken); Providence Gazette, May 30, 1778 (General Stark); John Sullivan to James Bowdoin, May 1, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 50. The forty cannon included cannon on board the state row galley Washington, which had six twelve pounders. Robert Pigot to Henry Clinton, May 27, 1778, in Davies, ed., Documents of the A.R., vol. 15, 126-27. The number probably also included cannon on board the privateer at Warren, the General Stark.
[75] Captain von der Malsburg counted thirteen wounded: “Our loss consists of the wounded Lt. Hamilton and 5 r&f [rank and file) of the 22nd Regiment, 2 r&f [rank and file] of the Flank [Light Infantry of the 54th Regiment], and 4 r&f [rank and file] of the 2nd Chasseur Company.” Malsburg also noted the two missing drummers of the 22nd Regiment. Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Malsburg Diary. In comparison, Major Mackenzie identified ten wounded, counting four privates of the 22nd Regiment, one Grenadier and one Light Infantryman of the 54th Regiment, and four German chasseurs. He also noted the capture of the two drummers. Diary Entry, May 25, 1778, in Mackenzie, Diary, vol. 1, 286. General Pigot wrote that the raiders had fifteen casualties; he likely included the two captured prisoners, making thirteen wounded. Robert Pigot to Henry Clinton, May 27, 1778, in Davies, ed., Documents of the A.R., vol. 15, 126-27. For more details on British and German casualties, see McBurney, Rhode Island Campaign, 274, note 81.
[76] John Sullivan to James Bowdoin, June 1, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 50; William Barton Memorial, Feb. 12, 1814, in William Barton Pension Application, Revolutionary War Pensions, RI, W23503, M804, SG 15, National Archives; McBurney, Kidnapping the Enemy, 190-91.
[77] General Orders, May 27, 1778, Josiah Fletcher’s Orderly Book, John Jacob’s Mass. State Regiment, Redwood Library and Athenaeum.
[78] See Petition of Townsmen from Bristol, May 28, 1778, Petitions to the General Assembly, XVII, No. 20, Rhode Island State Archives; General Assembly Resolution, May 1778 Session, in Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 8, 416.
[79] State Payment Records, May 1778, Military Papers of the Revolutionary War, microfilm reel 13, Rhode Island State Archives. Members of the church did successfully petition the General Assembly to operate a lottery to raise a sum not exceeding one thousand dollars for building a new church in Bristol. The last names of the members on the petition includes Ushers and Pearces, as well as Nathaniel Munro and Lemuel Clarke. See General Assembly Resolution, Feb. 1784 Session, in John R. Bartlett, ed., Records of the State of Rhode Island, vol. 10 (Providence: Providence Press Co., 1865), 11. It must have worked as a plain wooden meetinghouse was erected in 1785. It was replaced by a Gothic church that burned in 1858. The current stone structure was built in 1860, with the clock installed in 1871 and the steeple replaced in 1891. The wooden church that burned in 1778 was built in 1720. Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol, 83-84.
[80] John Sullivan to Robert Pigot, June 3, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 63-64.
[81] Cowell, Spriit of ’76, 351.
[82] Robert Pigot to John Sullivan, June 10, 1778, in Hammond, ed., Sullivan Letters, vol. 2, 69-70.
[83] See Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War (New York: Basic Books, 2008), passim.
[84] “The Centennial Anniversary of the Burning of Bristol by the British,” Bristol Phoenix, May 25, 1878; Declaration of Samuel Bowen, Aug. 29, 1837, Samuel Bowen Pension Application, Revolutionary War Pensions, R.I., S23314, M804, SG 15, National Archives (he was captured while repairing boats at Kickemuit River and was detained as a prisoner “on board a prison ship” in Newport Harbor for two months and one day); Susannah Smith Declaration, Nov. 4, 1833, Richard Smith Pension Application, R.I., W24995, in ibid. (“he was taken prisoner by the enemy who landed on the Neck and was carried to Newport. He was kept one month when he was exchanged and returned home”).
[85] “Lafayette in Rhode Island,” by Gloria H. Schmidt, The Online Review of Rhode Island History, at http://smallstatebighistory.com/lafayette-in-rhode-island/ A plaque on the house reads, “This house built about the year 1698 by Joseph Reynolds was occupied by Lafayette as his headquarters in September 1778 during the War of American Independence.” Ibid. See also Howard W. Preston, “Lafayette’s Visits to Rhode Island,” Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, vol. XIX, no. 1 (Jan. 1, 1926). 5-7. The Reynolds House, well-preserved and located at the north end of Bristol on the east side of Hope Street at 956 Hope Street, has been called “the most important and best preserved early transitional house in Rhode Island or Massachusetts.” Historic and Architectural Resources of Bristol, 93. It is the second oldest structure standing in Bristol today and the oldest known three-story wooden house in New England.
In his correspondence, Lafayette wrote that his location from September 3 to 16 was “Camp near Bristol” or “Near Bristol.” One letter on September 17 had his location as “Bristol.” His troops moved away from Bristol to a camp outside Warren on September 18. Lafayette either stayed with the soldiers in camp or in Warren itself. The letters alone indicate that he likely spent at least one night in Bristol at the Reynolds House. Even if he spent time during the day at the camp near Bristol, it would not be surprising if he spent the nights sleeping at the nearby and comfortable Reynolds House on those days as well. Lafayette was in Providence by September 25. See J. Bennett Nolan, Lafayette in America, Day by Day (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1934), 79-82.
[86] Robert A. Selig, The Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route I the State of Rhode Island, 1780-1783, An Architectural and Historical Site Survey and Resource Inventory (Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Association of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 2006 (updated 2015)), Parts 1-4, Part 2, 105-06 and 351, https://w3r-us.org/pdfviewer/w3r-in-ri-appendices-i/?auto_viewer=true#page=&zoom=page-fit&pagemode=none; Diary Entry, July 13, 1780, in Maurie La Chesnais, ed., Journal de Campagne de Claude Blanchard (Paris: Bureaux de la Revue Militaire Francaise, 1869), 37-38 (Blanchard stops at Bristol and examines hospital at Poppasquash Point); Bartlett, ed., Records of R.I., vol. 9, 86-87 (authorizing repair of buildings on Bristol farm of William Vassal for hospital for the French).
[87] Munro, Story of the Mount Hope Lands, 243; Edwin Martin Stone, Our French allies: Rochambeau and his army, Lafayette and his devotion, D’Estaing, De Ternay, Barras, De Grasse, and their fleets, in the great war of the American Revolution, from 1778 to 1782 (Providence: Providence Press Co., 1884), 369-70; Selig, The Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, Part 2, 201, https://w3r-us.org/pdfviewer/w3r-in-ri-part-ii/?auto_viewer=true#page=&zoom=page-fit&pagemode=none.
[88] Timeline, The Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Part 3, 19, https://w3r-us.org/pdfviewer/w3r-in-ri-part-i/?auto_viewer=true#page=&zoom=page-fit&pagemode=none; Stone, Our French Allies, 391. A French officer, Baron von Closen, wrote in his diary for June 14, 1781, “The country between Providence and Bristol is charming. We were transported into the Garden of Eden, all the roads were bordered with locust trees now in bloom and spreading a delicious perfume, almost too strong.” Quoted in Howard W. Preston, Rochambeau and the French Troops in Providence in 1780-81-82 (Providence: Privately Printed, 1924), 8.
[89] Jay M. Holbrook, Rhode Island 1782 Census (Oxford, MA: Holbrook Research Institute, 1979), v.; Bristol Preservation, 14.
