4 minute read
Remarkable Masons: Revolutionary War Soldier & Surgeon
by Stacey Fraser, Assistant Curator Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library
People from a wide variety of backgrounds contributed to the American Revolutionary War effort. The Masons profiled here – one a foot soldier and one a surgeon – may not have moved in the same Boston circles before or after the war, but both made valuable contributions to the American cause.
Pompey Edes (also Eads) (ca. 1755–unknown)
Muster Roll, Captain Japheth Daniels’ Company, Colonel Nixon’s Regiment, 15th Massachusetts Battalion, April 5, 1779. Kings Ferry, New York. U.S., Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783. National Archives and Records Administration.
EDES was born around 1755. Pompey Edes first appears in Revolutionary War military records when he enlisted on May 15, 1777. His place of residence is given as both Boston and nearby Medford, indicating he may have moved during the war.
By the late 1770s, the Provincial Congress required every town in Massachusetts to provide a certain number of soldiers for the Continental Army. Men who had a farm or a business to manage at home couldn’t or didn’t want to enlist for a long term, but they could pay others to do so in their stead to meet their town’s quota. In at least two military records, Edes’ participation is credited to Concord.
During the war, Edes was mostly stationed in upstate New York. His name appears on muster rolls from Peekskill, King’s Ferry, and West Point. He served in Colonel Nixon’s regiment from 1777-1779. In an April 1779 muster roll, Edes and Prince Hall, the founder of the first Black Masonic lodge in the country, are recorded in the same military company.
Edes joined African Lodge No. 1, the lodge that Prince Hall established. In January 1779, Edes is listed as having received the Fellowcraft degree. By May 1787, Edes held the office of Tiler in African Lodge No. 459 (formerly African Lodge No. 1).
Edes transferred to Colonel Vose’s regiment from 1779 until his discharge in 1781. On May 19, 1781, Edes married Beulah Chelor (1760-unknown) of Wrentham, Massachusetts. Eight years later, Edes was listed as executor for a Wrentham man named Cesar Jero. Although Edes made his home in Boston, he maintained ties to his wife’s town. Edes’ life illustrates the dedicated service of Black Revolutionary War soldiers and the interconnectedness of Massachusetts’ Black community.
John Warren (1753–1815)
WARREN was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Dr. John Warren was the youngest brother of Dr. Joseph Warren, whose death at the Battle of Bunker Hill made him a martyr to the American cause. John Warren studied medicine at Harvard, graduating in 1771.
While practicing medicine in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1772, he signed on as a surgeon with Colonel Timothy Pickering’s regiment. Warren participated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. He served as a senior surgeon at an army hospital in Cambridge after Bunker Hill and was described as being “. . . distinguished for his humanity and attention to the sick and wounded soldiers, and for his amiable disposition.”
Warren later served as Surgeon General of army hospitals in Long Island, New York, and Bethlehem, New Jersey, and saw action at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. He returned to Boston and his medical practice in 1777 but rejoined the war effort to participate in the 1778 Rhode Island campaign, possibly due to his marriage to Abigail Collins, daughter of Rhode Island Governor John Collins. He helped run a smallpox hospital in Boston from 1778-1783. Warren founded Harvard Medical School in 1782 and was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Surgery there the following year.
He joined The Massachusetts Lodge in 1780 and served as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts for the years 1783-1784 and 1787-1788. At his 1815 funeral, well-attended by Masonic, civic, and military dignitaries, Susanna Rowson (17621824) read an ode she had written about Warren which included the sentiment: “. . . flow’rs of rich perfume shall deck the grave / Of him, who lived to succour and to save.”
