Mar 25, 2021 - Sale 2562

Sale 2562 - Lot 280

Price Realized: $ 12,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(MILITARY--AMERICAN REVOLUTION.) Bounty list for enlisted soldiers, including two Black soldiers. 4 pages, 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches, on one folding sheet, apparently removed from a larger memorandum book; minor wear, scrapbook remnants on two pages. [Hanover, MA], circa March 1777
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

A list of soldiers who enlisted in the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment from Hanover, MA circa March 1777. The regiment fought under Colonel John Bailey at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, suffered through the long winter at Valley Forge, and then saw further combat in the Battle on Monmouth in June 1778. At least two of the soldiers on this list were Black: Cuffe Tilden and Prince Bailey. The list names 34 soldiers in all, including Tilden, Bailey and 9 others who were paid £14 recruitment bounties; 5 who were later drafted on 15 May 1777; and 19 including Colonel Bailey who are simply listed, in a different hand.

Cuffe Tilden had been raised in slavery in Hanover, MA as the property of Job Tilden, who was his town's leading slave merchant. Cuffe died with his regiment at Valley Forge in January 1778.

Prince Bailey served a full three-year term with the 2nd Massachusetts, was married in Hanover in October 1780, and survived to apply for a pension in 1817. In his application he explained: "When I was about eight years of age, I was stolen from Africa, my native country, and brought to America; my native name was Prince Dunsick--but on my arrival I was called by my master's name which was Bailey. . . . I never lived with my old master Bailey afterwards, and resumed my former name of Dunsick." See Crowder, African Americans and American Indians in the Revolutionary War, page 17. He lived in Maine after the war, and died in 1838.