Part 1

Produced by Katherine Ward, Darleen Dove, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

The Only Woman in the Town

And Other Tales of the American Revolution

BY SARAH J. PRICHARD

Author of the History of Waterbury, 1674-1783

PUBLISHED BY MELICENT PORTER CHAPTER Daughters of the American Revolution Waterbury, Conn. 1898

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898 By the MELICENT PORTER CHAPTER Daughters of the American Revolution, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

PREFACE

The celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of the United States at the city of Philadelphia in 1876, and the exhibit there made of that nation's wonderful growth and progress, gave a new and remarkable impulse to the germs of patriotism in American life. The following tales of the American Revolution--with the exception of the last--were written twenty-two years ago, and are the outcome of an interest then awakened. They all appeared in magazines and other publications of that period, from which they have been gathered into this volume, in the hope that thereby patriotism may grow stronger in the children of to-day.

CONTENTS

PAGE The Only Woman in the Town 9 A Windham Lamb in Boston Town 38 How One Boy Helped the British Troops Out of Boston in 1776 47 Pussy Dean's Beacon Fire 67 David Bushnell and His American Turtle 75 The Birthday of Our Nation 117 The Overthrow of the Statue of King George 127 Sleet and Snow 135 Patty Rutter: The Quaker Doll who slept in Independence Hall 151 Becca Blackstone's Turkeys at Valley Forge 159 How Two Little Stockings Saved Fort Safety 169 A Day and a Night in the Old Porter House 181

THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE TOWN.

One hundred years and one ago, in Boston, at ten of the clock one April night, a church steeple had been climbed and a lantern hung out.

At ten, the same night, in mid-river of the Charles, oarsmen two, with passenger silent and grim, had seen the signal light out-swung, and rowed with speed for the Charlestown shore.

At eleven, the moon was risen, and the grim passenger, Paul Revere, had ridden up the Neck, encountered a foe, who opposed his ride into the country, and, after a brief delay, had gone on, leaving a British officer lying in a clay pit.

At midnight, a hundred ears had heard the flying horseman cry, "Up and arm. The Regulars are coming out!"

You know the story well. You have heard how the wild alarm ran from voice to voice and echoed beneath every roof, until the men of Lexington and Concord were stirred and aroused with patriotic fear for the safety of the public stores that had been committed to their keeping.

You know how, long ere the chill April day began to dawn, they had drawn, by horse power and by hand power, the cherished stores into safe hiding-places in the depth of friendly forest-coverts.

There is one thing about that day that you have _not_ heard and I will tell you now. It is, how one little woman staid in the town of Concord, whence all the women save her had fled.

All the houses that were standing then, are very old-fashioned now, but there was one dwelling-place on Concord Common that was old-fashioned even then! It was the abode of Martha Moulton and "Uncle John." Just who "Uncle John" was, is not known to the writer, but he was probably Martha Moulton's uncle. The uncle, it appears by record, was eighty-five years old; while the niece was _only_ three-score and eleven.

Once and again that morning, a friendly hand had pulled the latch-string at Martha Moulton's kitchen entrance and offered to convey herself and treasures away, but, to either proffer, she had said: "No, I must stay until Uncle John gets the cricks out of his back, if all the British soldiers in the land march into town."

At last, came Joe Devins, a lad of fifteen years--Joe's two astonished eyes peered for a moment into Martha Moulton's kitchen, and then eyes and owner dashed into the room, to learn what the sight he there saw could mean.

"Whew! Mother Moulton, what are you doing?"

"I'm getting Uncle John his breakfast to be sure, Joe," she answered. "Have _you_ seen so many sights this morning that you don't know breakfast, when you see it? Have a care there, for hot fat _will_ burn," as she deftly poured the contents of a pan, fresh from the fire, into a dish.

Hungry Joe had been astir since the first drum had beat to arms at two of the clock. He gave one glance at the boiling cream and the slices of crisp pork swimming in it, as he gasped forth the words, "Getting breakfast in Concord _this_ morning! _Mother Moulton_, you _must_ be crazy."

"So they tell me," she said, serenely. "There comes Uncle John!" she added, as the clatter of a staff on the stone steps of the stairway outrang, for an instant, the cries of hurrying and confusion that filled the air of the street.

"Don't you know, Mother Moulton," Joe went on to say, "that every single woman and child have been carried off, where the Britishers won't find 'em?"

"I don't believe the king's troops have stirred out of Boston," she replied, going to the door leading to the stone staircase, to open it for Uncle John.

"Don't believe it?" and Joe looked, as he echoed the words, as though only a boy could feel sufficient disgust at such a want of common sense, in full view of the fact, that Reuben Brown had just brought the news that eight men had been killed by the king's Red Coats in Lexington, which fact he made haste to impart.

"I won't believe a word of it," she said, stoutly, "until I see the soldiers coming."

"Ah! Hear that!" cried Joe, tossing back his hair and swinging his arms triumphantly at an airy foe. "You won't have to wait long. _That signal_ is for the minute men. They are going to march out to meet the Red Coats. Wish I was a minute man, this minute."

Meanwhile, poor Uncle John was getting down the steps of the stairway, with many a grimace and groan. As he touched the floor, Joe, his face beaming with excitement and enthusiasm, sprang to place a chair for him at the table, saying, "Good morning," at the same moment.

"May be," groaned Uncle John, "youngsters _like you may_ think it is a good morning, but _I don't_. Such a din and clatter as the fools have kept up all night long. If I had the power" (and now the poor old man fairly groaned with rage), "I'd make 'em quiet long enough to let an old man get a wink of sleep, when the rheumatism lets go."

"I'm real sorry for you," said Joe, "but you don't know the news. The king's troops, from camp, in Boston, are marching right down here, to carry off all our arms that they can find."

"Are they?" was the sarcastic rejoinder. "It's the best news I've heard in a long while. Wish they had my arms, this minute. They wouldn't carry them a step further than they could help, I know. Run and tell them that mine are ready, Joe."

"But, Uncle John, wait until after breakfast, you'll want to use them once more," said Martha Moulton, trying to help him into a chair that Joe had placed on the white sanded floor.

Meanwhile, Joe Devins had ears for all the sounds that penetrated the kitchen from out of doors, and he had eyes for the slices of well-browned pork and the golden-hued Johnny-cake lying before the glowing coals on the broad hearth.

As the little woman bent to take up the breakfast, Joe, intent on doing some kindness for her in the way of saving treasures, asked, "Sha'n't I help you, Mother Moulton?"

"I reckon I am not so old that I can't lift a mite of corn-bread," she replied with chilling severity.

"Oh, I didn't mean to lift _that thing_," he made haste to explain, "but to carry off things and hide 'em away, as everybody else has been doing half the night. I know a first-rate place up in the woods. Used to be a honey tree, you know, and it's just as hollow as anything. Silver spoons and things would be just as safe in it--" but Joe's words were interrupted by unusual tumult on the street and he ran off to learn the news, intending to return and get the breakfast that had been offered to him.

Presently he rushed back to the house with cheeks aflame and eyes ablaze with excitement. "They're coming!" he cried. "They're in sight down by the rocks. They see 'em marching, the men on the hill do!"

"You don't mean that it's really true that the soldiers are coming here, _right into our town_!" cried Martha Moulton, rising in haste and bringing together, with rapid flourishes to right and to left, every fragment of silver on it. Divining her intent, Uncle John strove to hold fast his individual spoon, but she twitched it without ceremony out from his rheumatic old fingers, and ran next to the parlor cupboard, wherein lay her movable treasures.

"What in the world shall I do with them?" she cried, returning with her apron well filled, and borne down by the weight thereof.

"Give 'em to me," cried Joe. "Here's a basket. Drop 'em in, and I'll run like a brush-fire through the town and across the old bridge, and hide 'em as safe as a weasel's nap."

Joe's fingers were creamy; his mouth was half filled with Johnny-cake, and his pocket on the right bulged to its utmost capacity with the same, as he held forth the basket; but the little woman was afraid to trust him, as she had been afraid to trust her neighbors.

"No! No!" she replied, to his repeated offers. "I know what I'll do. You, Joe Devins, stay right where you are until I come back, and, don't you even _look_ out of the window."

"Dear, dear me!" she cried, flushed and anxious when she was out of sight of Uncle John and Joe. "I _wish_ I'd given 'em to Colonel Barrett when he was here before daylight, only, I _was_ afraid I should never get sight of them again."

She drew off one of her stockings, filled it, tied the opening at the top with a string--plunged stocking and all into a pail full of water and proceeded to pour the contents into the well.

Just as the dark circle had closed over the blue stocking, Joe Devins' face peered down the depths by her side, and his voice sounded out the words: "O Mother Moulton, the British will search the wells the _very_ first thing. Of course, they _expect_ to find things in wells!"

"Why didn't you tell me before, Joe? but now it is too late."

"I would, if I had known what you was going to do; they'd been a sight safer in the honey tree."

"Yes, and what a fool I've been--flung _my watch_ into the well with the spoons!"

"Well, well! Don't stand there, looking!" as she hovered over the high curb, with her hand on the bucket. "Everybody will know, if you do."

"Martha! Martha!" shrieked Uncle John's quavering voice from the house door.

"Bless my heart!" she exclaimed, hurrying back over the stones.

"What's the matter with your heart?" questioned Joe.

"Nothing. I was thinking of Uncle John's money," she answered.

"Has he got money?" cried Joe. "I thought he was poor, and you took care of him because you were so good!"

Not one word that Joe uttered did the little woman hear. She was already by Uncle John's side and asking him for the key to his strong box.

Uncle John's rheumatism was terribly exasperating. "No, I won't give it to you!" he cried, "and nobody shall have it as long as I am above ground."

"Then the soldiers will carry it off," she said.

"Let 'em!" was his reply, grasping his staff firmly with both hands and gleaming defiance out of his wide, pale eyes. "_You_ won't get the key, even if they do."

At this instant, a voice at the doorway shouted the words, "Hide, hide away somewhere, Mother Moulton, for the Red Coats are in sight this minute!"

She heard the warning, and giving one glance at Uncle John, which look was answered by another "No, you won't have it," she grasped Joe Devins by the collar of his jacket and thrust him before her up the staircase so quickly that the boy had no chance to speak, until she released her hold, on the second floor, at the entrance to Uncle John's room.

The idea of being taken a prisoner in such a manner, and by a woman, too, was too much for the lad's endurance. "Let me go!" he cried, the instant he could recover his breath. "I won't hide away in your garret, like a woman, I won't. I want to see the militia and the minute men fight the troops, I do."

"Help me first, Joe. Here, quick now! Let's get this box out and up garret. We'll hide it under the corn and it'll be safe," she coaxed.

The box was under Uncle John's bed.

"What's in the old thing anyhow?" questioned Joe, pulling with all his strength at it.

The box, or chest, was painted red, and was bound about by massive iron bands.

"I've never seen the inside of it," said Mother Moulton. "It holds the poor old soul's sole treasure, and I _do_ want to save it for him if I can."

They had drawn it with much hard endeavor as far as the garret stairs, but their united strength failed to lift it. "Heave it, now!" cried Joe, and lo! it was up two steps. So they turned it over and over with many a thudding thump;--every one of which thumps Uncle John heard and believed to be strokes upon the box itself to burst it asunder--until it was fairly shelved on the garret floor.

In the very midst of the overturnings, a voice from below had been heard crying out, "Let my box alone! Don't you break it open! If you do, I'll--I'll--" but, whatever the poor man _meant_ to threaten as a penalty, he could not think of anything half severe enough to say, so left it uncertain as to the punishment that might be looked for.

"Poor old soul!" ejaculated the little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge.

"Now, Joe," she said, "we'll heap nubbins over it, and if the soldiers want corn they'll take good ears and never think of touching poor nubbins." So they fell to work throwing corn over the red chest, until it was completely concealed from view.

Then Joe sprang to the high-up-window ledge in the point of the roof and took one glance out. "Oh, I see them, the Red Coats! 'Strue's I live, there go our militia _up the hill_. I thought they was going to stand and defend. Shame on 'em, I say!" Jumping down and crying back to Mother Moulton, "I'm going to stand by the minute men," he went down, three steps at a leap, and nearly overturned Uncle John on the stairs, who, with many groans, was trying to get to the defense of his strong box.

"What did you help her for, you scamp?" he demanded of Joe, flourishing his staff unpleasantly near the lad's head.

"'Cause she asked me to, and couldn't do it alone," returned Joe, dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene at the very moment Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.

"Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay," she added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.

Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare, and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil and the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and homespun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation to any discerning soldier of the king.

A smile broke suddenly over her fair face, displacing for a brief second every trace of care. "It's my old weapon, and I must use it," she said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest, and straightway disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap.

As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the breakfast she had not eaten, the clear pink tints seemed to come out with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks, while her hair seemed fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score and eleven years.

Once more, Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the picture she made, he paused to cry out: "All dressed up to meet the robbers! My, how fine you do look! I wouldn't. I'd go and hide behind the nubbins. They'll be here in less than five minutes now," he cried, "and I'm going over the North Bridge to see what's going on there."

"O Joe, stay, won't you?" she urged, but the lad was gone, and she was left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the thought, "They'll treat me with more respect if I _look_ respectable, and if I _must_ die, I'll die good-looking in my best clothes, anyhow."

She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers and then drew out the little round stand, on which the family Bible was always lying. Recollecting that the British soldiers probably belonged to the Church of England, she hurried away to fetch Uncle John's "prayer book."

"They'll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I know," she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of the well, and where she could also command a view of the staircase, she sat and waited for coming events.

Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper window. "Martha," he called, "you'd better come up. They're close by, now." To tell the truth, Uncle John himself was a little afraid; that is to say, he hadn't quite courage enough to go down and, perhaps, encounter his own rheumatism and the king's soldiers on the same stairway, and yet, he felt that he must defend Martha as well as he could.

The rap of a musket, quick and ringing, on the front door, startled the little woman from her apparent devotions. She did not move at the call of anything so profane. It was the custom of the time to have the front door divided into two parts, the lower half and the upper half. The former was closed and made fast, the upper could be swung open at will.

The soldier getting no reply, and doubtless thinking that the house was deserted, leaped over the chained lower half of the door.

At the clang of his bayonet against the brass trimmings, Martha Moulton groaned in spirit, for, if there was any one thing that she deemed essential to her comfort in this life, it was to keep spotless, speckless and in every way unharmed, the great knocker on her front door.

"Good, sound English metal, too," she thought, "that an English soldier ought to know how to respect."

As she heard the tramp of coming feet she only bent the closer over the Book of Prayer that lay open on her knee. Not one word did she read or see; she was inwardly trembling and outwardly watching the well and the staircase. But now, above all other sounds, broke the noise of Uncle John's staff thrashing the upper step of the staircase, and the shrill, tremulous cry of the old man, defiant, doing his utmost for the defense of his castle.

The fingers that lay beneath the book tingled with desire to box the old man's ears, for the policy he was pursuing would be fatal to the treasure in garret and in well; but she was forced to silence and inactivity.

As the king's troops, Major Pitcairn at their head, reached the open door and saw the old lady, they paused. What could they do but look, for a moment, at the unexpected sight that met their view: a placid old lady in black silk and dotted muslin, with all the sweet solemnity of morning devotion hovering about the tidy apartment and seeming to centre at the round stand by which she sat,--this pretty woman, with pink and white face surmounted with fleecy little curls and crinkles and wisps of floating whiteness, who looked up to meet their gaze with such innocent, prayer-suffused eyes.

"Good morning, Mother," said Major Pitcairn, raising his hat.

"Good morning, gentlemen and soldiers," returned Martha Moulton. "You will pardon my not meeting you at the door, when you see that I was occupied in rendering service to the Lord of all." She reverently closed the book, laid it on the table, and arose, with a stately bearing, to demand their wishes.

"We're hungry, good woman," spoke the commander, "and your hearth is the only hospitable one we've seen since we left Boston. With your good leave I'll take a bit of this," and he stooped to lift up the Johnny-cake that had been all this while on the hearth.

"I wish I had something better to offer you," she said, making haste to fetch plates and knives from the corner-cupboard, and all the while she was keeping eye-guard over the well. "I'm afraid the Concorders haven't left much for you to-day," she added, with a soft sigh of regret, as though she really felt sorry that such brave men and good soldiers had fallen on hard times in the ancient town. At the moment she had brought forth bread and baked beans, and was putting them on the table, a voice rang into the room, causing every eye to turn toward Uncle John. He had gotten down the stairs without uttering one audible groan, and was standing, one step above the floor of the room, brandishing and whirling his staff about in a manner to cause even rheumatism to flee the place, while at the top of his voice he cried out:

"Martha Moulton, how _dare_ you _feed_ these--these--monsters--in human form?"

"Don't mind him, gentlemen, _please_ don't," she made haste to say; "he's old, _very_ old; eighty-five, his last birthday, and--a little hoity-toity at times," pointing deftly with her finger in the region of the reasoning powers in her own shapely head.

Summoning Major Pitcairn by an offer of a dish of beans, she contrived to say, under cover of it:

"You see, sir, I couldn't go away and leave him; he is almost distracted with rheumatism, and this excitement to-day will kill him, I'm afraid."

Advancing toward the staircase with bold and soldierly front, Major Pitcairn said to Uncle John:

"Stand aside, old man, and we'll hold you harmless."

"I don't believe you will, you red-trimmed trooper, you," was the reply; and, with a dexterous swing of the wooden staff, he mowed off and down three military hats.

Before any one had time to speak, Martha Moulton, adroitly stooping, as though to recover Major Pitcairn's hat, which had rolled to her feet, swung the stairway-door into its place with a resounding bang, and followed up that achievement with a swift turn of two large wooden buttons, one high up, and the other low down, on the door.

"There!" she said, "he is safe out of mischief for a while, and your heads are safe as well. Pardon a poor old man, who does not know what he is about."

"He seems to know remarkably well," exclaimed an officer.

Meanwhile, behind the strong door, Uncle John's wrath knew no bounds. In his frantic endeavors to burst the fastenings of the wooden buttons, rheumatic cramps seized him and carried the day, leaving him out of the battle.