ReschJohnPaper.htm

Long Bill Scott Revisited: Lives of the Soldiers and Veterans of Peterborough, NH

"Copyright, 2001, John Resch, All rights reserved. This document is a draft for a presentation at the SHEAR Annual Meeting in July 2001 and is reproduced here for criticism and comment only. Please do not copy or quote from it in a scholarly work. Inquire with author regarding revised versions."

John Resch Professor of History University of New Hampshire - Manchester SHEAR Conference July 19, 2001 In 1973 John Shy, Ed Papenfuse and Greg Stiverson helped to move military history from the realm of drums and bugles to the realm of social history. Shy's study of Long Bill Scott and the soldiers of Peterborough raised a central question, not so much about their origins, but about why men fought, endured hardships and persisted in the struggle against England. When re-reading John's essay, published in 1976 in his A People Numerous & Armed, I was impressed by the depth and subtly of his analysis that frankly I had missed in prior readings because of my pre-occupation with the question of origins.
John's essay on Long Bill Scott went deeper than "origins" to explore human nature and the relationship between individuals and society. He observed, "For all their peculiar aggressiveness, even human beings do not kill and risk death for no reason. Beneath the raw irrationality of violence lies motive - some psychic web spun from logic, belief, perception, and emotion that draws people to commit terrible acts and to hazard everything they possess." What was the motive force? John asked. Were people moved by force or coercion (Hobbes's view) or persuaded to act by their convictions (Hume's belief)? These are timeless questions. The American Revolution would enlighten our understanding of human motivation that sustains organized violence if, as John asked, historians would describe "Who actually took up arms and why." Was it "whole towns springing to arms" or a few hard-core troops persuaded by radical leaders into fighting a long and dirty war. Moreover, if historians answered these questions they would also "know important things about the American society that emerged from seven years of armed conflict." ¹ With these questions John was making military history a means of studying human nature, social structure, and political culture. His approach resulted in an enduring contribution to historiography.
John's work, like that of Papenfuse and Stiverson's 1973 article on "General Smallwood's Recruits," was, I suspect, a product the times. Writing at the end of the Vietnam War, the standard image of the Revolutionary War as a conflict waged by patriots appeared naive. Papenfuse and Stiverson led off their important article with a succinct portrayal of that image: the "common soldier" was a "man of moderate means dedicated to the defense of liberty, ready at a minute's notice to protect his farm and defend his country." ² This image resonated with the patriotism of the WW II and Cold War generations, but not with the cynicism emerging during the Vietnam Era.
While influenced by their times to be critical of the standard image, neither proposed a new paradigm. Nevertheless, Papenfuse challenged the core of that image with the use of new archival data and innovative quantitative methods while John made new use of local history sources. Papenfuse and Stiverson based their conclusions on data produced through record linkages. John used Peter Oliver's interview with Long Bill Scott and Jonathan Smith's Peterborough New Hampshire in the American Revolution (1876), "an antiquarian work so carefully wrought that it invites systematic analysis" that he supplemented with applications generated by the 1818 and 1820 Revolutionary War Pension acts. ³ Cautiously using these sources, John warned that the subject of motivation is complex, "a mystery," that requires a "certain humility." Reflecting on the lessons of his times, he observed how the lack of humility had led the United States into war in Vietnam. He was also warning historians about the danger of hubris in doing their work. That advice is worth remembering.
Papenfuse and Stiverson, on the other hand, applied quantitative methods to give a statistical profile of the age, residence, and place of birth of the 308 men found on Smallwood's 1782 muster roll and then to linked a portion of those men to "census, tax and pension records."⁴ Linkage to those records was problematic because they employed a methodology similar to Soundex. They had to eliminate common names, such as Smith, from their search. Limited to "uncommon names," they linked 43 native born recruits to tax records after concluding that these men "had probable ties to families on the tax list or appeared themselves as heads of households." ⁵ Of the 120 foreign-born recruits, Papenfuse and Stiverson linked nine of them to families with similar surnames on the 1783 Maryland tax assessment list. They concluded that the absence of tax records for most of the recruits was further proof of their poverty because the "successful and moderately successful appear in the records' as a rule, the poor do not." ⁶
Coming from different approaches, Shy and Papenfuse reached similar conclusions about the composition of the Continental Army. John concluded that when looking at the hard-core troops from Peterborough, "they seem indeed to be untypical people...they were an unusually poor, obscure group of men even by the rustic standards of Peterborough....[many] reveal themselves near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder."⁷ Papenfuse wrote, "...the preponderance of Smallwood's recruits were members of the lowest social and economic class of whites in Maryland." To support their supposition, they reported that 21 of Smallwood's recruits had later applied for pensions under the 1818 Pension Act "under which applicants had to demonstrate poverty...." ⁸ Thus, they concluded, these men had enlisted "...not from a sense of duty or patriotism, but because Maryland society offered them few other opportunities for employment...." In summary they wrote that Smallwood's recruits were "born in poverty, raised in poverty," and spent their "adult lives in pursuit of an elusive prosperity..." ⁹
Based on the conclusion that Peterborough's Continental troops came from the town's lower sorts, John addressed the central question in his essay - what motivated men to enlist and fight? Long Bill Scott had confessed to Peter Oliver that he was motivated by his ambition to rise in status, not abstract ideas of liberty ("`for as to the Dispute between Great Britain & the Colonies, I know nothing of it; neither am I capable of judging whether it is right or wrong.'"). In a wonderful analysis of the role of the colonial militia transformed into the "infrastructure of revolutionary government," acting as a "police force and an instrument of political surveillance," John stated that its persuasive and coercive powers accounted for the small number of men "needed each year to keep the Continental Army alive....only a pervasive armed organization, in which almost everyone took some part, kept people constantly, year after year, at the hard task of revolution." ¹⁰ Aligning more with Hobbes and than Hume, he concluded that in the case of Long Bill Scott and the soldiers of Peterborough, their behavior was influenced less by their hearts and minds and more by the "brutally direct effects on behavior, if not on opinions, of military power."¹¹ John's analysis of the role of the militia and his insights into its use to sustain the war effort and suppress dissenters have deepened our understanding of the revolution far beyond the romantic images of embattled farmers that had dominated the public's mind and historical writing.
The unintended effect of John's work on Long Bill Scott, and I suspect this is also true for Papenfuse and Stiverson, has been the use of their work to create a paradigm as extreme as the romantic one they challenged. In James Kirby Martin's and Mark Edward Lender's 1982 book, A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789, the image of the "embattled farmer" was characterized as a myth. Citing Papenfuse and Stiverson, studies by Lender, Charles Sellers, and Charles Royster, Martin and Lender asserted that "the majority of recruits who fought with Washington after 1776 represented the very poorest and most desperate persons in society, including ne'er-do-wells, drifters, unemployed laborers, captured British soldiers and Hessians, indentured servants, and slaves....Among the post-1776 Continentals, poverty - before, during, and after Continental service - was unifying characteristic." ¹²
Today's historical paradigm portrays Continental soldiers coming largely from society's poor, propertyless, transient, and marginalized. Historian Charles Neimeyer stated that position most forcefully: ...it is apparent that the social origins of the majority of men who comprised the Continental army (where records can be found) were lower class. . . . The New Jersey regular, for instance, was neither 'a yeoman nor a middle class soldier - just as New Jersey was not a predominately yeoman society.' The same can now be said of Concord, Massachusetts; Peterborough, New Hampshire; and Prince George's County, Maryland. ¹³ He concluded that the view of the Revolution as a citizen-soldier's war, fought by the well-to-do and 'yeomen farmers, ` is a bewitching myth. ¹⁴
Neimeyer claimed that the lowborn status of Continental Army soldiers revealed the American colonies to be a class-ridden and exploitative society. He asserted that the propertied class lured the 'lower sort' from low paying jobs into the army with bounties, repressed these military workers out of fear of they would turn on their oppressors, and used this 'surplus population' as cannon fodder. The disempowered soldiers, he stated, resisted through work stoppages in the form of insubordination, desertion, refusal to reenlist, and by mutiny. ¹⁵ He concluded that military service in the Continental Army was another venue for class conflict.
The paradigm of soldiers as low-born and the use of that paradigm to portray colonial society as riven by class exploitation, it seems to me, is as extreme as the former one of embattled farmers rising from a nearly classless society. In a recent review of my book by James Kirby Martin I discovered how fervently the new paradigm's believers defend their views as unassailable rather than yielding to John Shy's admonition of humility. I want to be careful to heed John's advice and not to fall into the same trap of hubris when reported my findings from Peterborough. What I found in my research applies to that little town. I do not claim that the Peterborough is a microcosm of the Continental Army. Nevertheless, I do claim that my little study combined with the work of Walter Sargent on Plymouth and Greg Knouff's study of Pennsylvania's soldiers suggest that it is time to break out of the paradigm conflict to engaged in new studies of those who fought in the Revolutionary war and what that composition reveals the social structure and political culture of revolutionary society. To do so we should expand community studies and do analyses of military units within a framework that incorporates our deeper understanding of the Revolutionary War (including the work by Martine and Neimeyer) and a broader range of methodological tools than was available in 1973
Beginning with what we know about wide-spread participation, the Revolution was a people's war in which a large portion (John Shy has suggested that most) able bodied men of prime military age, 18 to 25, participated. In Peterborough, for example, 64 percent of the men at risk of military service, defined then as men between the ages of 16 to 50, left town under arms sometime between 1775 and 1783. It is reasonable to expect that with this general mobilization, we should find men who were impoverished, Blacks, indentured servants, former slaves, transients, sons of farmers, tradesmen, professionals, as well as the embattled farmers - property owners and their sons representing various degrees of wealth. Second, there was not just one Continental Army and one militia recruited to fight the British. We should expect their compositions to change with the exigencies of an eight-year war. The main theaters of the conflict shifted from state to state and region to region and there were frequent flare-ups and skirmishes, as well as sectors embroiled in vicious guerrilla warfare.Thus, I would like to see historians abandon the paradigm jawboning, which it seems to me as been reduced to a priori or doctrinal litmus testing, to adopt a more sophisticated historiography that will enrich our understanding of the revolutionary society by explicating local and regional differences and distinctions between rural and urban recruits that take into account the dynamics of war itself on participation. We should, of course, expect different reactions and types of participation during the rage militaire than between January and September 1782 when Smallwood was trying to recruit men for action at a time when peace was coming closer and when a bankrupt government could neither pay nor equip the men Smallwood sought to enlist.
In revisiting Long Bill Scott and Peterborough's soldiers and veterans, I learned not only humility as John Shy advised because there is much that cannot be know, but also the pitfalls that have misled historians. One pitfall that is both a logical fallacy and an error in fact is to assume that recipients under the 1818 and 1820 Pension acts were poor and that their applications are evidence of a lifetime of poverty. The current paradigm assumes both to be true. Receipt of the pension is proof neither of impoverishment at enlistment nor of a lifetime of poverty. Under the law, applicants were permitted to transfer of their property under retirement contracts or to (after 1823) to sell their property to pay debts and thereby fall under the $300 property line for eligibility. In Peterborough, 80% of the recipients had divested their property to receive the pension. Shy, Papenfuse and Stiverson to the contrary, pension applications are not indicators of "the postwar careers of the recruits." ¹⁶
Another pitfall, most evident in the Papenfuse article and central to Neimeyer's analysis, is to portray recruits as atomized individuals whose actions are determined by their social and economic status. Within this concept, the recruits are either portrayed as mechanical, impersonal objects moved by factors, or as persons whose self-awareness is formed by an emerging class consciousness resulting from their exploitation. I found neither type in my study of Peterborough. Instead of impersonal isolation, the recruits were part of complex social webs that affected their behavior as kin and community responded to the war. Unlike Papenfuse and Shy's snapshots of men found on muster lists, my approach, like that of Walter Sargent's, was to try to reconstruct the lives of the recruits within the context of their households, kin network, and community. From this vantage point, Long Bill Scott and Benjamin Alld, two key examples illustrating John's view that Continental soldiers came from the lower sorts, appeared very differently.
Scott Family¹⁷Long Bill Scott was deeply tied to a kin network that was established by his father, uncles, and their spouses. The Scotts were self-made men who had become well established in the middle ranks of their communities before the war. In the 1730s the Scott brothers, John (1706-1798), William (1713-1795) and Alexander (c.1715-1787) migrated from Ireland to Massachusetts. They were followed in the 1750s by a nephew, William (1743-1815), who was later known as Short Bill Scott. The Scotts first settled in Lancaster, Massachusetts, where Alexander married Margaret Robbe, whose family helped to settle Peterborough and whose brother, Alexander Robbe, later became the town's militia captain. Between 1734 and 1758, the Scott brothers lived variously between the Massachusetts towns of Lancaster, Townsend, and Lunenburg and the New Hampshire towns of Dublin and Peterborough.
Between 1750 and 1775, the Scotts established themselves as military leaders. Two brothers, Alexander and William, fought in the French and Indian War, the former with Rogers's Rangers and the latter in the expedition to Crown Point, New York. Alexander's son William (1742-1796), nicknamed Long Bill Scott, served two enlistments in that war. In 1760 Long Bill served with his brother David, aged 16, who died the same year from small pox contracted while in service. In 1761 Long Bill enlisted a second time for eights months, possibly in the same regiment as his cousin, Short Bill Scott.
Although beginning modestly, the Scotts succeeded economically. In the 1740s William (1713-1795) had homesteaded land which by 1775 had become a thriving farm. His brother, Alexander, was even more successful. In 1758 and 1759, after living for a time in Dublin, a town bordering Peterborough, he bought 220 acres in Peterborough. In 1761 he sold 100 acres, possibly indicating that Scott was either speculating in land or raising capital for his Peterborough farm. Alexander's son, Long Bill, added to the family's success. In 1762, at age 20, he married Phoebe Woods, aged 20, of Groton, Massachusetts. She was a descendant of one of Massachusetts's founding families. The newlyweds lived briefly with Phoebe's parents in Groton where their first child, David, born in 1763. By 1765 they moved to Dublin, New Hampshire where they lived on John Gleason's farm. Long Bill and likely his father, Alexander, were among the men who founded Dublin. While in Dublin they had their second child, Honorable John Scott, born in 1765. In 1783 Phoebe's tenth and last child was born on the family farm in Peterborough.
Alexander's nephew, Short Bill Scott, contributed to the family's growing prominence in Peterborough. In 1760, Short Bill moved from Dublin to Peterborough where, in 1763, he married Rosanna Tait. The following year they had the first of their four children, John. In the 1760s Short Bill and the other Scotts including cousin Long Bill bought and sold land in Peterborough. Generally they were identified as yeomen, although in 1767 William (probably Short Bill) was also referred to as a Schoolmaster in his deed for 50 acres of land in Peterborough.
The Scotts were enterprising, ambitious, and active in Peterborough. Short Bill ran a store from his house and was a leader in the local militia. Long Bill was a farmer and shoemaker anxious to make his mark in the world. They were involved in running and building the town. Between 1762 and 1775, William Scott, possibly one of the two Bills, and John Scott held six minor town offices, including constable and hogreeve. John, Alexander, and William (probably their brother) were among the town's signers of a 1767 petition to Governor Benning Wentworth to create a new county and shire town. John and William were also among the residents who petitioned Governor Wentworth in 1774 to enlarge town borders by taking land belonging to the town of Jaffrey.
Just before the war, Alexander Scott moved about 20 miles west to Stoddard, New Hampshire, taking two of his sons, Alexander and James with him. They were among Stoddard's founders. Once again, the Scotts were involved in developing a new town as they had been in Dublin and Peterborough. Alexander's son, Long Bill, remained on the family's Peterborough farm. Despite the move, father and sons kept close ties as did all the Scott kin.
In April 1775 Short Bill Scott led the town's militia company to Boston. His cousin, Long Bill Scott, later recalled that he agreed to join Short Bill's company only if appointed an officer. Ambition for military rank, desire for higher social status, and possibly revolutionary ideals, inspired Long Bill to take up arms. He told chronicler Peter Oliver after the war: I was very ambitious & did not like to see [neighbors] . . . who were no better than myself . . . above me. I was asked to enlist, as a private Soldier. My Ambition was too great for so low a Rank; I offered to enlist upon having a Lieutenants Commission; which was granted. Scott stated that he would risk death in battle for a Chance to rise higher [in rank]. Community prominence as active citizens, military leadership, and ambition to rise in the world led the two Scotts to war.
Both cousins served for the entire war. Continuation in the Continental Army resulted from a combination of factors: achieving higher status as officers, the war's politicizing effect, and attraction to military life. Long Bill Scott, the shoemaker and yeoman farmer, became Captain Scott Esquire or Gentleman. He continued to use this title after the war. His cousin Short Bill also raised his social status. In 1769, when selling 50 acres of land, Short Bill was referred to as yeoman Scott. In 1777 when he sold his shop and a small parcel of land he was Captain Scott, Gentleman. The ambitious Scotts had achieved high status in town as Continental officers, patriots, and military leaders.
In all, 12 of 13 Scotts of military age, representing three generations, living in Peterborough and nearby towns took up arms; seven Scotts served in the Continental Army. In 1775 Long Bill's son, Honorable John Scott, aged 10, and Short Bill's son, John, aged 11, served their fathers as waiters. Later, both boys enlisted on their own in the Continental Army. Other family members served in the Army as well. In 1777 David Scott, aged 15, enlisted in his father's (Short Bill) company as a drummer for the town of Attleborough, Massachusetts. In 1781 he reenlisted for a second three-year term for Townsend, Massachusetts. David was described as a farmer, who was 5'9" in height with blue eyes, a light completion and dark hair. He died in 1782, possibly of camp fever, after six years of service.
Judging from their enlistments, the Scotts made no ideological distinction between service in the Continental Army and other military units. Some family members, such as Alexander Scott of Stoddard, New Hampshire, and his son James served only in local militia companies and state troops. In 1777, Peterborough's William Scott, aged 64, the homesteader, marched with Alexander Robbe's militia company to repel Burgoyne's invasion. In September 1777, William reenlisted into Colonel Daniel Moore's state troops which reinforced the army opposing Burgoyne at Stillwater. His son David had served in 1775 under Short Bill and later served as a sergeant in the state troops raised in 1780 to repel a Tory raid on Royalton, Vermont. William's two other sons, Thomas and William Scott, Jr., served in the Continental Army.
By war's end 12 Scotts had collectively contributed about 40 years of military service in Continental, state, and militia units. They were hard-core fighters from well established and aspiring families who were mobilized into service through their kin network. For some, military service became one more avenue to improve their social status and standing as community leaders. For most, the war was a family affair involving fathers, sons, and cousins serving, often together, in militia, state and Continental Army units. Furthermore, the Scotts belonged to an extensive kin network which included families like themselves -- Robbes, Cunninghams, Nays, Taggarts, and Swans -- which contributed troops. Three men from the Taggart family and two from the Swan family, both part of Peterborough's establishment, contributed soldiers to the Continental Army.Benjamin Alld¹⁸Benjamin Alld was a Continental Army veteran who had served four grueling years during the darkest days of the war. In 1816, having separated from his wife and child and failing to sustain himself as a day laborer, Alld, aged 57, became a pauper. That year Peterborough's selectmen auctioned Alld to a local resident who agreed to receive 96 cents a week from the town toward the veteran's care. Possibly for this reason, John Shy cited Alld as one of the town's soldiers who was . . . near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder when he enlisted. Despite impoverishment in his 50s, Alld was not born among the dregs of society. Rather, he was from a wealthy and prominent local family. By 1816 the veteran Alld became a pauper and a declasse relic of the Revolutionary War, having fallen from high status and wealth to the fringe of society.
Benjamin's father, William Alld, was born in 1723 in Armagh, Ireland. In 1740 his family was among the thousands of Scotch-Irish immigrants who moved to New England. The Allds settled in Dunstable, Massachusetts. In 1746, William, aged 23, married Lettice Caldwell, aged 18, and the following year the couple moved to Merrimack, New Hampshire, one of the many Scotch-Irish communities established in the south-central portion of the province. A brother, David Alld, and another relative, John Alld, and their families also moved to Merrimack. In 1747 William, Jr., the first of William's ten children (five males and five females), was born. The last of William's children, Samuel, was born in 1766.
By 1767 William had acquired substantial holdings in the region and was known as Gentleman William Alld. In 1767 he ranked in the top 10 percent of Merrimack's ratepayers (4th out of 64). In addition to farming, William appeared to be a land speculator. Farming and land sales kept Alld at the top of the town's growing list of ratepayers. In 1773 he ranked 9th out of Merrimack's 113 taxpayers. William was also a leader of the town. He held numerous public offices including that of selectman. In 1775 he became the captain of the town militia's which added military prestige to his esteemed social rank of Gentleman. William Alld was at the top of Merrimack's social, political, economic, and military structure.
William provided amply for his children to sustain their high status. By 1775, at age 52, he had accumulated land for his children, including Benjamin, then aged 16. Throughout the war, William apparently strengthened his economic position by liquidating some of his holdings to purchase other property at bargain prices. In 1777, he sold his Merrimack farm, which included a sawmill, for L 1,500. The following year he sold one of his farms in nearby Amherst for L 150. He also sold his church pews in Amherst and Merrimack when he moved to Peterborough, where he had purchased farms for himself, his sons and his daughters.
In 1778 William purchased more land in Peterborough by buying property the town had confiscated for back taxes and then sold at rock-bottom prices at public auction. Throughout the war, William Alld and son James bought and sold land in Peterborough and in nearby towns. William included his other sons in the family land business when they came of age. Just after the war, his youngest son Samuel became involved in the family's extensive land dealings.
In 1779 the Alld family solidified their status in Peterborough when William's daughter, Jean, married Robert Swan, the son of town founder, Gustavus Swan. Robert was also well established in Peterborough. He had inherited his father's farm and was considered a man of superior abilities [who became] one of the most influential men in town. In 1783 William insured financial security for another daughter, Hannah, and her husband, Michael Dalton of Londonderry, New Hampshire, by giving her 200 acres of land in Peterborough for goodwill and affection. William and his wife, Lettice, had provided for their children by giving them farms and other advantages expected from a prosperous and prominent family.
Besides being a successful businessman and generous parent, William was one of Peterborough's leaders. In 1779 and 1781, townsmen appointed him to settle the wages it owed soldiers. In 1782 the town made Alld part of the committee reviewing the proposed state constitution. In 1783 and 1784 he was elected as the town's treasurer and then, in 1785 and 1786, was elected tithingman; he also served for a number of years as surveyor of roads.
True to the pattern exhibited by community leaders, the Alld family contributed sons to the war effort. Two of its four sons of military age, Benjamin and William, Jr. (1747-1790), served in the Continental Army. Two other sons of military age, James and John, did not serve. James was probably the family's insurance policy to sustain its enterprises in case his brothers Benjamin and William, Jr. were killed or disabled while in service. Throughout the war, James (1751-?) assisted his father on their farm and with land purchases, which added to the family's fortunes. John, however, aged 18 in 1775, may have been incapable of service, possibly because he was weak or disabled. John never received land, was not involved in any land transactions, and he lived at home, unmarried, until his death in 1790 at the age of 33. William's last son, Samuel, was too young to fight. He was only nine years old in 1775.
Coming from a wealthy family, neither Benjamin nor William, Jr., enlisted for economic reasons. Their service probably reflected the combination of community expectations that prominent families contribute manpower to the war, politicization while in service, and the influence of the Scotts. Benjamin served in the same regiment as Long Bill Scott who attracted many townsmen into the Army.
Benjamin Alld, like many townsmen, served several enlistments in various units of the Revolutionary army. In the fall of 1776 he mustered into one of New Hampshire's state regiments that was sent to New York to reinforce Washington's beleaguered army. Benjamin returned in December, a veteran of the battle at White Plains. Shortly thereafter, Alld became a hard-core soldier. In July 1777 he enlisted for three years in Henry Jackson's Massachusetts regiment which included Long Bill Scott's company. With other Peterborough residents in that regiment, such as John Blair, 2nd. and Honorable John Scott, Alld participated in the Army's 1778 campaigns at Philadelphia and Monmouth, in its 1779 Rhode Island campaign, and its 1780 defense of New Jersey.
The brutality and hardships of war apparently troubled Alld. In May 1779 he deserted but returned to service that October under a pardon. Alld completed his service in July 1780 and was honorably discharged. In October 1781 he mustered for the last time in a New Hampshire state regiment that spent two months reinforcing Continental troops at West Point. By war's end, Alld had spent nearly four years under arms in either the Continental Army or state regiments. He had fought in some of the war's major engagements and had experienced the hardships of combat and miseries common among Continental troops.
Benjamin Alld remained in Peterborough following the war where he enjoyed the advantages of his family's growing wealth and prominence. He appeared to be on the same track toward success enjoyed by his father and brothers. In 1784 Benjamin, aged 25, identified himself as a husbandman, successfully petitioned the state compensation for his depreciated soldiers' pay, and had begun dabbling in real estate. However, within a few years Alld's life crumbled. Alld's father lost confidence in his son's ability to sustain the family's property.
William refused to entrust Benjamin with his estate when a series of family misfortunes made the veteran the heir apparent to his family's wealth and business. In 1790, two of William Alld's sons died. William, Jr., who had married in 1788 at age 41 and had moved to Maine, died in an accident. In 1790, Benjamin's other brother, John, aged 33, died at his father's home, possibly after a lifetime of infirmity. Also about this time, James Alld, aged 39, who had been his father's principal associate, moved from Peterborough. The reasons for the move are unknown. In 1795 William retired, but instead of deeding his farm to Benjamin he granted the farm to his youngest son, Samuel, aged 29. William may have passed over Benjamin because he was thought incapable of providing for his parents' support. The deed required that Samuel keep the farm in good order, provide his parents with one-third of the farm's produce, enough wood for one fire, and pay two-thirds of the household's taxes owed the town.
Together, William and Samuel retained the family's high economic and political standing in town. In 1796 Samuel Alld and his father ranked in the town's top 10 percent of ratepayers. They were taxed $19.73 for 5 horses, 25 cows, 4 oxen, 6 planted acres, 12 acres mowed for fodder, 20 acres in pasture, 350 acres of undeveloped land, and ?100 lent at interest. The loan indicated that they were involved in the region's expanding capital market. At the turn of the century, the Allds were successful at farming, investing, and speculating. After William's death in 1805 at age 82, Samuel continued at the top of Peterborough's ratepayers as did other members of the family, except for Benjamin. Samuel's brother-in-law, Robert Swan enjoyed an equally high economic rank and social prestige. In the early nineteenth century, the Allds were firmly planted in the town's economic, social, and political structure.
Benjamin, unlike brother Samuel, failed to live up to his inherited social and economic advantages. Nevertheless, Benjamin continued to enjoy his parents' love and financial support while they lived and he was remembered in their wills. His father's will, prepared in 1790, and his mother's bequest following her death in 1807 named him as a beneficiary. Despite these blessings, Benjamin's life shattered.
Benjamin's marriage dissolved. He had married Nancy White, daughter of John and Molly Wallace White, one of the town's early settlers, and had fathered a daughter. For unknown reasons, Benjamin separated from his wife and child. Beginning in the 1790s, Benjamin -- then in his mid-thirties -- apparently moved among the communities of Merrimack, Maine, and Peterborough. He remained a legal resident of Peterborough where he may have lived with kin and worked as a day laborer. His transient's life suggested alienation. By 1816, Benjamin, then on the verge of pauperism, was disowned by his family. By law and custom, either his brother, Samuel, or his sister, Jean Alld Swan, was required to support him. They were financially able to do. Instead, they cut their ties to him and allowed Peterborough's selectmen to place Benjamin on the pauper's auction block to bid for lowest cost for his care. Benjamin, once part of a wealthy and prominent family, once a Continental soldier, had sunk to the ignominy of an outcast and pauper.
Scott and Alld were part of Peterborough's mobilization. The town's war effort was most intense in 1775.¹⁹ In 1775 nearly 40 percent of the men at risk of service were under arms sometime that year. More important, those men who first enlisted in 1775 accounted for nearly half of the total days served by Peterborough's soldiers between 1776 and 1783 (see Table 3). Most representative of the community in 1775, those soldiers continued to shape the character of Peterborough's contribution to Revolutionary army throughout the war. Fourteen of the town's 31 Continental soldiers were part of the rage militaire.
In general, Peterborough's war effort varied with the ebb and flow of the war. Peterborough's war effort declined in 1776 following the British evacuation of Boston. The war effort increased in 1777 after scores of townsmen rushed into the field that summer to repulse Burgoyne's invasion of New York and Vermont. After 1778 the town's war effort depended upon retaining men already in service and persuading veterans to reenlist. Only 13 the town's 100 soldiers enlisted for the first time between 1778 and 1782. Beginning in 1780, the year that enlistments expired for most who joined the Continental Army in 1777, the town's war effort dropped precipitously. By 1782 the war was virtually over and only the most hardened troops remained in service. By war's end, many townsmen had served alternately in militia companies, in state regiments, or in Continental Army units. Their war effort varied. The town's 31 men who joined the Continental Army averaged 1369 days of service. By contrast, the remaining 69 of the town's 100 soldiers averaged 190 days of service under local militia captains or in state regiments.
The view prominent in the Revolutionary generation and in claims made by modern historians that the Continental Army was unrepresentative of society failed to materialize when all of Peterborough's soldiers are examined within the context of their households and community. Whether serving in the Continental Army, state regiments, or militia, Peterborough's enlistees represented a cross section of the community. Some men were on the margin of the town's society, a few were transients, and possibly two were former slaves. Most recruits, however, came from families such as Smith, Morison, Miller, Ferguson, Scott, Blair, and Alld. These soldiers were sons of well-to-do farmers, immigrant settlers, and homesteaders who by the time of the Revolution had established positions in the town's social, political and economic structure. That the young soldiers would lack wealth or property was a function of their age or perhaps being lower in the birth order among males in their households.
Many townsmen served alternately in militia companies, in state regiments, or in Continental units. Service was not stigmatized by class. Six factors accounted for enlistments. First, kinship was probably the most important factor. Enlistments followed family lines. Once a family member left town under arms, others, including fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, and in-laws, could be expected to enlist. Second, high social status influenced enlistment. Town leaders or their children and those aspiring to leadership were expected to serve in the military.
Third, confidence in local commanders produced enlistments. Many Peterborough residents served either with Captain Long Bill Scott or with his cousin Captain Short Bill Scott who were company commanders in Henry Jackson's Massachusetts regiment and the First New Hampshire Regiment, respectively. Many mobilized under the town's militia captain, Alexander Robbe. All three captains were town founders, veterans of the French and Indian War, and seasoned officers. Thus townsmen clustered around experienced and trusted officers whose units contained relatives, friends, and neighbors. Bounty payments did not cause Peterborough enlistments to shift to the lower sorts in the community. Rather, financial rewards were conventional, and thus expected, when responding to kin, peer, and community expectations to serve.
Fourth, demography affected enlistments. The army recruited young men. Peterborough had a large pool of men between ages 16 and 25, the prime military ages. Consequently, fathers and older townsmen of military age were under less pressure to enlist because they could send young sons to war. Fifth, the war's changing character motivated townsmen to enlist. Conflict close to home aroused many men to arms. During both the rage militaire in 1775 and the British invasion of New England in 1777, a large portion of the community's men bore arms. As the conflict became a long and dirty war from 1777 to 1782, recruits came from the manpower pool of newcomers, veteran soldiers, and young men from the town's established families. A handful of hired men came from the manpower pool of friends, relatives, transients, and possibly former slaves. Sixth, the war politicized soldiers and stiffened their resolve, particularly those who fought in 1775 and 1776. Many of the men who saw action early in the war became hard-core troops. They frequently reenlisted when there was a call to arms. Over half (18 of 31) of the town residents who served in the Continental Army first enlisted in either 1775 or 1776.
In Peterborough, as may have been true in other towns, the Revolutionary army was not socially segregated. Enlistees, including Continental soldiers, came from various social ranks. Enlistments resulted from a combination of factors such as kinship, community expectations, the war's proximity, trust in local military leaders, ambition for prestige, and politicization resulting from combat. Viewed as whole, Peterborough fought a people's war which mobilized households, kinship networks, and the community in military service.
From the vantage of Peterborough, and Walter Sargent's Plymouth, there is rich history of Revolutionary American yet to be written through the lives of soldiers such as Scott and their communities.

Footnotes:1. John Shy, A People Numerous & Armed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 165-67.2. Edward C. Papenfuse and Gregory A. Stiverson, "General Smallwood's Recruits: The Peacetime Career of the Revolutionary War Private, William and Mary Quarterly (Jan., 1973), 117.3. Shy, 163.4. Papenfuse, 118.5. Papenfuse, 123.6. Papenfuse, 126.7. Shy, 171-172.8. Papenfuse, 129.9. Papenfuse, 131-132.10. Shy, 176-177.11. Shy, 179.12. James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender, A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789 (Arlington Heights, Ill: Harland Davidson, Inc., 1982), 90-91.13. Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 25.14. Neimeyer claims that The myth of the classless, independence minded farmer or hard-working artisan-turned-soldier has been a longstanding legend.... the well-to-do and 'yeoman farmers,' seemed to prefer staying at home rather than rushing to the front lines... after 1775; ibid., xiii.15. Ibid., xiii-26.16. Papenfuse, 130. See John Resch, Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 146-176, 192-193.17. The following section is from Resch, 35-38.18. Resch, 40-43, 50-5219. Resch, 43-45.