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10 minute stories of exceptional Americans doing extraordinary things. Fast-paced, entertaining, binge-worthy and historically accurate.
This is my real voice and these are real stories.
New episode every other Wednesday.
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Dust clouds rose in the distance. The British Army was approaching their sleepy Massachusetts town. Esther Whittemore rushed to pack and flee. She assumed her husband would too. Instead, she found that 78 year old farmer in the barn, oiling his musket and loading his dueling pistols. When the Redcoats arrived, he ambushed an entire British column by himself.
This is the story of an American legend. This is the story of Samuel Whittemore.
Samuel Whittemore was born in sixteen ninety-six. He grew up in a New England where Indians, French troops, and colonial militias were locked into an endless cycle of raids and skirmishes. Whittemore enlisted in His Majesty's service. Some sources claim he was even a part of the Royal Dragoons, a unit of trained killers on horseback.
He fought in King George's War, and at age 49, he helped capture the French fortress of Louisbourg that was one of the most heavily fortified positions in North America. He returned home with the French officer's saber. When asked how he got it, he replied, the previous owner had "Died suddenly." In 1758, at the ripe age of 62, he enlisted again, this time for the French and Indian War, and he went back to Louisbourg to take it a second time.
When he finally came home for good, he settled in Menotomy, Massachusetts. He farmed his land. But Samuel wasn't done yet. He was not the type to retire into a life of rest and ease. When the Stamp Act ignited indignation in the colonies with the famous cry of "No taxation without representation" guess who was right in the middle of it?
At age 72, he was elected to the Massachusetts Committee of Convention, and at age 76, they put him on the Committee of Correspondence, which was the shadow network that organized the resistance against the Crown. Samuel Whittemore was not some random old farmer who got caught up in events. He was a hardened combat veteran and a hot-blooded patriot.
April 1775, a British column of seven hundred men reached Lexington Green at dawn. Eight Massachusetts militiamen lay dead before the sun was fully up. The British pushed on to Concord, and then a single volley at the North Bridge turned a quiet New England morning into the opening shots of the American Revolution.
By midday, the British were retreating, and the entire countryside was hunting them. Militias from every town within twenty miles converged on the road back to Boston. Farmers, shopkeepers, young men, old men, they fired from behind stone walls, from upstairs windows, from inside barns, from the edges of the woods.
The British column hemorrhaged men at every mile. By late afternoon, the survivors had reached Menotomy, the town where the Whittemores lived, and the fighting there was just as bad. In one house alone, eleven Americans were killed. The British soldiers, panicked and enraged, bayoneted men who had already surrendered in the chaos.
This was the moment Esther Whittemore was rushing to flee, and this was the moment that 78 year old Samuel was in his barn oiling his musket. She begged him to come with her. He told her plainly that he would not. Samuel walked out to a stone wall along the road, loaded his musket, tucked his two dueling pistols into his belt, drew his French saber he brought back from the war, and laid it across the top of the wall. And he waited. A few hundred yards down the road, a column of British soldiers were marching toward him, coming straight up his lane.
Samuel Whittemore crouched behind the stone wall and steadied his musket.
The British column came around the bend, roughly forty men, grenadiers from the 47th Regiment of Foot, some of the toughest soldiers in the British army, trained to break enemy lines with the bayonet. Samuel thought to himself, he was a 78 year old man about to ambush forty well-trained soldiers in their prime.
He knew the odds were next to impossible that he would even make it out alive, but he was ready to sacrifice everything. Samuel let them get close. closer... closer... Samuel quickly stood up and fired. The musket ball hit the soldier in the chest. He dropped where he stood. The grenadiers scrambled.
They had no idea where the shot came from. By the time they spotted the old man behind the wall, Samuel had already drawn his first pistol and fired again. A grenadier fell. He fired his second pistol. A third man went down, mortally wounded. The British had had enough. They charged. Samuel didn't run. He picked up that French officer's saber and advanced towards the Redcoats.
The first British soldier fired a musket at point-blank range. The ball struck Samuel in the face and tore through his left cheek. It took out part of the bone. Samuel kept swinging. The grenadiers swarmed him. A bayonet went in, then another, then another. When it was over, Samuel had thirteen wounds, thirteen separate bayonet thrusts.
Then the British beat him into the dirt.
When the firing finally stopped, the people of Menotomy came out from the houses and the cellars to survey the aftermath. A group of neighbors came up the lane to recover Samuel's body. They expected to bury him, but not only was he alive, he was sitting up, and he was reloading his musket. The neighbors stared at him.
Dr. Cotton Tufts was sent for. He examined the old farmer and announced that there was nothing he could do. The wounds were too severe. The blood loss was too great. The man would be dead within hours. Samuel disagreed. They carried him home. Tufts patched what he could, and then everyone waited for the inevitable.
But Samuel Whittemore did not die that day. He didn't die that week. He didn't even die that year. He lived another 18 years. His face was permanently disfigured. The musket ball had taken too much of his cheek to ever fully heal, but he lived a relatively normal life for the rest of his days. He walked. He talked.
He returned to his farm. He saw the war end. He saw the United States become a country. He saw George Washington become its first president. Years later, when Samuel was an even older man, his daughter is said to have asked him this question. Would he do it all again? After everything, the 13 bayonets, the musket ball through the face, being left for dead by the side of the road, would he do it all again?
He didn't hesitate. Yes, he said. He would. And when he finally did die in 1793, he was 96 years old, and he went peacefully in his own bed.
Today, there's a stone marker in Arlington, Massachusetts, which is modern-day Menotomy. The marker is near the place where Samuel made his stand. In two thousand and five, the Massachusetts state legislature finally named him the official state hero, recognizing that Samuel Whittemore wasn't just an old man.
He wasn't just a seasoned veteran. He was an American legend.
Thank you for listening to Stories of American Legends. If you like this story, please subscribe and leave a five-star rating. It really does help. And come follow me on X at History with Jacob. My handle is HistoryWJacob. I post interesting stories from American history every day. Next episode, we will be covering Peter Francisco, a 5 year old orphan found abandoned on a Virginia dock. He grew into a six-and-a-half-foot giant who was strong enough to carry a cannon by himself to keep the British from capturing it and smart enough to outwit them time and time again. He is known as George Washington's one-man army. Don't miss it, but until then, stay legendary.