The First American Army Read Online Free

Greenwood obtained an old, rather tarnished fife. The long, slender instrument had a crack in it which he sealed with putty. He watched and listened to the British fifers on parade in Boston whenever he could and taught himself to play just by observing them. He became good enough to be taken in as a volunteer fifer with a local militia company. He was fifteen. While many of the men in the militia went through their routines monotonously, some there perhaps only for the beer that was served at the end of the day, the young fifer delighted in playing the tunes he had learned in music books he had purchased. The men enjoyed his music and nodded approvingly at him as he played while they drilled. The boy’s love of fife music continued over the next few years, but his esteem for the British soldiers did not.
    Samuel Maverick was a teenager who worked as an apprentice for Greenwood’s father, a local dentist in Boston. The dentist paid Maverick small wages for his work in the dental office, but gave him meals and allowed him to live in his home, where he shared a bedroom with his son John. The two teenagers became fast friends. In 1770, Maverick, who loved to discuss politics, dined at the home of some teenaged friends, the Carys, and then went out. He and John’s older brother Isaac approached troops gathered on King Street near the Customs House shortly after 9 p.m. but were separated. Maverick worked his way toward the front of the crowd that was harassing British soldiers. Residents shouted at the troops, some screaming “kill them!”
    At the height of the dispute, when the frightened soldiers raised their muskets to threaten the crowd, Maverick shouted, “Fire away, you damned lobsterbacks!” They did. The musket fire killed Maverick and four others and sent fifteen-year-old John Greenwood spiraling into a deep depression over the loss of his close friend in what was quickly called the Boston Massacre by the press. 1 He not only grieved publicly, but was tormented in private. “After his death, I used to go to bed in the dark on purpose to see his spirit, for I was so fond of him and he of me,” Greenwood wrote in his journal.
    His father, who also experimented with early electrical inventions, was the son of a Harvard professor. He enrolled Greenwood in the city’s prestigious North School, where he earned good grades. He was not in school for long, however, because his uncle asked his father to send John to live with him in Falmouth, a fishing community on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod. His uncle, a wealthy man, had recently become a widower and had no children. He needed someone to help him around the house and to run errands for his business. He also yearned for company.
    The teenager arrived in Falmouth in the spring of 1773, a few months before the Boston Tea Party. He wrote, “The whole country at this time was in commotion and nothing was talked of but war, liberty, or death; persons of all descriptions were embodying themselves into military companies and every old drunken fellow they found who had been a soldier was employed evenings to drill them.”
    Greenwood’s uncle moved into one of the largest homes in Falmouth, a three-story wooden house on the south side of Middle Street, shortly after his nephew arrived. His uncle, who had grown to despise the Crown, became the lieutenant of a local Cape Cod militia company and brought his nephew along as the troupe’s fifer. The boy joked that he was selected as the fifer because he was brave, healthy, and imbued with the military spirit. He added slyly that he was the only man or boy in Falmouth who knew how to play the fife.
    Two years later, the men in the company, and everyone else on Cape Cod, learned of the battles at Lexington and Concord. Greenwood had not been home to Boston to see his family in two years. He wanted to return because he feared a war and was worried about the safety of his parents. “I was afraid [my parents] would all be killed