Concord Register

From the Grafton Journal.

REMINISCENCE.

In August, 1777, when the early inhabitants of the town of Plymouth, N. H., were engaged in haying, news came, that an attempt was about to be made to capture a body of Hessians, that had strayed into Vermont from Burgoyne's army.—It reached the rugged yeomen in the afternoon. They did not delay a day or two for preparation, or hold any councils to determine what course to take. They left their hay in the cock, and their scythes "in the half-cut swath"—took their old muskets from the hooks, where they hung charged with greeting for the wolf or the moose, and took their course westward, from which point they heard the summons, and seemed to scent "the battle afar off."

Lieut. Brown, who was as resolute and brave a man as ever stepped after a drum and fife, lived then on what is called the Lower Intervale in Plymouth. He had been a soldier in the old French war, and was a ranger under Major Rogers. He was an expert and enterprising hunter in these then wilds. He kept two guns. As soon as he heard the news, that men were wanted to go and fight the Hessians, he seized his two guns with the determination forthwith to march and pay his respects with both of them to our polite German "guests," who had come over like Fayette to visit us, but with different intentions. Finding the locks a little out of order, he went to old Deac. Lucas, who was a blacksmith, and understood, as all did in those days of peril, the workmanship of guns and their apparatus, to get them repaired. Lucas' shop was near where the old court house stood. He repaired the gun locks, and Lieut. Brown, with such heroes as joined him, set out before sunset, to join Gen. Stark, where he might chance to find him. He came up in season to bear a distinguished part in the Bennington fight. His experience as a hunter had made him wonderfully dexterous in the use of the gun. He went into battle with the two, which he carried from home, and how skilfully he used them, the fall of many a portly Hessian could attest. Lieut. Brown was the first man that mounted the captured breast-work of the enemy. After the victory, and after the Americans were ordered to desist from the pursuit, Brown was missing, and it was supposed he was slain. The next morning he came into camp with his brace of muskets, and said he had followed the Hessians on their retreat, and had laid three more of their number on the ground. Some of his companions went with him to the places where they lay, and discovered their tall and martial bodies stretched in death by the unerring bullets of this yankee huntsman. He returned home unhurt, and brought with him the two guns. He had borne them constantly while on the long march, and during the heat and toil of that desperate battle.

Gen. Stark won all the glory of that victory, and goes down to posterity as the sole "Hero of Bennington," while the deeds of the gallant Brown and many other unknown veterans are transmitted only by the legend of local tradition and will soon be as undistinguished as the smoothworn graves, where their iron frames have long mouldered.

Lieut. Brown was a man of small size: and had in his appearance and manners nothing that indicated the spirit that was within:—nothing that could lead any one to suspect that resolution and courage, which in days of chivalry would have made him a champion.