Person:Thomas Millett (15)

Thomas enlisted in the Continental Army on 3 May 1775. The Company to which he belonged was in the battle of Bunker Hill. On the way to the battle they divided into two parts, one under the Captain and the other under the Lieutenant. Thomas was with the Lieutenant, and by the time they reached the site, the battle was essentially over and the seige of Boston broken. He joined Washington's army and stayed on after the term of his enlistment until after the battle of Trenton. He returned to Gloucester, and in April signed up for a year on the Hancock, a ship of 32 guns under the command of Captain John Manley. They sailed from Boston in May 1777. Cruising off Newfoundland, they captured a merchant vessel and the Fox, a sloop of war. But in August he was captured by the British warship Rainbow and impressed into service with her crew. At Halifax, on Christmas day, he and two others escaped by jumping overboard and swimming three miles to shore. From Liverpool, Nova Scotia he shipped out on the sloop Bermuda for Antigua, and went from there to St. Eustasia. In May of 1778 he shipped on the Dutch schooner for North Carolina, but was captured by the British and taken to New York. Here he was imprisoned until September. Then he was taken to Elizabethtown, New Jersey to be exchange

    In the sixteen months that his family had not heard from him, his wife and four children had gone to New Gloucester, Maine to live with her brother William Parsons.  Thomas joined them there.  He never returned to Massachusetts.  In 1781 he went with three other families to Leeds, Maine -- then in the heart of the wilderness.  There he built a log house, and lived the rest of his life.  Youngest son Benjamin always lived at the homestead, but the other children scattered to nearby areas.  In 1813, age 81, Thomas applied for a pension, which was granted.
    The story is told that on the day he died, Thomas hitched his team of horses to the buggy, drove to each of his children's homes for a visit, and died that night.

1. ↑ George Francis Millett. Ancestors and Descendants of Thomas Millett. (1959)
   p. 6.
2. ↑ George Francis Millett. Ancestors and Descendants of Thomas Millett. (1959)
   pp. 17-18.