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Letter from Caleb Porter to his brother Silas Porter, May, 1775
Battle of Lexington, April, 1775
My Dearest Brother,
It will take some weeks for this letter to reach you and I pray that your family here in the colonies will have survived the depredations brought upon us by your British friends.
While you sit in London sipping tea with the purlieus subjects of a mad king, your wife and daughter have been forced to find refuge with our father on his farm. It is the cowardly rampaging Hessians and their scabby masters, the King’s Own 4th Regiment that set fire to the fine house you and I so happily built, drove your family into the night and murdered, yes murdered your trusted slave Prince Elijah when he tried to stop the outrages.
As of this writing, your beloved Polly is safe and unharmed, but your beautiful daughter Martha has suffered a brain fever. The good Dr. Covington has applied his best physic and gives us good cheer that she will recover. The sight of her great friend Prince Elijah on the point of a Hessian bayonet was too much for her gentle nature.
We can only thank Holy Providence that Deacon Esterase had stopped by for a visit, for he saved the day by putting the women on his old dobbin and rode like the devil down the post road. I know not what condition the three…
