At 78, he killed three British soldiers, was shot in the face and bayoneted six times — then lived 18 more years as America's oldest Revolutionary War fighter.
Samuel Whittemore (1696–1793) was a farmer and veteran soldier living in Menotomy, Massachusetts, when the battles of Lexington and Concord ignited the American Revolution on April 19, 1775. He was 78 years old — ancient by the standards of the era — but had no intention of watching history from the sidelines.
As British troops retreated from Lexington and Concord back toward Boston, Whittemore took his musket, his two dueling pistols, and a sword, and positioned himself behind a stone wall along their route. When the column came within range, he opened fire at point-blank distance — killing one soldier with the musket and shooting dead two more with his pistols before the British reached him.
The British response was swift and brutal. Soldiers shot him in the face, bayoneted him repeatedly — accounts say at least six times — and beat him with rifle butts, leaving him for dead in the road. His family found him lying in a pool of blood and assumed he had not survived.
A doctor was summoned and worked to stabilize Whittemore's horrific wounds, reportedly with little expectation of success. Whittemore proved him wrong. He survived his injuries and lived for another 18 years, dying in 1793 at the age of 96. By every account, he never expressed regret about what he had done.
Whittemore had a long military history before 1775. He had fought in King George's War in the 1740s, participating in the capture of the French fortress at Louisbourg in 1745 — one of the most celebrated British colonial victories of the 18th century — and may have served in the French and Indian War as well. He was not an impulsive man; he was an old soldier who had waited 30 years for a war he believed in.
In 2005 — 230 years after his stand at Menotomy — the Massachusetts Legislature officially declared Samuel Whittemore the state's official hero. He remains the oldest known combatant in the American Revolutionary War, and his story is a favorite of historians who study the extraordinary range of people who risked everything for American independence.