Manuscript list of subscribers in Croydon NH

Item Details

Croydon NH, Moses Whipple, 1777

worn as shown

1777 Manuscript Document: 8.5”x13” paper watermarked “GR” under crown. 42 subscribers with monetary sums (in shillings, pence, farthings) tabulated in 3 columns and their sum for each subscriber. The “Sum Total” - 31 Guineas, 3 shillings, 7 pence, 2 farthings. Verso: “This Highway Rate made by us the subscribers June ye 9th 1777” signed by Moses Whipple, Stephen Powers, and Phinehas Sanger.

Of the 42 subscribers listed (Croydon’s 1773 population that included women and children was 91), 26 are known to have fought in the Revolutionary War, notably the three who signed on the back of the document, Selectmen of the town who had since 1774 been named to Croydon’s Committee of Safety under Chairman Moses Whipple, Captain of the Militia. This list, then, served as an Association Test such as was signed in 1776 by 36 men (with no one refusing) in neighboring Newport. In neighboring Claremont, 84 men signed and 31 refused (the Tories loyal to the King were thereafter persecuted, some hiding in a “Tory Hole” at the foot of North Street near the Sugar River). Croydon town records note that funds were raised in 1777 for the militia to march toward the British. Markers were placed along what is now the Newport-Croydon Highway. Nine men from Croydon joined another militia company from Cornish under Captain Solomon Chase and marched toward Ticonderoga, and eight others joined the company of Captain Hardy of Hanover and united with a force under General John Stark at Charlestown. 

The first road in this area of NH was cut in 1766 from Newport to Charlestown, about 12 miles, where there was the first grist mill. The money raised in Croydon in 1777 could have provided for a better path to join the road to Claremont at Newport. The Cornish men would then join them to cross the Connecticut River by boat (the Ashley Ferry was commissioned in 1784).

Captain Moses Whipple, Stephen Powers, Phineas Sanger and the other Croydon men under Captain Solomon Chase had been furnished on 6 May 1777 with ammunition [receipt for eight pounds of powder from Colonel Jonathan Chase to David Warren (Moses Whipple’s brother-in-law), “for going on alarm to Tyconderoga” plus eleven more pounds of powder, nine pounds of lead and 57 flints [receipt from Colonel Jonathan Chase to Captain Solomon Chase, NH Historical Society]. It is unlikely that the Croydon men fought at Ticonderoga, but they probably were part of the forces that bedeviled General Burgoyne in the run-up to the Battle of Saratoga. On 20 August 1777 Burgoyne wrote in a letter to Lord Germaine: “The Hampshire Grants in particular, a country unpeopled and almost unknown the last war, now abounds in the most active and most rebellious race of the continent and hangs like a gathering storm upon my left.” The Croydon group did fight at Saratoga - on 7 January 1778, Moses Whipple acknowledged receipt of 80 pounds 18 shillings and one pence from Colonel Jonathan Chase “being in full of the money due to Croydon men for going in the alarm to Saratoga in Sept last.”

Moses Whipple (1733-1814) was born on Hassanamisco Plantation, Worcester, County, MA; and was one of the original proprietors of the charter of Croydon in 1763 and moved to settle there in 1766 with his wife Catherine Forbush whom he had married in 1758 and their seven children. Phineas Sanger (1749-1782) was born in Grafton MA and moved to Croydon about the same time as Whipple. Stephen Powers (died 1813 of the spotted fever).

Of the signers to this document, the following are known to have served in the Revolutionary War:

Isaac Sanger
John Cooper
Edward Hall
Moses Whipple
Stephen Powers
Phineas Sanger
Ezra Cooper
Benjamin Swinnerton
Amos Hager
Joseph Hall
Abner Brigham
Phineas Newton
David Stockwell
Samuel Whipple
Eleazer Leland
Benjamin Thompson
Timothy Fisher
Samuel Read Hall
Enoch Emerson
James Hall
Nathaniel Wheeler
Seth Wheeler
John Cooper Jr.
John Druce
John Sanger
Abijah Hall