3 In Joyce Malcom’s work Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009) the author hypothesizes Peter’s parents were two locally enslaved individuals named Robbin and Peggy. Historian Richard C Wiggin thoroughly debunked Malcom’s evidence as a misreading of vital records in his work Richard Wiggin, Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783 ( Lincoln: MA, Lincoln Historical Society, 2013), 353. Wiggin offers a secondary hypothesis that Peter was the child of Jupiter and Pegg, however acknowledges that this is speculative.
4 Joyce Malcolm, Peter’s War, 3-5.
5 For more information on the system of dependency see Jared Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependency In Eighteenth Century Boston (New York: New York University Press, 2016).
6 Emily Blanck, Tyrannicide: Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary South Carolina and Massachusetts (Athens, GA: The University of Georgie Press, 2014), 16; Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery And Dependence In Eighteenth Century Boston, 76.
7 Emily Blanck, Tyrannicide: Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary South Carolina and Massachusetts, 15-16; William Dillon Piersen, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988).
8 Donald Hafner, “First Blood Shed in the Revolution: The Tale of Josiah Nelson on April 19, 1775." eScholarship@BC. Boston College University Libraries, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:103654 (Accessed December 2020), 13-14.; Lincoln Public Library, Archives, Town of Lincoln Assessors Records, Valuation Book, 1774, 2003.021.1.4
9 For more information about the arms race see, John L. Bell, The Road To Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited The Revolutionary War, (Yardley, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing LLC, 2016). ; Hafner, First blood shed in the revolution, 2.; William Francis Wheeler in D. Hamilton Hurd, compiler, History of MiddlesexCounty, Massachusetts, Vol. II, (Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1890), 619.
10 Hafner, First Blood Shed in the revolution, 2015. In this work, Hafner raises serious concerns about the legitimacy of the Josiah Nelson legend. The story recorded in 1890 does not match the timeline for other known events, and was recorded by generations far removed from the participants of April 19, 1775.
11 Donald Hafner, addresses the controversy of Josiah’s militia service in Hafner, First Blood Shed in the revolution, 12. Many of the Nelson’s neighbors such as the Fiskes and Whittemore’s fled the area during the battle; See Jacob Whittemore Reed, History of the Reed Family in Europe and America (Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1861), p. 139; Rebekah Meriam Fiske Howe quoted in The Harvard Register, 1827-28 (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard And Brown, 1828) 112-114. It is likely, that the Nelson family also fled to a safer location until the fighting passed the home. Thorning narrative in Frank Hersey, Hero's of the Battle Road, 1775, (Boston: Perry Walton, 1930)., Hastings and George Nelson accounts in Frank Coburn, The Battle of April 19, 1775 in Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville and Charlestown, Massachusetts (Lexington, Ma: Author, 1912), 103.
12 Wiggin, Embattled Farmers, 91-137; June 10, 1779, “By twelve pounds ten shillings paid Mr. Josiah Nelson for his service at Cambridge in the year 1776, and for service at ticondoroga in the year 17776 and for service at Saratoga in the year 1777," Lincoln (Mass). “The book of the Treasurers accompts[sic] in Lincoln, 1755." Book 1755. Book. 1755. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/wm118w70t (Accessed January 2021)
13 Wiggin, Embattled Farmers, 353.; MA Soldiers and Sailors, Vol. XI, p 321.
14 Wiggin, Embattled Farmers, 349-354.; Hafner, First Blood Shed in the revolution, 8-9.
15 Wiggin, Embattled Farmers, 353; “General Orders, 22 July 1778," Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-16-02-0138. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 16, 1 July-14 September 1778, ed. David R. Hoth. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006, pp. 121-123.]; MA Soldiers and Sailors, Vol. XI, p 321.;
16 Joyce Lee Malcolm, Peter’s War, 2009, Wiggin, Embattled Farmers, 395-397.; Hafner, First Blood Shed, 215.; Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors, Vol. XIV 17, 150.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service