This Day In Founders History – 9 November

This Day In Founders History – 9 November

On this day in 1775, Americans successfully drove off British soldiers trying to steel livestock at Lechmere Point, in present-day Cambridge, Massachusetts. From a diary entry (author unknown) of 10 November: “Yesterday a party of regulars from Boston, amount to four or five hundred men, embarked in a number of barges from Charlestown Point…and landed at Lechmere’s Point, under cover of a man-of-war and a floating battery, where they seized a sentinel who was drunk and asleep upon his post…Their purpose was to steal the sheep and cattle that were feeding there. They effected a landing without opposition and began to drive the cattle to their boats. His excellency [Washington] ordered Colonel Thompson and his regiment of Pennsylvania riflemen to turn out immediately…Colonel Thompson and Colonel Mifflin headed them and passed the morass up to their breasts in water…the whole regiment poured in whole volleys upon the regulars, who returned the fire in great confusion, and retreated with the greatest precipitation on board their boats…Some of our men are badly wounded, but we hear of none of them who were killed…During the engagement twenty-two large ships hove in sight, with troops from England and Ireland.