Seth Pomeroy, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 20th of May,
1706, was an ingenious and skilful mechanic, following the trade of
a gunsmith. He entered the military service early in life, ranking
as captain in 1744, and as major at the capture of Louisburg by the
English in 1745. On the morning of the 17th of June, 1775, he entered
Ward’s camp at Cambridge as a volunteer, having heard the artillery
at Charlestown and feeling it a personal summons. Borrowing a horse
from General Ward, he eagerly pushed on, but reaching the Neck and
finding it swept by the fire from the British sloop-of-war “Glasgow,”
lying in the harbor, he gave the horse to a sentry, and shouldering
his gun, proceeded on foot, too honest to risk the life of a borrowed
animal. Upon reaching the hill, and taking his place with Stark behind
the rail-fence, he was recognized and greeted with shouts all along
the line. On the 22d of June, 1775, Congress commissioned him senior
brigadier-general; but this causing some dissatisfaction among the
seven others raised to the same rank at the same time, he declined his
appointment, and soon after retired to his farm. In 1776, however, when
New Jersey was overrun by the British, he marched at the head of the
militia of his own neighborhood to the rescue of Washington. He reached
the Hudson River, but never returned, dying at Peekskill, New York, on
the 19th of February, 1777.