As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of this country, we can revisit the lives of those men and women who contributed to the founding of the nation by connecting their stories with their photos. The war for independence from Great Britain took place from 1775 to 1781. Nearly 60 years after it ended, photography was introduced in America, resulting in images of surviving veterans who had fought in the Revolution.
The Maine Historical Society’s extensive collection of photographs taken between 1840 and 1865 includes five Maine men who served in the conflict. As Maureen Taylor wrote in The Last Muster, Images of the Revolutionary War Generation, “Although the faces that gaze at the reader are old and wizened, the stories they tell are of a youthful bravery in the young days of the Republic.”
Conrad Heyer, 1749-1856
On April 10, 1749, Conrad Heyer became the first white child born in Waldoboro, Maine, a German immigrant community. At the age of 26 in 1775, he joined the Continental army. In 1819 he described his service in applying for a military pension: ”About the middle of December AD 1775 I enlisted as a private in the army of the American Revolutionary War in the Massachusetts Line and Continental establishment to serve against the common enemy for the term of one year and that in pursuance of paid enlistment I did serve said term of one year in the army.”
Heyer served that year in the 25th Continental Regiment, a Massachusetts unit under the initial command of Colonel William Bond. The regiment was stationed in the New York area in April, 1776, then spent most of the rest of the year in Canada. Heyer was discharged at Fishkill, New York in December 1776.
Returning from the war, Heyer settled on a farm in Waldoboro, where he never experienced a day of sickness until shortly before his death on February 19, 1856, at the age of 106 years, 10 months, and 9 days. On June 17, 1856, he was buried in the Waldoboro German Cemetery during an elaborate military funeral attended by more than 4,000 people. In his eulogy, the Reverend John Dodge cited Heyer as a vital link between the 18th and 19th centuries and recalled his patriotism: “When young he served in our revolutionary war. No one who sat at his side and heard him narrate his adventures will forget how the spirit and life of a noble patriot still dwelt in his heart and flashed from his eye. Every word and gesture told the strength of his arm and the stoutness of his heart, when the welfare of his country was the object of his regard.”
Reverend John Sawyer, 1755-1858
A daguerreotype of the Reverend John Sawyer was taken in 1854 when he was 99 years old. Born in Orford, New Hampshire in 1755, Sawyer joined the Continental Army in 1777 and participated in the Battles of Saratoga. He was present at General John Burgoyne’s surrender on October 7, 1777.
After the Revolution, Sawyer entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1781, graduating in 1786. Ordained in 1787, he preached in his native Orford for the next nine years. From 1796 to 1806 he served as the pastor of a church in Boothbay, Maine. He then moved to Newcastle to pursue a career as a traveling missionary. Sawyer’s journeys took him to Bangor, where he preached and taught school from 1812 to 1818. That year he settled in Garland, where he devoted the balance of his life to ministering and teaching.
Reverend Sawyer lived five days beyond his 103rd birthday, dying on October 14, 1858. His funeral, which was held at the First Congregational Church in Bangor, “was attended by a great concourse of people, who thereby testified their love and respect for the aged veteran of the cross, who had for so many years lived and labored in their section of the state.”
Ralph Farnum, 1756-1860
Ralph Farnum was born in Lebanon, Maine on July 7, 1756. At the age of 18, in 1775, Farnum enlisted in York in Captain Phillip Hubbard’s company of Colonel James Scammon’s regiment. The regiment arrived in Cambridge on June 16th. Contrary to later accounts, the unit did not participate in the Battle of Bunker Hill the next day.
Farnum served with the regiment until December 1775. He then re-enlisted in the York militia for two more tours of duty, one in Rhode Island and the other with Captain Elisha Shapleigh of Maine. During the latter, he was present at General John Burgoyne’s surrender on October 7, 1777, after the Battles of Saratoga.
Farnum was discharged from the army in December, 1777 and returned to Maine, where he established a 100-acre farm in Acton. He led a quiet life there until 1860, when he was honored by Acton and Boston as one of the last survivors of the Revolutionary War. Farnum was feted in Boston in October, 1860, even meeting the young Prince of Wales, who was visiting the city at the time.
The aged veteran accepted this attention with modesty, commenting, “I do not think I deserve any special credit for the part I took in the Revolution. I only felt and acted as others.” He died in Acton at the age of 104 on December 26, 1860.
Simon Dearborn Jr., 1760-1853
Originally from New Hampshire, Simon Dearborn Jr. served from the spring of 1777 to the end of 1779 as a private in the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment under Captain Michael McClary and Colonel Alexander Scammel.
According to Dearborn’s pension records, he was present at General John Burgoyne’s surrender after the Battles of Saratoga in 1777 and participated in “the expedition against the Indians under General Sullivan” in 1779.
When the war ended, Dearborn settled in Monmouth, Maine, where he farmed, raised a family, and was active in town affairs. His uncle, General Henry Dearborn, was a member of George Washington’s staff during the Revolutionary War and served as Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of War.
William Hutchings, 1764-1866
William Hutchings was born in York, Maine on October 6, 1764. At the age of four, in 1768, he moved with his family to Penobscot, where his father established a farm.
Hutchings was 15 when the British occupied the adjacent town of Castine in 1779. His father refused to swear allegiance to the king and moved the family to Newcastle. There William enlisted as a private in Captain Benjamin Lemont’s Company of Colonel Samuel McCobb’s Massachusetts Militia. During his six-and-a-half months of service, he was stationed at Cox’s Head at the mouth of the Kennebec River.
After the Revolutionary War ended, 22-year-old Hutchings married and built a substantial house in Penobscot, where he raised a large family. There he worked as a farmer, a lumberman, and a sea captain.
In 1864 the Reverend Elias B. Hillard included Hutchings as one of six veterans in his book The Last Men of the Revolution. Hillard’s book features a biography of Hutchings as well as a color illustration of his home in Penobscot and a photograph of him.
On July 4, 1865, Bangor marked the recent end of the Civil War with a public celebration. At age 100, Hutchings was the city’s guest of honor that day. In response to an oration by Hannibal Hamlin, a U.S. Senator from Maine and Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president, Hutchings declared, “My friends told me that the effort to be here might cause my death, but I thought I could never die any better than by celebrating the glorious Fourth.”
Hutchings died in Penobscot on May 2, 1866, at the age of 101. Speaking at his funeral, the Reverend Alfred E. Ives of Castine stated, “The last link that connects us with the distant past has been sundered. His were the only living lips that could tell us, from what they personally knew, of those times that tried men’s souls.”
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Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. directed the Maine Historic Preservation Commission from 1976 to 2015, and has served as Maine State Historian since 2004.
