THE FREETOWN RAID & SKIRMISH

Many colonists remained loyal to the Crown in the months leading up to the start of the war. In fact, the American Revolution almost began two weeks before the attack on Lexington and Concord, in our own little corner of southeastern Massachusetts. An April 1, 1775 article in The Providence Gazette reports that Loyalists in the mainly pro-British Assonet Village, only a short distance from Middleborough, were also taking up arms to defend their homesteads and to support the Crown with the blessing of British army authorities.

“We hear a Number of Fire Arms, with a Quantity of Ammunition, have been sent from on board a Man of War at Newport, to Col. Thomas Gilbert, and his Tory-Adherents, at Freetown,” the news report said. Col. Gilbert, a colonial officer who had also served in the French & Indian War, had been asked to raise a Loyalist militia force, and set up an armed camp at his Assonet plantation.

While the Tory recruits were being drilled, Col. Gilbert heard rumors of a potential attack by the local Sons of Liberty, and had traveled to Newport, Rhode Island to beg a detachment of British army regulars to help defend the Tory outpost. The troops never came, and local patriot Committees of Safety debated the threat, and then called out their Minutemen to disarm the Loyalists.

Attleboro patriot John Daggett was the primary organizer of an attacking force, initially composed of his “Rehoboth” militia company, which marched on Assonet two weeks before the Lexington and Concord raid. Dispatches sent out to other Committees of Safety resulted in hundreds of other Minutemen, including detachments from Dartmouth and Middleborough, marching on Freetown and joining Daggett’s troops for the assault.

Ten days later, patriot diarist Dr. Ezra Stiles of Newport recorded the demise of the local Loyalist “uprising” in his April 11, 1775 diary entry: “Above a thousand men assembled in arms in Freetown to lay Col. Gilbert as they had heard he had risen up against his country. They came from all parts round as far as Middleboro’ Rochester etc – they took about 30 of his men and disarmed them, tho’ they had lately taken the King’s Arms.” 

Another report indicates that Col. Gilbert himself and a handful of his men had escaped by small boat, rowing downriver and taking refuge on the British warship Rose, which had recently delivered the arms and powder to the Loyalist camp. While the colonel was away, the rebel militiamen seized 35 muskets, several large flasks of powder, and a basket of musket balls, it was reported. Twenty-nine Loyalist prisoners captured that day were sent to Taunton and Providence jails to be locked up, and another 20 escaped, according to reports published in The London Chronicle on June 15-17, 1775.

A British Army deserter who was helping to train patriot militiamen in the neighborhood, recently captured by Gilbert’s men, was also freed by the rebel forces, Dr. Stiles notes in his April 14, 1775 diary entry. Other news reports of the time indicated that Col. Gilbert’s brother Samuel was injured in the confrontation, and among those taken into custody by the patriots; Col. Gilbert returned a few days later, riding to Taunton and convincing the rebels to release his brother, son-in-law and several other prisoners. The Gilberts eventually fled to Boston to seek protection from the British forces occupying the city.