Two hundred and fifty years ago, thirty Colrain men marched eastward on the morning of April 20,1775, in response to the conflict between the British and Minutemen at Lexington & Concord.
These Colrain men were fortified by donuts that their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters had stayed up all night making for them. The story goes "... they camped on the floors getting sleep ... while the women of the neighborhood spent the whole night in cooking and frying doughnuts for them."
Ten of the Colrain men who marched to Boston April 20th 1775 are buried in four local cemeteries: six in Chandler Hill, two in North River, and one each in Brick School and Christian Hill cemeteries. More info on who these men were and photos of some of the their headstones are here.
(Thank you Dave Allen!)
The Colrain Resolves
Unlike the settlers in the valley, who were almost all of English extraction, Colrain’s Scotch-Irish settlers had no love for the English. Resentments festered, and in January, 1774, at Wood’s Tavern the prominent men of the town gathered and drew up what became known as the Colrain Resolves.
Predating the Declaration of Independence by 18 months, the six Resolves declare the rights of the individual, objection to taxation without representation, legal authority for independence, the right of the group to self-government, the necessity for action, a listing of specific grievances, the necessity for independence rather than mere reform, and the struggle for independence transcending the individual.
Colrain was ardently patriotic. In 1775, when the alarm rang at Lexington, Colrain Minutemen marched to Boston. Later they served at Ticonderoga and at the Battle of Bennington. Ten percent of Colrain’s population - 198 men - served during the Revolution.
(Thank you Belden Merims!)
