Publisher's Synopsis
In 1786, Abigail Adams wrote this about her brother, William Smith: "Let all remembrance of his connection with this family cease, by a total silence upon the subject. ... My friends will do me a kindness by strictly adhering to this request." William Smith and his older sister Abigail were born into a minister's family in a Massachusetts town south of Boston. When the American Revolution began on April 19, 1775, Abigail was married to John Adams, whose statesmanship during the American Revolution would eventually win him election as the second President of the United States. In April 1775, William Smith and his family occupied one of the largest farms in Lincoln, Massachusetts, west of Boston. Even though he had no military experience and had moved to Lincoln only a year or so earlier, William was elected Captain of the town's minute men. On April 19th, Captain William Smith and his soldiers joined the day-long battle with British troops that began at the North Bridge in Concord. As the Patriot army stood overlooking the North Bridge, wracked with indecision, William Smith's offer to have his minute men attack the British galvanized the resolve of those around him, and the Patriot army marched toward the Bridge. William Smith then joined the Siege of Boston as a Captain in the new Continental Army. Yet within two months, he would be absent from the battlefield as his soldiers fought at Bunker Hill. Within thirty months, he would be a British prisoner of war, having been captured during an ill-fated venture as a privateer. Within a dozen years, William would be dead, far from family and fame. The manner in which William Smith became Captain of a minute man company at the age of 28 and a participant in the most important day in American history, only to die in poverty, disgrace, and estrangement from his wife and family at the age of 40, is a tangled tale. The tale is told here in an engaging style, tracing the lives of William Smith, his wife and six children, his slave Cato, and their relationships with William's famous sister, Abigail Adams. While telling William's tale, this book also explores the life of American soldier's in camp during the Siege of Boston, the rewards and hazards of privateering during the Revolutionary War, the treatment of American prisoners of war by the British, and the social and economic challenges faced by New England families during and after the War.
