Debt from the French and Indian war led to heavy British taxes on the colonies which led to the American Revolution. Two adventurous brothers, Seth and Joseph Read joined local Committees of Correspondence by July 1774. Colonel John Spring led a Massachusetts Militia training company of Uxbridge men who prepared for the battle. Dozens of local men fought at the Lexington alarm and at Bunker Hill. Lt. Col. Seth Read fought at Bunker Hill under Colonel John Patterson. General George Washington stopped at a tavern owned by Colonel Seth Read in June 1775 before assuming command of the Continental Army in Boston. Colonels Seth Read, J. Read, Spring, Tyler, Chapin, Captains Green, Bezaleel Taft, Hall, Rawson, and Lieutenants Wheelock, J. Taft, Farnum, and White served with several companies of local heroes. Baxter Hall, an 18-year-old Battle of Lexington drummer, served at Bunker Hill and at West Point when General Benedict Arnold escaped. Samuel Spring, a native of Uxbridge, trained under Rev. Nathan Webb, and at Princeton College, and became a Revolutionary War chaplain commissioned in the militia at the Siege of Boston. Rev. Spring then served under Colonel Benedict Arnold, in the invasion of Canada, while Lt. Colonel Seth Read served in a separate regiment, under Colonel John Paterson. Samuel carried Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr, his Princeton classmate, off of separate battlefields. Samuel, "a fundamentalist Congregationalist", went on to be a renowned clergyman in Newburyport, with published works, and a founder of the Massachusetts Missionary Society.