The first major battle of the Revolutionary War was the Battle of Boston. When the American Revolution broke out, Captain John Brady took his sons Samuel and James with him to fight in the trenches with General George Washington in Boston. Samuel and James Brady enlisted in the Continental Army as privates on August 3, 1775. Samuel was nineteen years old. Cecil B. Hartley, in his 1859 book about Samuel Brady's sometimes comrade, Lewis Wetzel gives this account of the service of Samuel Brady at the Battle of Boston.