The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1889-11-27
THE HERO OF BUNKER
HILL.
BY JAMES Parton.

BY JAMES PAXTON.
4s
1T is still a little uncertain who
was in command of the American
troops at the battle of Bunker Hill.
There was very little commanding
done It is true, and it is of no great
consea auepce whether that little was
done by Colonel Prescott or by
General Putnam. But there is no
doubt that thei ,fayorite hero of the
day was5 and is Joseph Warren, who
had thestrange destiny to be thirteen
years a aBoston physician, then three
days major-general, and three
hours a soldier in the ranks. He
was ir5 truth a most gallant and de-
voted spirit, worthy of the cause to
whieh he gave his life.
As5the seventeenth of June ap-
pro sps. passers by read with re-
newed interest certain inscription
on stone cottage in Roxbury:
"On this spot stood the house
erected in 1920 by Joseph Warren,
of Boston, remarkable for being the
birthplas se of General Joseph War
rem, his grandson, who was killed at
the battle of Bunker Hill, June IL,
1875"
Another inscription testified that
Doctor John Warren, distinguish
ed physician, and brother of the
general, was also born in the same
mansion"
The writer of the latter inscrip-
ton used very inappropriate word
when he called the modest abode of
the Warrens mansion. A lady
descended from the hero, still living
in Boston, has a painting of the old
house. 1t was a farm house of the
pIainest possible decription, two
stories high, with nothing large
about it except the huge chimney
in tho middle. 1t was surrounded
by picket fence of the simplest
kind, and had near the front of it a
most uncompromising shed.
1t was the house of Yankee
farmer of the last century, who
raised vegetables and fruit for the
Boston marlset,-a slilful, enter
prising, prosperous farmer, who in
troduced an apple which for a CEN
tury bore his name, being called the
:sWarren russet.
The British soldiers in Boston
taunted Joseph Warren with having
been ga bare-lcggcd milk boy and
nothing is more probable than that
all the four Warren boys, each in
his turn, carried milk around for
their father.
If they did not carry milk for
their father, they probably did for
their mother.
When Joseph was a boy of four
teen, a terrible evont took place up
on the Warren farm. On day in
October, 1755, when the farmers
thereabouts were gathering their
later apples, the mother of this
family sent hor youngest son, John,
a little boy just able to do such an
errand, to call his father and two
laboring men to dinner. On his
way to the orchard, the little fellow,
only two years and three months
old, saw the two laborers carrying
homeward his fathers dead body.
He had fallen from a ladder while
gathering apples, had broken his
neck, and had died instantly.
Young as the boy was, this fear
full sight made an impression on his
mind which the lapse of time did
not weaken, and he spoke of it with
feeling when he was an old man
The father thus suddenly taken from
them, was such a man as we should
naturally expect the father of Joseph
Warren to be. One short sentence
which he uttered in his life has been
recorded. Turning his eye toward
his eldest son, Joseph, he said one
day, al would rather a son of mine
were dead than coward.
AT this time Joseph Warren, four
teen years of age, was about ready
to enter Harvard College. The
mother, wise and vigorous woman,
managed the estate SO well that no
change had to be made in the life of
the boys, and their education went
on in the way the father had planned
before his death.
In due time Joseph Warren grad
uated; then spent year as master
of the Roxbury Grammar School;
then studied medicine; by the time
he was twenty-three years of age he
was full-fedged Boston doctor,
getting into a good practice, and
married a young lady, Miss Eliza