John and Joshua Townsend Atop a wooded hill above the village of Putney Vermont, on land that he once owned lay the grave of 1/Lt. John Townsend, late of the 4th Company, 2nd Worcester County Regiment of Militia; and, Col. Asa Whitcomb’s 5th Regiment of the Massachusetts Line. John was a veteran of Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Ticonderoga, and my 4th Great-grandfather on my maternal side. Two of his sons, their wives, and several infant children lay nearby in this overgrown and seemingly overlooked half acre within the Vermont woods. The stone walls that surround the old burying ground are tumbling, and small trees and shrubs have invaded the cemetery grounds now owned by a family that bears no ancestral connection to the land. In nearby Bolton, Massachusetts, are the graves of his father Joshua Townsend, two of John’s biological brothers (Richard and Robert) and three of his nephews who also marched to Concord and Cambridge with him in the early morning hours of April 19th, 1775. Joshua was in his seventy-fifth year on the night of, “The Lexington Alarm”, but he shouldered his musket and gamely marched beside his sons and grandsons to face the King’s Grenadiers. Three
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