Joseph Plumb Martin was born in western Massachusetts in 1760. His father was a pastor who often got in trouble for speaking his mind too freely. At the age of seven, Joseph was sent to live with his affluent grandfather. When the war started in 1775, Martin was eager to enlist, but he was too young. Many of Martin’s friends had enlisted and Martin was under peer pressure to join his friends.
At a time when less than half of all Americans were literate, Joseph “Plumb” Martin, was an exception. Though young and penniless, Private Plumb could read and write. Very well, in fact, having received a free education while growing up in Massachusetts, the most progressive of the colonies.
In June of 1776, at the age of 15, Martin, though wary of a long enlistment, decided “to take a priming before I took upon me the whole coat of paint for a soldier.” Thus, much to the chagrin of his grandparents, Martin enlisted for six months as a private in the Connecticut state troops. After serving at the Battles of Brooklyn and White Plains on the side of the Patriots, the farm boy decided not to re-enlist in December 1776. But a long winter at home proved too dull for the teenage veteran. He enlisted again in 1777, this time in Washington’s Continental army, and served for the duration of the war, seeing action at a number of major battles.
At the age of 70, the venerated veteran then living in Maine published A NARRATIVE OF SOME OF THE ADVENTURES, DANGER AND SUFFERING OF A REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER, INTERSPERSED WITH ANECDOTES OF INCIDENTS THAT OCCURRED WITHIN HIS OWN OBSERVATION. The book which did not sell particularly well fell into obscurity until rediscovered in the 1960s when it was republished with the title Private Yankee Doodle. Martin recorded his observations of the First National Thanksgiving at Gulph Mills.
Private Plumb’s journal entry, written on Thanksgiving Day, 1777 was timely and poignant. In plainspoken but penetrating prose, the eighteen-year-old Martin conveyed in stark detail what the common soldier faced, endured, and, sometimes, survived.
“While we lay h
ere there was a Continental thanksgiving ordered by Congress; and as the army had all the cause in the world to be particularly thankful, if not for being well off, at least, that it was no worse, we were ordered to participate in it. We had nothing to eat for two or three days previous, except what the trees of the fields and forests afforded us. But we must now have what Congress said, a sumptuous Thanksgiving to close the year of high living we had now nearly seen brought to a close. Our country, ever mindful of its suffering army, opened her sympathizing heart so wide upon this occasion as to give us something to make the world stare. And what do you think it was, reader? Guess. You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will. I will tell you: It gave each and every man half a gill of rice and a tablespoonful of vinegar! With this extraordinary superabundant donation, we were ordered out to attend a meeting and hear a sermon delivered upon the happy occasion.
“We accordingly went, fo we could not help it. I heard a sermon, a “thanksgiving sermon”, what sort of one I do not know now, nor did I at the time I heard it. I had something else to think upon. My belly put me in remembrance of the fine Thanksgiving dinner I was to partake of when I could get it. Well, we had got through the services of the day and had nothing to do but to return in good order to our tents and fare as we could. As we returned to our camp, we passed by our commissary’s quarters. All his stores, consisting of a barrel about two-thirds full of hocks of fresh beef, stood directl in our way, but there was a sentinel guarding even that.
“However, one of my messmates purloined a piece of it, four or five pounds perhaps. I was exceeding glad to see him take it; I thoghut it mught help to eke out our Thanksgiving supper, but alas! How soon my expectations were blasted! The sentinel saw him have it as soon as I did and obliged him to return it ot the barel again. So I had nothing esle to do but to go home and meke out my supper as susual, upon a log of nothing and no turnips.
“… The army was now not only starved but naked. The greatest part were not only shirtless and barefoot but destitute of all other clothing, especially blankets. I procured a small piece of raw cowhide and made myself a pair of moccasins, which kept my feet (while they lasted) from the frozen ground. Though the hard edges of the moccasins galled my ankles, this was better than going barefoot, as hundreds of my companions had to, till they might be tracked by their blood upon the rough frozen ground.
“The army continued at or near the Gulf for some days, after which we marched for teh Valley Forge in order to take up winter quarters. We were now in a truly forlorn condition-no clothing, no provisions and as disheartned as need be.