The King’s Attorney and the Minister: Old Lyme’s Heroes at the Battle of Bunker Hill

The men of Lyme had barely returned home from Lexington before they had to march right back to Boston to face the British at Bunker Hill.  On April 26, 1775, just days after the opening skirmish of the Revolutionary War, the Connecticut General Assembly raised six regiments for defense of New England.  After beating a humiliating retreat from Lexington, the British dug in at Boston and blockaded the harbor, while the Americans held the highlands of Charlestown and Dorchester and the Charles River east of Boston.  This tense face-off was bound to come to a head, and when it did, not only would Lyme men be there—the most prominent of them would personally engage in the fighting.

A 1768 letter from Parsons to Samuel Adams expressing patriotic sentiment and pledging Connecticut's help in the defense of Massachusetts. (New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Samuel Holden Parsons, son of Lyme’s famed New Light minister Jonathan Parsons, had himself become a man of influence and wealth.  A Harvard graduate at 19 years old, Samuel’s classmates were John Adams, Jonathan Trumbull, and John Hancock.  By age 25, Parsons was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly from Lyme and served twelve consecutive terms.  As one of the colony’s most successful lawyers, he was appointed king’s attorney (prosecutor) for New London County in 1773.  That same year, the General Assembly appointed him to the Standing Committee of Correspondence which coordinated communications with other colonies on matters of defense and resistance to British authority.  

Page Two: 1768 letter from Parsons to Samuel Adams expressing patriotic sentiment and pledging Connecticut's help in the defense of Massachusetts. (New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Parsons was the right man for the job.   He may have been the first to call for American independence several years earlier when he wrote to his friend Samuel Adams, stating: “The idea of unalienable allegiance to any prince or state is an idea to me inadmissible and I can’t see but that our ancestors when they first landed in America were as independent of the Crown or King of Great Britain as if they had never been his subjects.”

On May 1, 1775, two weeks after the battle at Lexington, Parsons was made Colonel and appointed head of the Sixth Regiment, headquartered in New London. On June 7, 1775, Governor Jonathan Trumbull ordered Parsons’ Sixth Regiment to Boston. 

Accompanying Parsons was his twelve year-old son Billy, and Reverend Stephen Johnson, the 51 year-old minister of Lyme’s First Congregational Church.

Parsons’s Sixth Regiment also included Native Americans of Lyme. Several men of the Nehantic tribe such as John Leathercoat, Sampson Obey (Obed), Reuben Tutton (Tatten) and Daniel Wright joined the fight in Boston.

By early June 1775, it was clear that the British were planning their attack. They were surprised by the colonists’ resistance at Lexington, but now they meant business. They planned to extend their line and occupy Charlestown where the patriots were already digging in and fortifying their positions in anticipation. On June 17, the British army, the most formidable, well-trained and well-supplied army in the world, crossed the Mystic River and attacked Charlestown at noon, intent on making short work of the rebels.

Engraving depicting the Bunker Hill rail fence where Parson's regiment with Lyme's men were situated. (New York Public Library Digital Collection)

The fierceness of the battle shocked the British, including General Howe, who twice made an attempt to flank the fort along the rail fence that ran from the hill to the Mystic River and was twice repelled by Colonel Parsons’ men holding the line behind the fence. The pitched battle continued all day.  William Coit’s company, which was part of Parsons’ regiment, suffered heavy casualties.  Parsons’ own company avoided serious loss, with only John Saunders of Lyme suffering non-life-threatening wounds. In all, British casualties were 1,040—nearly half of their force, while the Americans lost 450 men. 

Two days after the battle, Samuel wrote a letter to his wife Mehetable Mather Parsons:  “They fought bravely, were twice repulsed by our men and rallied again and forced our intrenchments sword in hand”   He reported that their son Billy survived the battle, and he had gone off to Newbury to gather supplies, as there were none in Charlestown.

While the British took the Charlestown heights of Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill that day, it would be their last victory in Boston. A tense stalemate ensued through the summer of 1775, with the Americans encamped along the Charles River in Cambridge and on the heights of Roxbury where Parsons’ men prepared for the next battle. By winter, the flag of truce was extended by Parsons and accepted by the British, but as spring thawed the ground in 1776, the Americans prepared for a renewed conflict. Encamped in Cambridge, General Washington moved to retake Dorchester on March 4th, and heavy weather prevented the British from retaliating. On March 16th, Washington took the narrow road between Roxbury and Boston. To the patriots’ surprise, on March 17, 1776 the British surrendered Boston. Their resolve broken, they never set foot in that city again.

Reverend Johnson had been called home by his congregation during the Christmas truce.  He wanted to return to Boston in the spring but his congregants forbade it. Samuel Holden Parsons would go on to fight the Battle of Long Island and other consequential battles across the northeast for the next seven years, rising to the rank of Major General and becoming one of George Washington’s most trusted men. While several of the battles he fought in were lost, like Bunker Hill, in the end the dedication Parsons and his men showed in those encounters ultimately proved to be the decisive element in the Americans winning the war.  It can be said that Lyme’s heroes played a large role in that ultimate victory. 

Written by Jim Lampos/May 25, 2025.