Ebenezer Tyler

Of Attleborough. In the Revolution he was a private in Capt. Jabez Ellis’s Attleborough company, which marched on the alarm of 19 April 1775 (9 days); later a sergeant (Dec 1776) and first lieutenant (commissioned 22 Dec 1777) (MSSRW 16:230). Mollie Pfeiffer’s “2nd Lt.” among the first to march toward Lexington is wrong, and no record puts him at Lexington.

Daggett’s history of Attleborough (1834, pp. 81-82) prints a survivor’s account of Capt. Ellis’s company of sixty minute men on 19 April 1775: “We sat out at night,” they stopped at Maxcy’s tavern, and at Dedham found “two tables by the road side generously provided with food for the soldiers.” They reached Roxbury about daylight and “were then marched round and round Roxbury Meeting House, to make as much show of numbers as possible in view of the British,” staying seven or eight days.

Most of his later service was in Rhode Island. As sergeant in Capt. Jacob Ide’s company he marched there on the alarm of 8 Dec 1776 (17 days). As lieutenant he served almost three months at Rhode Island in a regiment raised from 1 Jan 1778 to serve under Gen. Spencer, and in late July and early August 1780 he twice marched to Tiverton, R.I., on alarms (MSSRW 16:230-231). A Lieutenant Ebenezer Tyler, probably he (the record gives no town), claimed wages and rations as “a supernumerary officer in Col. Jacobs’s regt. at Rhode Island” from 1 May to 12 Oct 1778, and was allowed one ration a day until 1 August and two a day after that (account dated 18 Jan 1779, MSSRW 16:231).

Brigham: militia captain 1786, major 1790, colonel 1799, “major-general six years,” and “three times deputy to the General Court of Massachusetts.” The Attleborough record of his death calls him “Col.” Mollie says his gravestone reads “Brig.-Gen.”; the stone has not been seen. Brigham’s story that his sword was “captured from a British surgeon” and held by Gen. Mitchell of Bangor, his great-grandson, is tradition.

Brigham: “He died suddenly, being found in the barn, on the mow, with his pitchfork in his hand.” Holden (p. 191): “He went into his barn one morning, to feed his cattle, and was found dead upon the hay mow, with a pitch fork in his hand.”

His will, dated 7 Aug 1804 and probated 2 July 1811, made his wife and son Samuel executors. Samuel was “to have all lands, buildings, etc., and to pay debts and legacies,” and the other children “were left small sums of money, having received some portions of their shares previously” (Brigham 1:111; the will itself not seen).

In the autumn of 1775 his sons Leander (26 Sept), Rowland and Habijah (both 1 Oct) died, and in the same weeks his wife’s mother Mary (White) Read and her sons David and Ezra. Seven deaths in the two households in under three weeks; no cause is recorded. The twins born in 1780, Rowland and Abijah, carry the names of the two sons who died on 1 Oct 1775 (inference).

Children per Brigham; those in the research are Leander, Rowland and Habijah (d. 1775), the twins Rowland and Dr. Abijah Weld (b. 1780), and Ebenezer (m. 1799).

Open questions

• His birth: 25 March or 25 May 1740? Check the printed Attleborough births.
• The marriage date, 1 or 4 May 1762: check the Attleborough record.
• His gravestone (Attleborough “G.R.13”) for the “Brig.-Gen.” wording.
• Bristol County probate, 1811: read the will itself.