On this day 250 years ago in Newport, the Rhode Island Assembly issued charters for two militia companies in Kent County. The First Independent Company Kent County based in East Greenwich had been organized a month before as the “Kentish Guards” and retained that name through distinguished service in the Revolutionary War and is still in existence with that name today. The first commander of the Kentish Guards, James Mitchell Varnum, went on to become a Brigadier General in the Continental Army, but its most famous member Nathaniel Greene enlisted as a private and went on to fame as the Major General who commanded the campaign that drove the British from the Carolinas and Georgia. The Second Independent Company for the County of Kent County was based in Pawtuxet and was called the “Pawtuxet Rangers.” It was commanded by Captain Samuel Aborn, with Benjamin Arnold as its First Lieutenant, both of whom would go on to become militia Colonels in the War.
Sources: https://battleofrhodeisland.org/pawtuxet-rangers/; https://www.pawtuxetrangers.com/1774-charter/; http://www.kentishguards.com/founding-and-revolutionary-war.html
Also on this day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress adjourned until November 23. But its final day of the session was busy. The Provincial Congress approved a letter to Royal Governor Gage expressing alarm about the Governor’s “unusual and warlike preparations” in fortifying Boston Neck and asserting that “the unjust cause, on which you are engaged, . . . will never produce submission from the people of this province”. The Congress also: named Henry Gardner Sr. as Receiver General and ordered all counties to pay their taxes to Gardner rather than to the Royal Treasurer; ordered the county militias to reorganize into companies, choose officers and procure arms for militiamen who were unarmed because “the security of the lives, liberties, and properties of the inhabitants of this province depends, under Providence, on their knowledge and skill in the art military, and on their being properly and effectually armed and equipped”; and elected Captain William Heath and John Pigeon as additional members of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety that would govern the Colony until the Provincial Congress reconvened. Gardner served as the Treasurer of Massachusetts throughout the Revolutionary War, Pigeon became Commissary General of the Massachusetts Provincial Army that laid siege to Boston, and Heath became a Major General in the Continental Army.
On This Day In The Revolution 