Thomas Abbey Born April 11, 1731. Died June 3, 1811.
A soldier in the French and Indian Wars. Took part in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, 1758, and the conquest of Canada, 1761. Corporal First Regiment, Connecticut Troops, May 25 to November 22, 1758. Lieutenant in Captain Seth King's Company, April 1 to December 1, 1761.
According to tradition, at the Lexington alarm in April, 1775, drummed the congregation out of the meeting house, which stood on this spot. Marched to the relief of Boston with the Enfield Company, led by Major Nathaniel Terry and Captain John Simons, Jr. Lieutenant in Captain Hezekiah Parson's Company, 1775.
May 9, 1776, appointed by the General Assembly of Connecticut first lieutenant in Captain Abel Pease's Company. Served under General Gates at Ticonderoga and vicinity, June to November, 1776. Adjutant Chester's Connecticut State Regiment. June to December, 1776. Commissioned captain January 1, 1777. Appointed by the Council of Safety, February 1, 1777, to Colonel Samuel Wyllys's Regiment in New York. Held this command until November 15, 1778.
The meeting house which stood here is now the town hall. It was built in 1775 by Isaac Kibbe and succeeded the church which stood on the green one-third mile to the south. There, July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards
preached the famous sermon, "Sinners in the hands of an angry God."
poem inscribed on the pedestal, beginning on the south side
The Captain's Drum
A Tradition of Enfield, April 20, 1 775
In Pilgrim land one Sabbath day
The winter lay like sheep about
The ragged pastures mullein gray;
The April sun shone in and out,
The showers swept by in fitful flocks,
And eaves ticked fast like mantel clocks.
II
And now and then a wealthy cloud
Would wear a ribbon broad and bright,
And now and then a winged crowd
Of shining azure flash in sight;
So rainbows bend and blue-birds fly
And violets show their bits of sky.
III
To Enfield church throng all the town
In quilted hood and bombazine,
In beaver hat with flaring crown
And quaint Vandyke and Victorine,
And buttoned boys in roundabout
From calyx collars blossom out.
IV
Bandanas wave their feeble fire
And footstoves tinkle up the aisle,
A gray-haired Elder leads the choir
And girls in linsey-woolsey smile.
So back to life the beings glide
Whose very graves have ebbed and died.
V
One hundred years have waned, and yet
We call the roll, and not in vain.
For one whose flint-lock musket set
The echoes wild round Fort Duquesne,
And swelled the battle's
powder smoke
Ere Revolution's thunders woke.
( east side of pedestal )
VI
Lo, Thomas Abbey answers "Here!"
Within the dull long-metre place;
That day upon the parson's ear
And trampling down his words of grace
A horseman's gallop rudely beat
Along the splashed and empty street.
VII
The rider drew his dripping rein
And then a letter wasp-nest gray
That ran: "The Concord Minute-Men
And Red-Coats had a fight to-day.
To Captain Abbey this with speed."
Ten little words to tell the deed.
VIII
The Captain read, struck out for home
The old quickstep of battle born.
Slung on once more a battered drum
That bore a painted unicorn,
Then right-about as whirls a torch
He stood before the sacred porch; —
IX
And then a murmuring of bees
Broke in upon the house of prayer,
And then a wind-song swept the trees,
And then a snarl from wolfish lair,
And then a charge of grenadiers,
And then a flight of drum-beat cheers.
X
So drum and doctrine rudely blent.
The casements rattled strange accord,
No mortal knew what either meant,
'Twas double-drag and Holy Word.
Thus saith the drum and thus the Lord.
The Captain raised so wild a rout
He drummed the congregation out!
( north side of
pedestal )
XI
The people gathered round amazed,
The soldier bared his head and spoke,
And every sentence burned and blazed
As trenchant as a sabre-stroke:
" 'Tis time to pick the flint to-day,
To sling the knapsack and away —
XII
''The Green of Lexington is red
With British Red-Coats, brothers' blood!
In rightful cause the earliest dead
Are always best beloved of God.
Mark time! Now let the march begin!
All bound for Boston, fall right in!"
XIII
Then rub-a-dub the drum jarred on,
The throbbing roll of battle beat!
"Fall in, my men!" And one by one,
They rhymed the tune with heart and feet
And so they made a Sabbath march
To glory 'neath the elm-tree arch.
XIV
The Continental line unwound
Along the church-yard's breathless sod,
And holier grew the hallowed ground
Where Virtue slept and Valor trod.
Two hundred strong that April day
They rallied out and marched away.
XV
Brigaded there at Bunker Hill
Their names are writ on Glory's page,
The brave old Captain's Sunday drill
Has drummed its way across the age.
Benjamin Franklin Taylor.
Enfield, April, 1875. 1819 — 1887
( inscribed around the base of the pedestal, west side )
Memorial of Captain Thomas
Abbey
His Ancestors and Descendants of
The Abbey Family
Pathfinders Soldiers and
Pioneer Settlers of Connecticut
Its Western Reserve in Ohio
And the Great West
( south side )
Erected by His Great Granddaughter
Frances Maria Abbey
Wife of
Joel Francis Freeman
1836 — 1910
( east side )
Her Sons
Alden Freeman
Member of the Society of the
Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut
Francis Austin Freeman
1869 — 1889
( north side )
Daughters
Edith Freeman Dallett
1871 — 1914
And the Granddaughter
Frances Dallett Kissel
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