Cato Marcy

Cato Marcy

Walpole, NH

According to the 1880 publication Walpole as it was and as it is, Thomas Bellows once reminisced about the men who went to fight in Saratoga, NY, from his town of Walpole, NH.  He remembered the names of twelve residents but could not recall the name of the Black man who went with them.  The author of the town history, Aldrich, surmised that the Black man was most likely Cato Marcy who was a blacksmith on a farm near the old meeting house in Walpole at the time of the American Revolution (“now owned by B. E. Webster”).

New Hampshire, U.S., Revolutionary War Records, 1675-1835, verify the fact that Cato Marcy of Walpole, NH, served as a private in the American Revolution at the age of 35.  He was listed by muster master Thomas Sparhawk  as having enlisted in the 1st New Hampshire Regiment, in Keene, in 1777.  This regiment served under Colonel John Stark and was assigned to the Northern Department (New York).

Cato Marcy would have been present at the Battle of Saratoga in September 1777 as a private.  The Saratoga campaign was an attempt by the British to gain military control of the Hudson River valley during the War. It ended in the surrender of the British army.  This victory was a huge boost to American troops’ moral and convinced France to enter the war in alliance with America.

Muster roll records show that Marcy was paid the same rate as other privates in his regiment while at the Battle of Saratoga.  These records also reveal that Cato Marcy died on April 27, 1778. His cause of death has not been discovered.

Additional Note:

Cato Marcy resided in Walpole, NH, around the same time that a man named John Marcy was in Cheshire County. John Marcy, a white man who had moved into the Monadnock Region from Connecticut also fought in the American Revolution alongside his son. He later relocated with his son to Windsor, VT. Could Cato Marcy have been connected to this family and originally moved to Cheshire County, NH, from CT?

SOURCE MATERIALS

Aldrich, George. Walpole as it was and as it is. (1880), p.47— Archives.org

Aldrich and Frank R Holmes, Lewis C. History of the Town of Windsor, Vermont (1891)— https://genealogytrails.com/ver/windsor/1891windsor.html

Knoblock, Glenn A. "Strong and Brave Fellows": New Hampshire's Black Soldiers and Sailors of the American Revolution, 1775-1784. (2003)

New Hampshire, U.S., Revolutionary War Records, 1675-1835 — Ancestry.com

U.S. Federal Census, 1790 - Ancetry.com

RevolutionaryWar.US, “New Hampshire Regiments in the Continental Army”