Ancestors & Family
Caleb Pillsbury
Four generations after his great-grandparents William and Dorothy Pillsbury first immigrated to Massachusetts, Caleb joined the fight for the American Revolution.
After a stint as a captain of a militia under royal authority, he would soon switch allegiances to captain his own company of 15 Minutemen sworn to resist the crown’s imposition of colonial rule. Among them were three of his sons: Moses, Micajah and Caleb Jr. At some point all five of his sons, including Joshua and Isaac, served in the Continental army.
Captain Caleb and his company answered the midnight call of Paul Revere and William Dawes to challenge the British troops who had marched from Boston to the village of Concord to destroy arms stashed there by the patriot resistance. His sons are on the muster roll of those who joined the confrontation with the Red Coats in response to the alarm that spread through the countryside.
They probably weren’t in time for the first skirmish, as Minutemen met a line of British regulars on the Lexington Green, the halfway point between Boston and Concord.
They more likely joined the confrontation when the British troops pushed on to Concord, either at the battle at Concord’s North Bridge or on along the path of the British retreat back to Boston.
Caleb may be most remembered for his early organizing of the Minutemen. However, he became known as one of the more prominent citizens of Amesbury, his home town north of Boston. It was said that at one time or another, Caleb held every public office “within the gift of the people.”
Caleb was repeatedly chosen as a town selectman and elected to represent Amesbury in the Massachusetts state legislature. He was also recruited to serve in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Provincial Congresses were extra-legal legislative bodies established in ten of the thirteen Colonies early in the American Revolution. They created a revolutionary governmental structure to finance the movement, organize an army for provincial defense, and help write their state constitution. Massachusetts was the first state to establish a Provincial Congress with John Hancock as its first president.
After the war, three of Caleb’s sons would relocate to New Hampshire, the future home of all my Pillsbury relatives that moved to Minnesota. His son Micajah (my fourth great-grandfather), ended up as a farmer, blacksmith, and a selectman in the town of Sutton, northeast of Concord.