Dr. Dabbs – The Indestructible Man: Sam Whittemore

Updated: July 1, 2023 BY Will Dabbs

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

Some folks are born heroes. Teasing these special souls out from the background clutter is a timeless challenge.

Predicting how someone will perform in combat is innately unfathomable. That weird unquantifiable spark is what separates the true heroes from the “And also participated…” Modern armies invest tremendous time and treasure trying to prepare individual soldiers for this most extraordinary of human crucibles. Whatever that ethereal stuff is, military leaders farm it while smart folks study it. In combat that curious little spark is more valuable than gold.

Modern full-motion simulators are superb training tools.

Some of that spark is indeed a function of training. Intense, realistic combat training is the foundation for success on the modern battlefield. The simulators I flew back when I wore the uniform were the ultimate first-person video games. With superlative visuals, legit perfect cockpits, and a full-motion chassis that responded the same way the real aircraft did, this was where we went to do stuff we couldn’t or shouldn’t do in the actual airplane. However, when the chips are down and the bullets are flying, something else comes into play.

This sawed-off little guy was a cold-blooded beast in combat.

What Makes the Difference

That something else is, for lack of a better term, heart. Sometimes the biggest, scariest stud in the unit loses his enthusiasm for it all the first time they experience incoming, while the little guy ends up being born to the job. Audie Murphy, the most highly decorated American soldier in history, stood five foot five and was rejected by both the Marines and the Airborne before he found his stride. Some of that mysterious secret sauce indeed stems from circumstances.

It’s tough not to root for Ukraine in its existential fight for survival against the Russian invaders. We all like to think we would do the same were the roles reversed.

If YouTube is to be believed, Ukraine is dirty with such guys nowadays. By and large, the Russians are fighting and dying in a faraway land for a cause they neither believe in nor understand. By contrast, the Ukrainians are fighting for their homes and their families. The broad gulf between these two ideologies could not be much more stark. This simple observation is a timeless part of the human condition. It transcends time and space and is driven by more primal, tribal stuff. In the case of the patriot Samuel Whittemore, we see personified the axiom that you should never get into a gunfight with an old man in a world where men die young. He’ll likely just flat-out kill you.

The Setting

Much of the United States was once a battlefield.

We are nearly two and one-half centuries out from our own American Revolution. The institutional memory of these ghastly events has been all but extinguished by the passage of time. While the sorts of sordid stuff we see unfold on the news out of Ukraine seems foreign and shocking, there was indeed a time when such as this was commonplace right here at home.

The guys who made up the First Continental Congress were cut from rugged stock.

It all really came down to natural selection. The British colonies in North America were liberally populated with free-thinking pioneers who were none too keen on paying incessant tribute to a faceless King on the other side of the world. When they grew weary of the taxes and the oppression the pressure began to build. That, and other factors, ultimately led to a full-bore war.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. These unwashed cavemen, misguided though they were, without a doubt believed in their cause.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we derogatorily called them insurgents. They bombed and murdered indiscriminately because their dark god told them to. In late 18^th-century America, however, rebels fought for what I like to think was something truly righteous. They suffered and died so that we could be free even today. As Information Age Americans, it behooves us to oft revisit their tales of daring and sacrifice.

The Man

Sam Whittemore was a child of his era. Folks of his age were harder than we are today.

Samuel Whittemore was born on 27 July 1696 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was the second son of Samuel Whittemore and Hannah Rix, both of Charlestown. Young Sam’s upbringing was typical for his era—hard, unforgiving, and passionate.

The French and the English were forever scrapping. Sam Whittemore fought alongside the Brits.

Like almost every American of his era, Sam Whittemore was a loyalist. When he came of age he enlisted in the service of the Crown. He landed in Colonel Jeremiah Moulton’s Third Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and fought in King George’s War from 1744 to 1748. In 1745 he participated in the capture of the Fortress of Louisbourg, a fortified French bastion.

We idealize ages past, but, in the words of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, life in the days of the American Revolution was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.“

Not What You’d Think

New Math tells us that by this time Sam was getting fairly old. It’s hard for us to imagine today, but the average life expectancy for an American during this period was 36. By the end of King George’s War, Old Sam was already 52.

The wars against the Native Americans saw atrocities committed wholesale on both sides.

After that war ended, Sam moved to Menotomy, Massachusetts, to begin life anew along with his wife, kids, and grandchildren. In 1754 he donned his uniform to serve in the French and Indian War, once again in the employ of England. In this capacity, he helped seize the Fortress of Louisbourg yet again. In 1763 at age 67, he also pursued Chief Pontiac. Chief Pontiac and his braves were bad men. In one instance they burned a schoolhouse after murdering and scalping the school teacher along with ten young students. During his fight against the Indians, Whittemore captured a matching pair of dueling pistols that he kept with him for the rest of his days.

The American Minutemen helped birth a free nation.

A great deal happened in North America in the next dozen years or so. The British became more oppressive, while the colonists grew more agitated. By 1775 there was open warfare between British Redcoats and American irregulars. This time the aging Sam Whittemore threw his hat in with the rebels.

The Fight

Though relatively small in scale compared to modern combat involving warring nation-states, the American Revolution was ultimately one of the most seminal wars in human history.

On 19 April 1775, British forces were on the march back to Boston after the legendary battles of Lexington and Concord. Their mission had been to capture the Colonial arsenal at Concord and take Sam Adams and John Hancock into custody. These were the opening engagements of the larger American Revolution. It was here that the shot heard ’round the world was fired.

Despite being grossly outnumbered, American Minutemen thoroughly bloodied the seasoned troops of King George III.

Fought in Middlesex County in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, this early scrap resulted in an American victory. The Redcoats destroyed cannon and rebel supplies in Concord, but they were eventually forced back to their bivouac in Boston after a vicious exchange. The butcher’s bill eventually claimed 49 colonials against 73 Brits.

Despite minimal military training and limited supplies, the colonials gave better than they got.

After their recent pummeling at the hands of the colonists, the British were in a foul mood. It did not help that their column was relentlessly fired upon by harassing colonials as they made their retreat. Such sniper fire pursued them throughout their trek.

The early American patriots were objectively tough men.

Quite The Man

Sam Whittemore was, like most folks of his era, a man of the earth. He was out working his fields at age 79 when the British relief brigade under the command of LTG Earl Percy approached on the march. Their mission was to help secure the retreating forces and suppress the harassing partisans. When Whittemore saw the enemy column he did not hesitate.

There was no gun control as we might imagine it in the American colonies during the time of the Revolutionary War. If you could afford a cannon or mortar you could own a cannon or mortar.

SEE MORE: California Mayor Proposes End to Private Sales of Guns and Ammo

Gun laws are a recent contrivance. Back during this time almost everybody owned guns and knew how to use them. President Biden once asserted that it was illegal for private citizens to own cannons back then, but that’s demonstrably false. Americans of this era could own whatever weapons they could afford. However, consider the source. President Biden has also claimed to have survived a catastrophic fire, been arrested during a meeting with Nelson Mandela, lost a son in Iraq, and hit a 368-foot home run during a baseball game. These are just a few of Biden’s claims that turned out to be not technically real.

Sam Whittemore, even nearing 80, was a seriously hard man. When the Redcoats came marching up he threw down.

This Is Where Indestructible Comes In

In Sam Whittemore’s case, he quickly retrieved his musket and set it up behind a nearby stone wall. As the British 47^th Foot approached, Whittemore killed one of the passing grenadiers with his long gun. The British then deployed to his position determined to neutralize the threat and exact a little payback.

The British Redcoats comprised what was arguably the most respected professional military force in the world in their day.

Once the Grenadiers approached, Whittemore retrieved the matching dueling pistols he had previously captured while fighting the men of Chief Pontiac and got ready for the close fight. He shot and killed the first Redcoat to breach the wall and mortally wounded another. Now with all three of his firearms empty, Whittemore retrieved his sword, itself a weapon he had captured from a French officer years before.

Sam Whittemore ultimately killed three British Regulars before they beat him down.

Those old single-shot muzzleloading firearms took forever to load. Additionally, their flintlock firing mechanisms were notoriously unreliable, particularly in foul weather. Liberated French sword in hand, the octogenarian patriot got ready to get it on.

Once the British got in close they ravaged the old man.

Having lost two dead and one badly wounded to the elderly rebel, the Brits took no chances. They shot Whittemore in the face with a Brown Bess musket, beat him badly with musket butts, and then ran him through fully thirteen times with their bayonets for good measure. With the threat neutralized, the Redcoats left the old man for dead and headed back to Boston.

The Land Pattern Musket or Brown Bess projected British power around the globe.

Yikes

The big three-quarter-inch British musket ball had torn a generous chunk out of the man’s face. Several colonials who had watched the exchange from a distance moved to aid old Sam Whittemore, now vigorously bleeding and weak, as soon as the Redcoats were clear. They found the man trying desperately to reload his musket. They put the badly injured farmer atop a handy door and carried him to Dr. Nathaniel Cotton Tufts at Cooper Tavern in nearby Medford.

Dr. Tufts looks like a fairly dour guy to me. I doubt he was much fun at parties.

Dr. Tufts graduated from Harvard in 1749 with a degree in medicine and settled in Weymouth. However, don’t be unduly impressed with that. Medicine in the 18^th century was fairly crude by modern standards. Tufts was a cousin of Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams and mother to John Quincy Adams. Along with Barbara Bush, Abigail Adams is the only other woman in history to have been married to one US President and given birth to another.

Apparently, Sam Whittemore wasn’t much to look at by the time he got to the local sawbones.

Dr. Tufts looked the old man over and made him as comfortable as he was able, but it was obvious that his wounds were not survivable. Considering that he had already lived literally twice as long as the average American of the day, it was clearly time for the esteemed Mr. Whittemore to get his affairs in order. Dr. Tufts, therefore, sent Whittemore home to die in peace surrounded by relatives. However, Sam Whittemore was not quite done yet.

Though the ages were off by a year or two, this granite marker commemorates the exploits of Sam Whittemore. In 2005, Whittemore was voted the Massachusetts State Hero.

Indestructible Is the Word of the Day

Against all odds, Sam Whittemore fully recovered from his wounds. He lived another eighteen years to die peacefully at age 96. Freedom is such a precious thing. It is at once immensely powerful and simultaneously diaphanous and fragile. Liberty must be jealously guarded lest it dwindle away and die or be subsumed by some evil despot.

The freedom we take for granted has not always been unicorns and butterflies. A lot of good folks suffered and died so we could enjoy this precious stuff.

In the extraordinary tale of Sam Whittemore, we see the story of an indestructible old man who fought like a berserker for what he believed and then refused to die when death seemed inevitable. We modern-day Americans stand on the shoulders of giants. We owe such a profound debt of gratitude to such men as these.

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