Just After Lexington ConCord and Bunker Hill Fantastic 1775 Quartering Roll of Captain Samuel Noyes's Company from Portland, Maine, at Cambridge, Massachusetts

Billeting is the quartering of military troops at public expense. This billeting roll gives the names, date enlisted, date marched from home, and number of weeks and days they had been in the service, together with the amount owed them, for forty-seven men in Captain Samuel Noyes's company, a part of the 31st Regiment of Foot commanded by Edmund Phinney, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company came from the area of Falmouth, Maine. Samuel Noyes heads the list, followed by First Lieutenant Josiah Baker, Second Lieutenant Joshua Merrill, and forty-four privates, including Samuel Noyes Jr. and nine additional members of the Merrill family. The total charges for billeting were £66..19..6.

The men on this list enlisted between April 24 and August 9, 1775, with nearly half enlisting on May 15. All but four marched from home on July 13, with three more following on July 15. With 47 men on the rolls, Noyes's company was the smallest of the ten companies that comprised Phinney's regiment of 549 officers and men.

[REVOLUTIONARY WAR.] Manuscript Document, Billeting Roll for Captain Samuel Noyes Company, December 1775, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1 p., 7.75" x 12.75". Expected folds; minor tears at edge of some folds; two small holes; minor soiling; very good.

Historical Background
The Massachusetts Provincial Congress resolved on February 4, 1775, to purchase munitions for 15,000 men. On April 23, it unanimously resolved to raise 13,600 men and invited the other New England colonies to raise proportionate forces to total 30,000 men.

News of the Battles of Lexington and Concord reached Falmouth, Massachusetts (now Portland, Maine), on April 21. Colonel Edmund Phinney's 31st Regiment of Foot was the first regiment raised in the surrounding Cumberland County. Debate followed in the local Committee of Safety of whether they could spare the men or they should remain to prevent the British navy from seizing local livestock or burning the town of Falmouth.

Noyes and his company captured a boat owned by prominent Tory merchant Thomas Coulson on the Presumpscot River on June 22, 1775. That same day, the Provincial Congress ordered Col. Phinney to bring 400 men "with effective firearms" to the camp at Cambridge, Massachusetts, a distance of approximately one hundred miles, leaving the remainder of the regiment in Cumberland and Lincoln Counties. The company commanded by Noyes left Falmouth on July 13, and probably took approximately seven days to reach Cambridge. General George Washington had arrived a few weeks earlier, on July 3, to take command of the army forming there.

On October 18, 1775, a five-ship flotilla of the Royal Navy at Boston under the command of Captain Henry Mowat burned Falmouth (modern Portland) in retaliation for the early support the area gave to the Patriots in the Revolutionary War. The attack prompted the Second Continental Congress to form a Continental Navy and to authorize privateers to attack British shipping. It also left more than 1,000 people homeless out of an estimated population of 2,500.

On November 1, the British man of war HMS Cerberus threatened Falmouth, and the town committee asked General Washington to send "a person of martial spirit" to command the defense of the town and for the return of Col. Phinney's regiment. Washington sent Phinney but not his regiment. Phinney took command until General Joseph Frye arrived a few weeks later to take command.

About December 31, 1775, the men of the 31st Regiment of Foot were discharged, some to re-enlist in the Continental Army and the others to return home.

Samuel Noyes (1725-1799) was born in Massachusetts and served on the Committee of Safety in Falmouth, Maine (then part of Massachusetts). He commanded a company from Falmouth under Colonel Edmund Phinney in the Lexington Alarm. He continued to serve in the Continental Army until discharged in May 1783. In 1750, he married Mary Merrill (1735-1835), and they had eighteen children between 1751 and 1784. He died in Falmouth, Maine.

Edmund Phinney (1723-1808) was born in Massachusetts and moved to Maine with his family. In 1750, he married Elizabeth Meserve in Gorham, Maine, and they had nine children. He commanded a regiment from Maine in the early months of the war in the Siege of Boston. With the organization of the Continental Army in January 1776, he received a commission as colonel of the 18th Continental regiment and took part in the Ticonderoga campaign of 1776. He retired from the service on December 31, 1776. He later served in a variety of local offices and as member of the Provincial Congress and representative to the General Court.

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