This marker is wrong, Samuel Whittemore was not 80, but a spry 78 years old when this happened.
- Samuel Whittemore was born in Massachusetts in July of 1696. He was a farmer by trade.
- In his upper 40s, Whittemore fought as a private under Col. Jeremiah Moulton in the third of the French and Indians wars known as King George's War, participating in the siege and taking of the French fort on Cape Breton, Fort Louisberg, in 1745.
- Age 58-62 he served as Captain of the Dragoons in The French and Indian War (1754-1763), again taking Fort Louisberg, and going on a campaign against Chief Pontiac and his Ottawa tribe.
- At age 78, he was out in his fields when he spotted a British Grenadier relief brigade on the way to assist the retreat from Lexington and Concord, where colonial forces had amassed thousands to fight back the 700 British troops. He ambushed them from behind a stone wall, killing one soldier with his musket, then drawing his dueling pistols and dispatching two more. Whittemore then drew his sword and attacked. He went down after taking a shot to the face and multiple bayonet wounds. The British left him for dead, lying in a pool of blood, but he was soon found by colonial forces alive, trying to reload this musket. They took him to one Doctor Cotton Tufts, who sewed him up, but didn't hold out much hope for Whittemore's survival.
- Whittemore did survive his war wounds, he lived another 18 years.