Ezra Ross - "Company Raised From 3d [Essex County] Regt."
Sixteen year old Ezra Ross of Ipswich, Massachusetts, likely feared he might die on several occasions before July 2, 1778. On December 19, 1775, he had enlisted in Colonel Loammi Baldwin's 26th Continental Regiment. In the year that followed, his regiment would take part in the Siege of Boston, Washington's unsuccessful attempt to defend New York City from a British invasion, and the Battle of Trenton before their enlistments expired on December 31, 1776. In August of 1777, Ross would either volunteer or be drafted to serve again, one of the two-thousand Massachusetts militiamen called for to reinforce the Northern Army under the command of Major-General Horatio Gates. [1]
Eight months later, and just a few weeks before his seventeenth birthday, he faced certain death. [2] Ross, along with Sergeant James Buchannon and Private William Brooks of the British 9th Regiment of Foot, and Bathsheba Spooner of Brookfield, Massachusetts, had been convicted of murder, when "After becoming pregnant by her lover, Continental Army soldier Ezra Ross, she [Bathshedba] enlisted the assistance of Ross and two others to murder her husband." All four were hanged in Worcester, Massachusetts, on July 2, 1778. [3]
The April 21, 1778, murder indictment for Brooks, Buchcannon and Ross lists them as "William Brooks resident at Charlestown in the County of Middlesex Labourer James Buchannon of the same Charlestown Labourer and Ezra Ross of Ipswich in the County of Essex Labourer". [4] Brooks and Buchannon's connection to the Saratoga Campaign and the Convention Army is well documented. Their "last words and dying speech", published in a broadside in Worcester at the time of their execution, begins with the statement "I JAMES BUCHANAN was a Serjeant in the Army under General Burgoyne... I WILLIAM BROOKS was a private in said army...". [5] Ross's military service, and how he came to be in Brookfield, is not mentioned, perhaps so as to not discredit either the Continental Army or the Massachusetts militia. His service illustrates the complexity of military service in Revolutionary War Massachusetts.
Most accounts of Ross's short life note that he was in the Continental Army. Some, as quoted above, fail to recognize that he actively served in the militia as well. As he was only thirteen years old when the war began on April 19, 1775, he was too young to be in the militia. Eight months later, when men were being recruited to serve for one year, he enlisted to serve in General George Washington's army until December 31, 1776. His service completed, Ross was noted as being "...on march homeward at close of the campaign in 1776, sworn to at Rowley, April 9, 1777; 240 miles travel allowed said Ross;...". [6] It was on his return home that Ross first met Bathsheba Spooner in Brookfield. What followed, an affair with a married woman twice his age, and a British invasion of the United States in 1777, would prove fatal.
It's incorrect to say that Ross "reenlisted" in 1777. Whether it was due to what he experienced during his one year of service, his being ill at the end of 1776, or a need for him to work at home on his parents farm (he was the youngest of seventeen children), Ross left the Continental Army when his enlistment was completed. Ross, along with men from several Essex County militia regiments, were formed into a regiment under the command of Colonel Samuel Johnson. The regiment would participate in the raid on Mount Independence, Vermont, across from Fort Ticonderoga in September, the second battle at Saratoga on October 7, and the siege which preceded Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne surrender at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777, before marching south to Albany and then into the Hudson Highlands to complete the remainder of their service. [7]
The petition Ross's parents filed with the Massachusetts Council in an attempt to save him from being hung may be the source of some confusion. It suggests Ross made his own way back to Brookfield, as it reads: "After the evacuation of Ticonderoga, in his march to reinforce the Northern Army, gratitude for past favors led him to call on his old benefactress, who then added to the number of her kindnesses, and engaged a visit on his return..." [8] It's not clear when Ross passed through Brookfield on his way to join the Northern Army in 1777, but he may have had an opportunity to visit with Bathsheba Spooner. Johnson's regiment likely marched by companies to join the Northern Army, rather than as a whole. Two accounts from Johnson's Regiment indicate they passed that way. Ralph Cross of the 2nd Essex County Regiment, who served as Johnson's lieutenant-colonel during the Saratoga campaign, noted in his diary that he had breakfast just to the east of Brookfield in Spencer on August 30th, and stayed in Belchertown August 31st. Major Eleazer Craft of the 6th Essex County Regiment, and in Johnson's Regiment, wrote that he left Shrewsbury on September 10th and reached Ware the following day, a journey of more than thirty miles which likely took him through Brookfield as well. [9]
Some accounts of Ross's life indicate that his service ended after Burgoyne surrendered on October 17th. It didn't, as Johnson's regiment was engaged to serve until November 30th. Massachusetts records indicate that Ross was ".... discharged Dec. 14, 1777; service, 4 mos., in Northern department mileage (275 miles) allowed from Peekskill home..." [10] It was then, on his way back home after serving with the militia, that Ross stopped in Brookfield for his final and fatal visit with Bathsheba Spooner.
One witness testified at Ross's trial that on March 2nd in Worcester that he was the one who first found Ross after the crime was discovered, and that when he "... took a light & went up Stairs, found Ross in upper Garret he quivered & was much scared ....". Ross probably knew at that point that once again his life was in danger. Ross, Captain Joshua Whitney recalled, "... told him me he was guilty of this crime was very full, & wanted a minister, Did not strike the first blow, but was Aiding & assisting, very penitent. Ross sd. he had on Mr. Spooners Jacket & Breeches & had given his own to Brooks who had bled his own in taking up the body...". [11]
Four months later, with death looming, his dying statement would note: "We, Buchanan, Brooks and Ross, are conscious to ourselves that we are indeed guilty of the above murder, and that hereby we have forfeited our lives... now we commend our departing souls into the hands of a merciful GOD and Savior, earnestly desiring that all who may be spectators or hearers of our tragical end, while we are the subjects of prayer, would lift up their hearts in fervent supplications for us, that GOD would receive us to his everlasting mercy." [12]
For more on the Convention Army's 1777 march from Saratoga to Boston, see:
[1] MSSRW 13:583. Ross is noted as being on a "...List of men belonging to Col. Baldwin's regt. who were not in the Continental service but who were enlisted for the year 1776 by Capt. Thomas Mighill and his subalterns ... enlisted Dec. 19, 1775...". In 1777, Ross is credited as serving with "... Capt. Robert Dodge's co., Col. Samuel Johnson's regt., Gen. Warner's brigade; marched from home Aug. 15, 1777... company raised from 3d [Essex Co.] regt." The image of a hanging, above, is taken from a broadside published for the 1779 execution of Robert Young in Worcester. Young too deserted from the Convention Army, but on the way to Cambridge in 1777.
[2] Ross was born July 20, 1761. Vital Records of Ipswich, Massachusetts (Salem, MA: The Essex Institute, 1910), 319.
[3] For a brief online summary of Joshua Spooner's murder, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathsheba_Spooner
[4] "Indictment of William Brooks, James Buchannon and Ezra Ross, Worcester, MA, April 21, 1778", Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4, Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed online at https://www.masshist.org/publications/rtpp/index.php/view/RTP4dg1
[5] "The Lives, Last Words, and Dying Speech of EZRA ROSS. JAMES BUCHANAN, and WILLIAM BROOKS, who were executed at WOR|CESTER, on Thursday the 2d Day of July, 1778. for the Murder of Mr. JOSHUA SPOONER, of BROOKFIELD. BATHSHEBA SPOONER, who was convicted of being acessary to the Murder was also executed at the same Time", Worcester, MA, 1778, accessed online at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N33098.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
[6] MSSRW 13:583.
[7] The journals of two of Johnson's officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Cross (Joseph Williamson, ed., “The Journal of Ralph Cross, of Newburyport, Who Commanded the Essex Regiment, at the Surrender of Burgoyne, in 1777,” The Historical Magazine, Second Series 7, no. 1, (1870), 8-11.), and Major Eleazer Craft (James M. Crafts and William F. Crafts, The Crafts Family (Northampton, MA: Gazette Printing Company, 1893), 689-693.) provide detailed accounts of Johnson's regiment.
[8] "Petition of Jabez and Johana Ross", Deborah Navas, Murdered By His Wife (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) 160.
[9] Cross, 9. Craft, 689.
[10] MSSRW, 13:583.
[11] "Trial Notes", Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4, Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed online at https://www.masshist.org/publications/rtpp/index.php/view/RTP4dg1
[12] "The Lives, Last Words, and Dying Speech of EZRA ROSS. JAMES BUCHANAN, and WILLIAM BROOKS...", accessed online at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N33098.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext. "The Dying declaration of James Buchanan, Ezra Ross, and William Brooks, who were executed at Worcester, July 2, 1778, for the murder of Mr. Joshua Spooner." In the digital collection Evans Early American Imprint Collection. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/N33096.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed July 2, 2025.
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