American Revolution Patriots > Timothy Bigelow

Timothy Bigelow

Background

BIGELOW, Timothy, soldier, b. in Worcester, Mass., 12 Aug., 1739; d. there, 31 March, 1790. At the beginning of the revolutionary war he was a blacksmith at Worcester and a zealous patriot. Hearing of the battle of Lexington, he led a company of minute-men to Cambridge, and on 23 May, 1775, became a major in Ward's regiment. He accompanied Arnold in his expedition to Quebec in 1775, and was captured there, remaining a prisoner until 1776.

He was made colonel, 8 Feb., 1777, and, when in command of the 15th Massachusetts regiment, assisted at the capture of Burgoyne. He was also at Valley Forge, West Point, Monmouth, and Yorktown. After the war Col. Bigelow had charge of the arsenal at Springfield. He was one of the original grantees of Montpelier and a benefactor of the Leicester, Mass., academy.—His son, Timothy, lawyer, b. in Worcester, Mass., 30 April, 1767; d. 18 May, 1821, was graduated at Harvard in 1786, studied law, and practised at Groton, Mass., from 1789 until 1807, when he removed to Medford and opened a law office in Boston.

He was an active federalist, was elected to the legislature in 1790, and served there twenty years, eleven years of the time as speaker of the house. He was also a member of the Hartford convention of 1814. He was an active member of many literary and benevolent societies, a prominent freemason, and stood high in his profession. It is said that in the course of thirty-two years he argued 15,000 cases. He published an oration, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa society (1797).

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Sources

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1905)