The 1778 Battle of Monmouth came at a pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War. Nine months earlier, General Washington’s Continental Army had been forced to flee the British invasion of the revolutionary capital of Philadelphia and withdraw to a winter encampment at Valley Forge, where as many as 2,000 soldiers perished in the cold.
Monmouth marked a turn in the tide, as Washington’s soldiers who had survived the winter attacked retreating British soldiers in 100-degree heat that was as deadly as enemy fire.
Among those Continental Army soldiers were two Dorchester brothers — Isaac and James Davenport. While Isaac died in the Sept. 1778 battle, James served through the end of the war and returned to Dorchester, where he lived on until 1822.
The brothers were among hundreds of Dorchester men who served in the Revolutionary war during the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the siege and liberation of Boston, and countless battles in the 13 colonies.
While the histories of many of those Dorchester residents have been lost over the years, the Davenport brothers left several artifacts that tell their stories — chief among them, a small trove of letters.
While literacy was not uncommon in the colonies at the time — as many as 90 percent of white men were thought to be literate in the 18th century — few letters from that time period have survived. Indeed, the Davenport brothers’ letters would have vanished entirely were it not for a nephew who painstakingly transcribed 17 of them, giving historians a rare glimpse into the lives of Continental Army soldiers, rendered with the 18th century spelling and grammar intact.
“Brother James is in Camp with me he is verry well harty and Desires to be remembered to you the place I am in at presant is Very bad and Our fare very hard but still I hope for better Times,” Isaac wrote in a letter to his brother Samuel from Valley Forge. “the Army lies 21 miles to the Westward of Philadelphia between two Mountains they have built huts in the woods for Winter quarters and the Enemy Lie in Philadilpha are very still at Presant.”
The Davenport brothers’ entry into the Continental army was an outgrowth of their family’s longstanding allegiance to the patriot cause. Their uncle, Josiah Wheeler, was a member of the Sons of Liberty and took part in the 1773 Boston Tea Party. After King George ordered troops to be stationed in Boston, Massachusetts towns including Dorchester began organizing for an armed rebellion, stockpiling arms and gunpowder. Josiah and Abraham Wheeler led a 47-man Dorchester militia that Joseph and his brother Samuel Davenport joined.
On March 10, 1775, the Town of Dorchester called on all able-bodied men to assemble with arms and ammunition to assess their military capabilities. The American Revolution began a month later with the battle of Lexington and Concord. The Davenport brothers’ regiment was called to action, although it’s unclear whether they actually participated in the fighting. Over the next 12 days, they camped in Roxbury and kept watch on the Continental Army’s fortifications near the Boston Neck.
Commemorative events atop Dorchester Heights in March 2026. City of Boston photo
As British troops retreated to the Shawmut Peninsula and began the year-long siege of Boston, Dorchester became a strategically critical site. It was on Dorchester Heights — present-day South Boston — that General Washington brought cannons seized from Fort Ticonderoga to command the Boston Harbor. Dorchester residents were among the soldiers and civilians who toiled to bring the cannons and fortifications to the heights over three nights.
When British General William Howe first glimpsed the installation battery and fortifications, finished the night before, he understood his ships and the harbor itself to be at the mercy of General Washington’s army and ordered an immediate evacuation, handing Washington his first victory in the war.
It was a year later than the Davenport brothers found themselves in the bitter cold of Valley Forge. There, Washington’s army camped in hastily constructed, window-less log cabins heated with open fireplaces. Many soldiers lost extremities and whole limbs to frostbite while others lost their lives to illness.
Having survived the encampment there, Isaac wrote his brother Samuel in his last surviving letter, before Washington’s army attacked the British in the Battle of Monmouth.
“The Enemy are getting ready to move as soon as possible they say for Boston but how they make that out I cannot Tell but I believe that will not all get safe their this summer,” he wrote. “Their is nothing new in Camp only we are setting for a march which expect to accomplish soon.”
Isaac was killed three months later in a surprise attack by British troops who slaughtered his unit while they were encamped in houses and barns in Bergen County, New Jersey. His skeleton was among those disinterred from a mass grave in the 1960s. Historians were able to identify his remains by a neck buckle that bore the inscription of a Dorchester smith whose records indicated he had manufactured it for Isaac.
By 1781, James Davenport was a sergeant with the light infantry commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette. Among the items his descendants donated to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia are a pair of French-made epaulets de Lafayette gave to his officers.
Other items include Continental currency, with which Gen. Washington intermittently paid soldiers, an easy chair, a pair of andirons that bear the shape of the Hessian soldiers with whom Davenport did battle and a pair of baby shoes he had fashioned from a red coat taken from a British soldier.
In the final months of the war, James Davenport’s letters to his brother Samuel speak of the monotony of camp life, the lack of adequate food and pay, and the soldiers’ yearning for the war to end. In 1782, months before the war concluded, James asked Samuel for provisions from his hometown.
“I want some of your Dorchester Pears for there is none here our Company is a going to the lines thursday for a fortnight,” he wrote. “I have nothing more to write only you must Pray for the war to be over for me so I Conclude I am Dear Brother with sentiments of Esteem your affectionate Brother untill death.”
A year after the 1783 armistice, James Davenport married Esther Melish, with whom he had 11 children. In his later years, he was known to sit in his easy chair — the one on display at the museum — tell war stories and spit at the Hessian soldiers’ andirons.
