present, one under command of Captain John Ford, the other under Captain
Benjamin Walker; and one company composed largely of Dracut men was
under Captain Peter Colburn.

[Illustration: FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 1840.]

Captain Ford had served previously at the siege and capture of
Louisburg, in 1745. When the first man in his company fell at Bunker
Hill, an officer prevented a panic by singing Old Hundred. When closely
pressed by the British, and the ammunition had been exhausted, Captain
Colburn, on the point of retreating, threw a stone at the advancing
enemy and saw an officer fall from the blow.

Colonel Simeon Spaulding, of Chelmsford, was an active patriot during
the Revolution and did good service in the Provincial Congress.

During Shays' Rebellion, in 1786, a body of Chelmsford militia under
command of General Lincoln served in the western counties.

The people of Chelmsford, from the earliest settlement, gave every
encouragement to millers, lumbermen, mechanics, and traders, making
grants of land, and temporary exemption from taxation, to such as would
settle in their town. It became distinguished for its sawmills,
gristmills, and mechanics' shops of various kinds. Billerica, Dracut,
and Tewksbury gave like encouragement. About the time of the Revolution
a sawmill was built below Pawtucket Falls and owned by Judge John Tyng.

[Illustration: PAIGE-STREET FREEWILL BAPTIST CHURCH, 1840.]

Toward the close of the last century the lumbering industry on the