by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, July 17, 2015.
If you’re feeling revolutionary this weekend, consider the life and untimely death of Exeter’s Brigadier General Enoch Poor. There’s a historic road marker highlighting Poor on Newfields Road just past Swasey Parkway erected in 1979 by the New Hampshire Historical Commission. Read it at your own peril – the location is on a narrow bend with ‘no parking’ signs threatening the history-buff photographer who may wish to stop. If you don’t want to risk it, the text reads: “Brigadier General Enoch Poor. Born in Andover, Mass. June 21, 1736, Enoch Poor settled in Exeter, becoming a successful merchant and ship-builder. In 1775 he was appointed colonel in the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. Poor was at Stillwater, Saratoga and Monmouth and served under Washington, Sullivan and Lafayette. Congress commissioned him Brigadier General in 1777. Mortally wounded in a duel fought September 8, 1781, he was buried in the First Reformed churchyard in Hackensack, New Jersey.”
Poor could only call Exeter home for roughly 20 years, although for the final five of those years he was mostly off fighting the British, so perhaps 15 is a closer number. During that brief time, he took his carpentry skills – learned during his boyhood apprenticeship – and jumped into the lucrative shipbuilding industry in New Hampshire. He lived in town on the corner of Water and Center Street. His business was profitable and he regularly traded with local merchants. The Exeter Historical Society has an account book belonging to John Giddings which lists Enoch Poor and his partner, Thomas Parsons purchasing iron bars, pine plank, rum and a mast, which was valued at 54 Pounds. His account was later settled by Joseph Bean, who paid with “pine board 1036 feet and joyce” – a typical arrangement during the pre-revolutionary days when barter was the means of exchange.
Poor came to Exeter in 1760 as a newly married young man. At the age of 19, he’d joined the army during the French and Indian War. He served in Nova Scotia before returning to his home town just long enough to spirit his love, Martha Osgood, away in an elopement which may have been his reason for leaving Andover. Martha probably figured he’d gotten his youthful exuberance out of his system during his five years in Canada. Indeed, he seemed to settle down a bit, making good on his commitment to provide for the family. The pair produced two daughters, Martha and Harriet, who would later marry the Cilley brothers, Bradbury and Jacob of Nottingham – sons of Poor’s old army buddy Lt. Col. Joseph Cilley.
As tensions between the American colonists and the British increased in the 1770s, Poor began to resent the stranglehold on commerce and the taxes imposed by the British parliament. He served in the Provincial Congress, which met in Exeter and was chosen at the outset of hostilities to lead New Hampshire soldiers into battle. It was probably during the miserable winter at Valley Forge that he first met Lafayette. Although at first glance it might seem that the well-born French aristocrat and the humbly-born New England shipbuilder had little in common, there was more there than meets the eye. Lafayette also had a runaway marriage opposed by his bride’s parents and, like Poor, he’d gone off to war as a teenager, only turning 20 after his arrival in America and already in Washington’s army. Together they would go on to fight in the searing heat of the battle of Monmouth in New Jersey, during which both sides lost almost as many men to heatstroke as to the enemy.
Poor died in New Jersey at the relatively young age of 44 in 1780. The circumstances of his death were not debated at the time, but in the 1830s a rumor began circulating that he died as the result of a duel with either a there has been some discussion. The army surgeon, James Thacher lists the cause of death as ‘putrid fever’ and though he discusses other duels in his journal, doesn’t mention a stand-off between Enoch Poor and Major John Porter of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, around whom the rumors swirl. Dueling among officers was forbidden and neither of the alleged participants seemed the type to buck official orders. Not only was the practice uncommon in New England, but Porter had been educated as a minister. Other contemporary reports of Poor’s death indicate it was far more likely that he died of typhus (the modern description of ‘putrid fever’). But there’s just enough doubt to fuel the pilot light of conspiracy that keeps the rumor going. It was certainly a solid enough belief in 1979 when the roadside sign was erected in Exeter. Poor’s funeral was attended by both Lafayette and General Washington. In 1904, the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution erected a statue in his honor in Hackensack, where he is buried. Lt. Jeremiah Fogg of Kensington was with Poor during his final hours. In his journal he lamented, “My general is gone. A cruel stubborn fever has deprived us of the second man in the world.” The first man, presumably, was General George Washington.
Image: a photo of the Enoch Poor New Hampshire roadside sign.