Caesar Jones

Quick Facts

Significance:

Patriot of Color at Battle Road

Place of Birth:

Bedford, Massachusetts(?)

Place of Burial:

Bedford, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Old Burial Grounds

The following is from the 2004 National Park Service study Patriots of Color researched and prepared by George Quintal:

 

Caesar Jones was the ‘Negro servant’ of 2^nd Lt. Timothy Jones of Bedford (MA). He was ‘freed before the Revolution and served in the war, doing duty in every campaign from the 19^th of April to the end of the conflict.’^I Lt. Jones, in Capt. Jonathan Wilson’s Bedford Minute Man company, became second in command after his Captain was killed on Battle Road. Caesar, if present, would have been a volunteer attached to this company (his name is not listed in the official military records for 1775). A town history gives more detail:

Family tradition has proved that Caesar, a freed slave, went to Concord with his master on the morning of April 19 and stayed with him until he returned home. Although a freed man, Caesar was not a free man, and he entered the service after the battles at Concord with the approval of his master. His name appears on the Bedford treasurer’s lists for the years of the war for receipt of grain and money as “bounty,” or extra pay allowed by the Town of Bedford for enlistment.^II

No known military records list him from 1775 to 1781. On 1 May 1782, he did indeed enlist ‘to serve in the Continental Army for the term of three years,’ as a Private in Col. Benjamin Tupper’s 10^th regiment. Probably due to the disbandment of the armed forces after the War, he only served a term of eight months. He received a bounty from Bedford on 11 May 1782 for his enlistment.^III Town records show this bounty to be sixty pounds.^IV He signed by an “X” mark with the note ‘A free negro’ appended.^V

He is buried in the northeast corner of the Old Burial Grounds on Springs Road in Bedford. A stone monument marks the spot:

CAMBRIDGE MOORE
CAESAR PRESCOTT
CAESAR JONES
NEGRO SLAVES
SOLDIERS
IN THE REVOLUTION
1775 1783

Footnotes:

1. Brown, Louise K. Bedford [MA] a Revolutionary town (1975), 231. There is some disagreement on these points. Brown, Abram English. History of the Town of Bedford, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, … to ...1891 … (1891), 31 states that there ‘is no evidence that any of the slaves of this town were permitted to accompany their masters to Concord on April 19, 1775.’ Therefore the proof level has been set at “?” [service not proven but probable] rather than “+” [service accepted by reason of a secondary source].
2. Ibid, 296.
3. Secretary of Commonwealth. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (1896-1908), 8:903. Also 2-CD Family Tree Maker^TM set “Military Records: Revolutionary War.”
4. History of the Town of Bedford, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, … to ...1891 … (1891), 27.
5. Ibid, 32.

Learn more about Quintal's study.