Last updated: August 11, 2021
Person
Cato Green
Quick Facts
Significance:
Patriot of Color at the Battle of Bunker Hill
Place of Birth:
Stoneham, Massachusetts(?)
The following is from the 2004 National Park Service study Patriots of Color researched and prepared by George Quintal:
Cato, a slave ‘belonging to Dea. Green’ and son of Simon, was baptized on 11 August 1751 in Stoneham (MA).I
A Cato Green of Stoneham, undoubtedly the same man, enlisted on 30 May 1775 in the company of Capt. Samuel Sprague, in Col. Samuel Gerrish’s regiment. On 13 June 1775 he, with others at the Camp at Cambridge, took an oath required by Congress. His Colonel was cashiered because of behavior at the Battle scene and Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin took over. Green was at ‘Camp at Chelsea’ in August 1775 and still there on 30 December 1775 when he received an ‘order for bounty coat or its equivalent in money.’II
He may have been the same Cato Green, ‘free negro,’ who married Peggy Inches, ‘free negro,’ at Boston on 9 April 1782.III
Footnotes:
- Vital Records to 1850. Births, Marriages and Deaths. Vols for most Massachusetts towns, Stoneham, Births (under “Negroes”), 75; referencing Congregational Church record.
- Secretary of the Commonwealth. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (1896-1908) 6:798. Also 2-CD Family Tree MakerTM set “Military Records: Revolutionary War.”
- McGlenen, Edward W. Boston Marriages from 1700 to 1809 (1977), 449.