Mark Anthony

Quick Facts

Significance:

Patriot of Color at the Battle of Bunker Hill

Place of Birth:

Newbury, Massachusetts(?)

Date of Birth:

Circa 1745

Place of Death:

Prospect Hill, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

October 17, 1775

Mark Anthony enlisted in the Massachusetts regiment raised in Newbury on May 1, 1775, in the wake of the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord. He served in in the company of Capt. Jacob Gerrish in Col. Moses Little’s regiment through the beginning of the Siege of Boston.¹ On October 17, 1775, 30-year-old Mark Anthony died in camp at Prospect Hill of “putrid fever,” or typhus.²

One Newburyport diarist recorded Mark Anthony’s death under the name “Mark Noyes.”³ This suggests that before enlisting, Mark Anthony may have been enslaved by a household of the prominent Noyes family of Newbury, MA. He may have been the “Negro Servant Calld Mark” willed by Daniel Noyes to his son Ebenezer in 1765.⁴ It is unknown what happened to this Mark after Ebenezer Noyes’s death in 1767.⁵

On December 27, 1775, Colonel Moses Little signed a request for the equivalent in money for a bounty coat “for Mark Anthony a servant.”⁶ Although he had died two months earlier, Mark Anthony’s service until his death had earned the bounty promised by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress for eight months of service.⁷ The coat rolls for Moses Little’s regiment include payments to the estates or named heirs of other soldiers who had died in service. Because Colonel Little signed on behalf of Mark Anthony and the document requested payment to Captain Jacob Gerrish, it is unclear who benefited from the bounty. There is no further documentation of how or to whom Gerrish and Little paid out the money.

Footnotes

1. Secretary of the Commonwealth. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (1896-1908) 1:280, listed as ‘Anthony.’ Ibid 3:73, listed as ‘Mar Canteney.’ Pay receipt list of Capt. Jacob Gerrish’s company in the Revolutionary War Orderly Books at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Moses Little’s Regiment, Continental Army. Microfilmed. P-394 Reel II.2.A. p. 200.
2. “A minute of ye discharg’d” in Revolutionary War Orderly Books at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Moses Little’s Regiment, Continental Army. Microfilmed. P-394 Reel II.2.A. p. 183, 200. Paul Lunt, Samuel Green, ed. Paul Lunt's diary : May-December, 1775 (Boston: For Private Distribution, 1872), 14. Moses Sleeper, Manuscript diary, entry for October 17, 1775. Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. (LONG 36353).
3. Moses Sleeper, Manuscript diary, entry for October 17, 1775. Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. (LONG 36353).
4. Henry Erastus Noyes, Genealogical record of some of the Noyes descendants of James Nicholas and Peter Noyes (Boston, 1904), Vol. I, 59. The will of Daniel Noyes (1703-1765) included four enslaved people: “I give to my Beloved Son Ebenezer Noyes my Negro Servant Calld. Mark” (Essex Co. Probate, 342: 167) and to Samuel “also my three slaves which Were not Before Disposed of in this my Will” (Essex Co. Probate, 342: 168). Daniel Noyes (1703-1765) himself had inherited “a negro slave valued at £40” from his father, Daniel Noyes (1673-1716). (Henry Erastus Noyes, p. 53.) Newbury vital records also document the baptism of “Peter, mulatto servant boy to Dea. [James] Noyes” in 1731. (Vital Records of Newbury Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849 (Salem: The Essex Institute, 1911), Vol. I. p. 564)
5. The inventory of Ebenezer Noyes’s estate lists “a Negro Man Servant,” but does not confirm that this is the same person as Mark. The probate record does not list heirs for Ebenezer Noyes. New Hampshire, Probate Records, Vol. 24, p. 536-537.
6. Muster/payrolls, and various papers (1763-1808) of the Revolutionary War [Massachusetts and Rhode Island], Vol. 57, Coat rolls, 8 months' service, 1775, book 2 1775-1776, File 9, page 12. 
7. Plea for Samuel Nelson, June 17, 1776. Muster/payrolls, and various papers (1763-1808) of the Revolutionary War [Massachusetts and Rhode Island], Vol. 57, Coat rolls, 8 months' service, 1775, File 12, page 31.

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

Mark Anthony^I was born circa 1745.^II

He joined the eight month’s service from Newbury on 1 May 1775, in the company of Capt. Jacob Gerrish in Col. Moses Little’s regiment.^III On 3 July 1775, he served on the main guard under Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin.^IV He is listed on the 1 August 1775 muster roll and on an October 1775 roll in which he is described as:

age: 30

He is also shown in the same unit on a 27 December 1775 ‘order for bounty coat or its equivalent in money,’ being ‘reported a servant.’^V

Footnotes:

I. Soldier description unavailable – soldier placed in database based on status of slave/servant alone. 

II. Birth date backwardly-computed, based on age in military descriptive roll.

III. Secretary of the Commonwealth. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (1896-1908) 1:280, listed as ‘Anthony.’ Also 2-CD Family Tree Maker^TM set “Military Records: Revolutionary War.”

IV. Ibid 3:73, listed as ‘Mar Canteney.’

V. Ibid 1:280.

Learn more about Quintal's study.