Phillip Abbot

Quick Facts

Significance:

Patriot of Color at the Battle of Bunker Hill

Place of Birth:

Andover, Massachusetts(?)

Place of Death:

Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

June 17, 1775

Place of Burial:

Likely Charlestown, Massachusetts

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

Little is known of Phillip Abbot except that he was from Andover (MA) and was the ‘negro servant of Nathan Abbot.’^I

He enlisted into the company of Capt. Benjamin Ames, Col. James Frye, and was present at the Battle of Bunker Hill in the redoubt, where he was killed.^II With other Americans who were killed, he is probably buried on or near the grounds of the Bunker Hill Monument.

Footnotes:

1. Secretary of the Commonwealth. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (1896-1908) 1:14. Also 2-CD Family Tree Maker^TM set “Military Records: Revolutionary War.”
2. Ibid; also Vital Records to 1850. Births, Marriages and Deaths. Vols for most Massachusetts towns, Andover, Deaths, 573 in which reference is made to the records of the South Parish Congregational Church: ‘a molatto killed in Battle at Bunker Hill’; also, Thomas Boynton journal: ‘We lost...Philip Abbot’ as quoted in Bailey, Sarah Loring. Historical Sketches of Andover, … Massachusetts (1880), 326.

Learn more about Quintal's study.