[The following "Memory" is, with few exceptions, substantially the same as the foregoing one (of Mrs. Holmes). J.E.]
Nov. 25. 1844. Mrs. Patty Holmes: I was born in Bedford, and lived in the Revolutionary war a short distance out of the village [of Bedford?] - east of it. I am now almost ninety. I was a grown up girl in the war. Poundridge was burnt on Friday, and Bedford a week from the next Sunday - that is, nine
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Mrs Patty Holmes contd.
days after. When the British retreated after burning Poundridge, Captain Gilbert Deane's first wife armed with her husband's musket attacked and made prisoner of a Refugee soldier who lagged behind. When the British retreated through Bedford after burning Poundridge they burnt the Meeting House and Colonel Holmes's house, and nine days after- -wards, on Sunday they burnt the parsonage and all the rest of Bedford, except one house. A woman of the village begged them so hard to spare her house that they consented. She then interceded for the opposite house occupied by a brother of Colonel Holmes. They hesitated, but on searching the rooms found a pair of pistols when they refused to hear any further request and fired the house. They searched for arms, and never spared a house where they found any. The British force that burnt Bedford was, I think, part Refugees and part Regulars.
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Mrs. Patty Holmes contd.
Holmes was a Colonel in the American service until the middle or latter part of the war. He was a disappointed man and considered himself ill treated. He advanced moneys to pay the troops when the authorities had none, and was not afterwards refunded when it was in their power. When the British burnt Bedford they advanced no further east than the District School House which stands about a quarter of a mile from the Village on the Poundridge road.