John Stark

John Stark learned irregular war in Rogers' Rangers and then spent the Revolution making British columns pay for New Hampshire roads. He was born in Londonderry on August 28, 1728. On June 17, 1775, he held the rail fence and the beach on the Mystic while the redoubt on Breed's Hill took the glory and the loss. The hill fell. The approach he was given did not.

On August 16, 1777, he met a German column under Friedrich Baum near Bennington. He told his men the enemy was theirs or Molly Stark would sleep a widow. The sentence is remembered because the field was won. Burgoyne lost a foraging expedition and a good deal of confidence. Saratoga became possible in part because that wagon hunt failed.

He was an independent, sometimes difficult officer. This page will not sand that down. It will say a ranger who disliked councils still knew when to stand on a fence and when to attack a column that thought Vermont was easy.

He died in Manchester on May 8, 1822, one of the last surviving generals of the war. The later state motto — live free or die — comes from a toast he sent in 1809. The war page is the fence and the field, not the souvenir shop.