Peter Salem

Peter Salem was born enslaved in the Framingham country of Massachusetts about 1750. He was freed to serve. On April 19, 1775, he stood with militia on the road that started the war. On June 17 he was in the redoubt on Breed's Hill.

A later story says he fired the shot that killed Major John Pitcairn. Officers praised a Black soldier's conduct that day; this page will not print the Pitcairn shot as a settled fact. The service is not a legend. Salem's name is in the Massachusetts rolls. He served afterward in the Continental line, including the work around Saratoga and the long years that followed a famous afternoon.

He died in Framingham on August 16, 1816. No contemporary likeness is known. The oil likeness on this page is a respectful later painting, not a face taken from life. The town kept a grave. The army kept a name that white officers had already written down when the powder was gone and the hill was lost.

The Revolution's first year was not only the men in the Copley paintings. Salem is here so that sentence has another name beside Poor.