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The Stories Behind the Statistics of Bunker Hill

  • Writer: Media Manager
    Media Manager
  • Jun 1
  • 2 min read

Join our blog writer, Memoria, in going beyond the statistics of Bunker Hill and exploring how those who died at the battle lived.


June 17, 2026, marks the 251st anniversary of what has become known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Battles are often discussed primarily in numbers: how many soldiers were in each army, and how many of those soldiers died over the course of the fighting. There were approximately 2,400 soldiers from the British army at Bunker Hill against roughly 1,500 to 2,400 men fighting for the Provincial militia. By the end of the day, the British army had experienced 1,054 casualties, while the Provincial army had lost only about 450 of their fighters. There is another important number to bear in mind when discussing the Battle of Bunker Hill, and there are two men in particular who are part of that number: Caesar Bason and Samuel Ashbow, Jr. 



Hailing from Westford, MA, Caesar Bason had served in Col. Hames Prescott’s regiment at Battle Road on April 19, 1775. Like many other men in the aftermath of that first battle in the war, he agreed to enlist for eight months in the army that was coalescing in Cambridge. As a member of Col. William Prescott’s regiment, he was present at the Breed’s Hill redoubt, constructed on the night of June 16, 1775. According to a nineteenth-century historian, “In the battle he found his powder was nearly gone, and putting in his last charge, he exclaimed, ‘Now, Caesar, give ‘em one more.’ He fired and was himself shot, and fell back into the trench.”


Less is known about Samuel Ashbow (or Ashbo), Jr. He seems to have enlisted soon after news of the events of April 19, 1775 came to his home in New London, CT, and marched north with Col. Israel Putnam’s regiment. When Ashbow arrived in Charlestown, he was stationed at the rail fence on Breed’s Hill, where he died on June 17, 1775. Unlike Caesar Bason, the exact moment of his death does not appear to have been recorded. 


So far, there is nothing in either of these stories to distinguish them from any other men who died in the battle. The same historian who related the anecdote about Caesar Bason’s death also noted, however, that Bason “was a colored man and perhaps the servant of James Burn.” Samuel Ashbow, Jr., has been described as “the first Native American to be killed in the Revolutionary War.” In addition to being two of the roughly 450 men from the Provincial Army who died at the Battle of Bunker Hill, then, Bason and Ashbow are also part of the 103 Black or Indigenous men who were present at that battle. These men have been described as “Patriots of Color” and their stories deserve to be shared, for any discussion of a major event that does not mention people such as Bason and Ashbow is incomplete. Black and Native histories are key threads in the tapestry that is American history.



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