David Parrella: Tertius Taylor

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Published: 06-05-2025 2:38 PM

In the old cemetery in Buckland, Massachusetts there is a grave marker that reads: “He entered the service of the revolution in the year 1775 and after the toils and privations of eight years was returned to his family with the thanks of a free and happy country.”

Young Tertius marched off to war right after the first shots at Lexington and Concord. Unlike many of those early patriots, Tertius did not serve for a year or two, He remained in what was to become the Continental Army right through the battles at Saratoga up until the final withdrawal of the British army from New York in 1783.

During that time, he was chased by Native Americans at the siege of Fort Stanwix. He shivered with the rest of the army at Valley Forge. And he witnessed the “World Turned Upside Down” at Yorktown.

Despite his yeoman service, Tertius managed to father five children during the course of the war, which means he must have secured leave to return to Buckland periodically, or Mrs. Taylor may have visited him at the front.

He appears in the National Archives as having petitioned for his four dollars a month in military pension. There is no record as to whether he actually received it.

During this sesquicentennial commemoration of the founding of our republic, it is important that we remember that all those figures of history were not just gentlemen in powdered wigs debating about our future government. They were real humans trying to navigate challenges that demanded personal sacrifices for uncertain rewards.

The revolution that began in Massachusetts could easily have failed had the British responded more aggressively. Perhaps the key to our success lay in the fact that while many Americans remained loyal to the crown, they never coalesced around a leader who could challenge Washington as the embodiment of a national ideal.

So Tertius and his compatriots bequeathed to us “A republic, if you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin said. That statement is a challenge that has faced us for the past 250 years, including a bloody civil war and today’s experiment with MAGA authoritarianism.

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If that republic was worth what Tertius went through to grant us “a free and happy country,” doesn’t it call on us to preserve it for our descendants?

David Parrella

Buckland